Do we need SCVMM in order to test Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016?

Currently we suggest SCVMM to our customers only in cases of four and more nodes.

I can’t tell for sure whether you need SCVMM in your case, but our last customer with four servers and over 100 VMs is almost not using SCVMM.

For more information on configuration, these two topics were very helpful for us: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center-docs/vmm/scenario/storage-spaces-manage https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/how-to-deploy-and-manage-storage-spaces-direct-cluster-using-scvmm-2016

SCVMM2016, PowerShell (that's what Microsoft pushes real hard), and there are some third-party products as well, but they are vendor locked-in so isn't really an option now.