Creating a Scale Out File Cluster on Azure Local (Stack HCI)

This guide provides a step-by-step approach to deploying a native file cluster on Azure Local (Stack HCI) for hosting FSLogix profiles, one of the primary use cases for this type of file cluster.

By running the file server as a cluster role, you eliminate the need for an additional Windows Server, reducing the overall management overhead, resource consumption, and licensing costs. At the same time, this approach retains the high availability and reliability offered by a Windows Failover Cluster.

Steps to configure

Pre-requisites:

• Azure Local

• Storage Volume

Install Failover Cluster Management Feature on a Windows VM in a network with access to the HCI cluster.

Connect to the cluster name or IP 

Click configure role 

Select file server 

Select scale-out file server 

Give it a name

Finish the wizard  

You can Now see the Scale Out File Server as a role under Roles.

Right click the role and select add file share

Select the server and share location. In this example we are selecting a pre configured volume on the Azure Local Cluster.

Give the share a name e.g. “FSLogix” 

Select Enable continuous availability as well as any other settings you require.

Configure Permissions as per

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fslogix/how-to-configure-storage-permissions

Select Create

You should now be able to access the share via UNC path 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/store-fslogix-profile

Conclusion: This is a quick and efficient way to provide a storage location for the FSLogix profiles in the same cluster as the AVD workloads, you can also use this method configure other other shares if you have a requirement for a highly available share without the need to configure additional servers.