This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Use case scenario:

This is useful in a scenario where you need to avoid using temporary drive D as the cluster DataPath as this drive will not persist data when the VMs of the cluster are deallocated. This can be leveraged to save on infrastructure cost by deallocating the VMs during non-working hours.

This is strictly only for test clusters as DataPath set to anything other than the temporary D drive is unsupported and if something goes wrong with cluster with this configuration, you should be ready to re-build your cluster.

Suggest you review the following articles if you have not reviewed yet before proceeding with steps:

  1. Implication of changing Data Path
  2. Issues caused by deallocating VM scale sets

 

Steps:

Windows SF Cluster:

 

For changing the service fabric run time location to other drive, you have an option to change the dataPath in the ARM template in the Service fabric extension of the VM scale sets while deploying new clusters as follows:

 

datapath1.jpg

As you could see the dataPath parameter can be changed to drive like C drive, OS disk etc.  You can set it to something like “C: SvcFab” or any desired drive.

 

Please find the ARM template reference for the same here

 

Linux cluster

You can update similar dataPath parameter in the VM scale set’s Service fabric extension using ARM template before making the deployment, example below:

 

datapath2.jpg

 

Also, while changing the dataPath you would be responsible for ensuring extension dependencies are appropriate; such as running VM extension for mounting volumes to your hosts before the SF extension runs (as it would fail without a storage location to bootstrap itself).

 

While you can change the dataPath as mentioned above, but we advise you shouldn’t change it.

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