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Using WS2016Lab to test Windows Server 2019

·328 words·2 mins
Storage Spaces Direct Windows Server

If you’ve been anywhere near Twitter or any Tech Blogs and News sites recently, you would have noticed that Microsoft have dropped their first cut of the next Long-Term Service Branch OS, Windows Server 2019, into the Windows Insider ring for people like you and me to start testing.

Now most people (like me) don’t have a huge amount of spare hardware sitting round for times like this, especially for testing things like Storage Spaces Direct (S2D). However, a Microsoft PFE, Jaromir Kaspar, has built some incredibly crafty Powershell scripts that mean with 3 scripts and about a half hour of your time, you can deploy an entire nested S2D Lab on any Hyper-V Host (Even a Windows 10 Laptop!).

What I’m talking about is WS2016Lab, and it’s available for anyone to use on GitHub (Link here)

I’m not going to do a walk-through on how to make use of WS2016Lab because if you read the GitHub page and check out the super helpful videos like the one above, you’ll be armed with everything you need to get going.

Now while I was focusing on S2D testing on Windows Server 2019 LTSB Insider Preview, here are just some of the scenarios supported with WS2016Lab:

  • Nested S2D Hyper-Converged Cluster
  • Physical S2D Hyper-Converged Cluster
  • S2D Converged Cluster (SOFS + Hyper-V)
  • S2D With Bitlocker
  • Storage Replica
  • S2D Bare Metal Deployment from SCVMM
  • Managing S2D with SCVMM
  • Device Guard
  • LAPS
  • SCVMM with SDNExpress
  • Testing Project Honolulu
  • And Many More

On top of all these great lab scenarios (most of which you can deploy on your laptop!), there are a number of great S2D Tools, Documentation on CSV Redirection, and just generally great articles around supporting all the technology used in each scenario.

If you work with Hyper-V or S2D, or are looking to learn more about it, you can take advantage of these scripts to quickly deploy, and redeploy many scenarios in very little time.

I highly recommend you check it out

Ben Thomas
Author
Ben Thomas

Ben Thomas is a Senior Solutions Engineer at Veeam with a deep passion for community, virtualization, and cloud technologies.

Prior to joining Veeam, he spent over 13 years at Datacom, where he progressed from the service desk to a senior advisory role specializing in Hybrid and Private Cloud solutions. His long-standing contributions to the tech community have been recognized with both the Microsoft MVP and Veeam Vanguard awards.

It was his passion as a Vanguard that ultimately led him to his role at Veeam, allowing him to work on the technology he advocates for every day. This blog is where Ben shares his hands-on experiences and real-world solutions from his work and home lab.

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