Examine the prerequisites for implementing Storage Replica

  • 5 minutes

Storage Replica offers numerous benefits. To implement it successfully though, you must first ensure that your environment meets a number of prerequisites.

Prerequisites to use Storage Replica

The prerequisites to use Storage Replica include:

  • Servers hosting replicated volumes must be members of the same or trusted Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) forest.

  • Each server should have at least 2 GB of RAM and two CPU cores.

  • Each server should be running Windows Server 2019 Datacenter, Windows Server 2016 Datacenter, or Windows Server 2022 DataCenter edition.

    Note

    It's possible to use Windows Server 2019 Standard edition, but this configuration supports replication of only a single volume of up to 2 terabytes (TB) in size.

  • Each server should have at minimum one Gigabit Ethernet adapter for synchronous replication, although Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is preferable.

  • The source and destination server must both have one set of volumes: one volume for data and one volume for logs, with the following settings:

    • Disks must be initialized as a GUID Partition Table (GPT), rather than as a master boot record (MBR).
    • Volumes should be formatted with ReFS or NTFS.
    • The data volumes sizes and sector sizes must match.
    • The log volumes sizes and sector sizes must match.
    • The log volumes should use faster storage than data volumes.
    • The log volumes shouldn't be used for any other workloads.

  • Bi-directional connectivity via Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), SMB (port 445, plus port 5445 for SMB Direct) and Web Services-Management (WS-MAN) (port 5985), between the servers hosting the replicated volumes.

  • A network between servers with enough bandwidth to match I/O write workload, and less than 5-ms round-trip latency when implementing synchronous replication.

Note

You cannot use Storage Replica to replicate Windows Server operating system volumes.

Tip

You can verify that these requirements are satisfied by using the Test-SRTopology Windows PowerShell cmdlet. The tool is part of the Windows Server Storage Replica Management Tools feature.

Data Deduplication

Storage Replica supports Data Deduplication. To implement it, you should:

  • Install Data Deduplication on both the source and destination servers.

  • Enable Data Deduplication on the data volume on the source server. This automatically replicates the deduplicated content of the primary to the secondary on the destination server.

    Note

    You shouldn't enable Data Deduplication on the destination server.