The nice moon is out again tonight: Notes from the field: Implementing Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) 2019 + Lenovo + WSLab: 1.Hardware consideration

I am deploying a disaggregated S2D scenario, consisting of 3x clusters each with 3 nodes.

2x Compute Clusters (one with a lot of CPU cores the other with high-frequency CPU), each node:

Notes:

S2D Nodes have to be certified (in order to receive support from the vendor and Microsoft) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-direct-hardware-requirements

The certification program name was called Windows Server Software-Defined (WSSD), now its called Azure Stack HCI (HCI)
However, in the Windows server catalog, it is still referred to as SDDC certification: https://www.windowsservercatalog.com/ but to make it more confusing it is prefabricated here as well: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/azure-stack-hci-catalog
SDDC Premium vs Standard

An only small subset of configurations have passed the certification, so the vendors usually offer few combinations of different SSD/NVMe/HDDs and network cards.
You may want your compute cluster/nodes to pass the SDDC Premium certification as well. While it is not a requirement and the compute nodes will not run S2D, you want to utilize features such as d.VMMq (which everyone else but MS is calling RSSv2) for which a proper drivers are a must https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/networking-blog/synthetic-accelerations-in-a-nutshell-windows-server-2019/ba-p/653976

Windows Server Catalog claims that Lenovo SR630 have passed the SDDC Premium certification...

Without XClarity Controller Enterprise upgrade you will not be able to use Lenovo's tool for Bare-metal deloyment (which might not be an issue, just stating facts:))

S2D calculator to check sizing https://aka.ms/s2dcalc
Each compute node is having 2x 2-ports Mellanox network card so that I can dedicate two 25Gbit ports for VM traffic and another two ports for S2D traffic. This simplifies the deployment greatly
Consider the RAM sizing. Not only how much GB you need but also the slots.

While this is something any good vendor should help you with (as well as proper placing to PCIe of NVMe cards/Mellanox cards etc..) just reminder that for S2D nodes you are looking for balanced configurations. In my case I have to follow: https://lenovopress.com/lp1089-balanced-memory-configurations-xeon-scalable-gen-2
Why? Because Software Defined anything performs the operations in the memory.
Deduplicaton - will run S2D nodes / https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/data-deduplication/install-enable

Service server is a must - you may utilize existing infrastructure however you will greatly appreciate a server for deployment/maintenance and troubleshooting. Something where you can run DC, VMM, Monitoring and/or other tools (bera metal deploy, configuration...)
You may want to use "Keep your harddrive" support option for S2D nodes if not running shielded VMs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/security/guarded-fabric-shielded-vm/guarded-fabric-and-shielded-vms
Backup for the VM's - do not forget to consider it as a part of the whole solution

The nice moon is out again tonight