Microsoft Official

Course

Module 9

Implementing Local Storage

Module Overview
Overview of Storage
Managing Disks and Volumes
Implementing Storage Spaces

Lesson 1: Overview of Storage

Disk Types and Performance
What Is Direct Attached Storage?
What Is Network Attached Storage?
What Is a SAN?
What Is RAID?
RAID Levels

Disk Types and Performance

Performance and
Cost:
As performance
increases, so does
cost

SSD
SAS

SCSI
~

S
OP
I
0
15

1
~2

S
OP
I
0

st:
a
F

Performan
ce

SATA

w
Slo

EIDE

w
Slo

S
O
P
I

Cos
t

io
m
1.5

What Is Direct Attached Storage?

DAS disks are physically attached to the
server
Advantages:
Easy to configure
Inexpensive
solution

Disadvantages:
Isolated because it is only
attached to a single server
Slower

Server with attached disks

What Is Network Attached Storage?

NAS is storage that is attached to
a dedicated storage device and
accessed through network shares
Advantages:
Relatively inexpensive
Easy to configure
Disadvantages:
Slower access times
Not an enterprise solution

NAS
NAS

NAS
NAS Device
Device

LAN (Ethernet)
File-level
File-level access
access
(CIFS,
NFS)
(CIFS, NFS)

NAS offers centralized storage at

an affordable price
File
File Server
Server

What Is a SAN?
SANs offers higher availability with the most
flexibility

Switches

Advantages:
Fastest access times
Easily expandable
Centralized storage
High level of
redundancy

Storage Device

Disadvantages:
More expensive
Requires specialized
skills

Servers

SANs can be implemented using Fibre

Channel or iSCSI

What Is RAID?
RAID combines multiple disks into a single
logical unit to provide fault tolerance and
performance
RAID provides fault tolerance by using:
Disk mirroring
Parity information
RAID can provide performance benefits by
spreading disk I\O across multiple disks
RAID can be configured using several different
levels
RAID should not replace server backups

RAID Levels
1+0
RAID
RAID0+1
6
RAID 1
4
0
2
RAID
3
5
Each pair of disks is mirrored, then the mirrored disks

Block
striped
set with
parity
distributed
Each
set level
of disks
is striped,
then
the stripe
set isacross
mirrored
are
striped
Block level striped
set
with
parity
distributed
across all
all disks
Bit
level
striped
set
with
parity
Striped
set
without
parity
or
mirroring
Block level
striped
set
with
parity
on
a
dedicated
disk
Byte
level
striped
set
with
parity
Mirrored
drives
disks

Lesson 2: Managing Disks and Volumes

Selecting a Partition Table Format
Selecting a Disk Type
Selecting a File System
What Is a Resilient File System?
What Are Mount Points and Links?
Demonstration: Creating Mount Points and
Links
Extending and Shrinking Volumes

Selecting a Partition Table Format

Use MBR for disks smaller 2 terabytes, and GPT for
disks larger 2 terabytes
MBR
Standard Partition table format since early 1980s
Supports a maximum of 4 primary partitions per drive
Can partition a disk up to 2 terabytes
GPT
GPT is the successor of MBR partition table format
Supports a maximum of 128 partitions per drive
Can partition a disk up to 18 exabytes

Selecting a Disk Type

Basic disks:
Are disks initialized for basic storage
Are the default storage for Windows

Dynamic disks:
Can be modified without restarting Windows
Provide several options for configuring volumes

Disk volume requirements include:

A system volume for hardware-specific files that are
required to start the server
A boot volume for the Windows operating system files

Selecting a File System

When selecting a file system, consider the
differences between FAT, NTFS, and ReFS
Basic
FAT
provides:
file system
Partition size limitations
FAT32
to enable larger disks
NTFS
provides:
exFAT developed for flash drives
Metadata
Security (ACLs and encryption)
Auditing and journaling
ReFS provides:
Backward compatibility support for NTFS
Enhanced data verification and error correction
Support for larger files, directories, volumes, etc.

What Is a Resilient File System?

