Why is configuring regional shared storage locations on a CIFS server using Clustered File Services the best design choice for vDisk storage?

Clustered File Services require multiple servers, shared storage, and specialized configuration, making it significantly more expensive than a standalone CIFS server or even DFS.

Clustered File Services, such as a Windows Server Failover Cluster with Scale-Out File Server (SOFS), provides high availability and fault tolerance for shared storage by allowing multiple servers to access the same storage resources. This architecture ensures continuous service availability and easy scaling of storage throughput and capacity, making it a highly scalable and resilient solution crucial for vDisk storage.

Implementing and managing Clustered File Services involves complex setup, configuration, and ongoing maintenance of the cluster, shared storage, and failover mechanisms, which increases administrative overhead.

A clustered setup inherently involves multiple physical or virtual servers and shared storage components, which increases the system footprint compared to a single server.