ReFS is a new file system that is built in to Windows
Server 2012
ReFS provides the following advantages:

Metadata integrity with checksums

Integrity streams with user data integrity

Allocation on write transactional model

Large volume, file, and directory sizes (2^78 bytes

with 16-KB cluster size)

Storage pooling and virtualization

Data striping for performance and redundancy

Disk scrubbing for protection against latent disk

errors

Resiliency to corruptions with recovery

Shared storage pools across machines

What Are Mount Points and Links?

A mount point is a reference to a location on a disk that
enables operating system access to disk resources
Volume mount points enable you to mount volumes or disks
as folders rather than using drive letters
Use volume mount points when:
You need to add disk space without changing the folder
structure
You do not have drive letters available for creating new
volumes
A link file is special type of file that contains a reference to
another file or directory
Link options:
Symbolic file link (also known as soft link)
Symbolic directory link (also known as directory
junctions)

Demonstration: Creating Mount Points and

Links
In this demonstration, you will see how to:
Create a mount point and assign it to a folder
Create a link between folders and see how it

behaves
Create a link for a file

Extending and Shrinking Volumes

You can resize NTFS volumes from the operating
system, beginning with Windows Vista and Windows
Server 2003
When you want to resize a disk, consider the
following:
You can extend or shrink NTFS volumes
ReFS volumes can only be extended
FAT/FAT32/exFAT cannot be resized
To extend, the free space has to be adjacent
You can shrink a volume only up to immovable
files
Bad clusters on a disk will prevent you from
shrinking a volume

Lesson 3: Implementing Storage Spaces

What Is the Storage Spaces Feature?
Virtual Disk Configuration Options
Advanced Management Options for Storage
Spaces
Demonstration: Configuring Storage Spaces

What Is the Storage Spaces Feature?

Use storage spaces to add physical disks of any type
and size to a storage pool, and then create highlyavailable virtual disks from it
To create a virtual disk, you need the
following:
One or more physical disks
Storage pool that includes the disks
Virtual drives that are created with disks
from the storage pool

Disk drives that are based on virtual

drives

Disk Drive
Virtual Disk
Storage Pool
Physical Disks

Virtual drives are not virtual hard disks (VHDs);

they should be considered as a drive in Disk
Manager

Virtual Disk Configuration Options

Feature
Storage Layout
Disk sector size
Drive allocation
Provisioning
schemes

Options
Simple
Two-way or three-way
mirror
Parity
512 or 512e
Data store
Manual
Hot Spare
Thin vs. fixed provisioning

Advanced Management Options for

Storage Spaces
Basic Management for Storage Spaces is available in
Server Manager
On disk failure:

Do not use chkdsk or scan disk

Remove the drive and add a new one

Advanced Management requires Windows PowerShell

Windows PowerShell cmdlet

Get-StoragePool
Repair-VirtualDisk
Get-PhysicalDisk |
Where{$_.HealthStatus ne
Healthy}
Reset-PhysicalDisk
Get-VirtualDisk |
Get-PhysicalDisk

Description
List storage pools
Repair a Virtual Disk
List unhealthy physical disks

Remove a physical disk from a

storage pool
List physical disks used for a
virtual disk

Demonstration: Configuring Storage

Spaces
In this demonstration, you will see how to:
Create a storage pool
Create a virtual disk and a volume

Lab: Implementing Local Storage

Exercise 1: Installing and Configuring a New Disk
Exercise 2: Resizing Volumes
Exercise 3: Configuring a Redundant Storage Space

Logon Information
Virtual Machine

20410A-LON-DC1
20410A-LON-SVR1

User Name

Adatum\Administrator

Password

Pa$$w0rd

Estimated Time:30 minutes

Lab Scenario
A. Datum is a global engineering and manufacturing company

with a head office based in London, England. An IT office and

a data center are located in London to support the London
location and other locations. A. Datum has recently deployed
a Windows Server 2012 infrastructure with Windows 8 clients.
You have been working for A. Datum for several years as a
desktop support specialist. In this role, you visited desktop
computers to troubleshoot application and network problems.
You have recently accepted a promotion to the server support
team. One of your first assignments is configuring the
infrastructure service for a new branch office.
Your manager has asked to add disk space to a file server.

After creating volumes, your manager has also asked you to

resize those volumes based on updated information he has
been given. Finally, you need to make data storage
redundant by creating a 3-way mirrored virtual disk.

Lab Review
At a minimum, how many disks must you add to a storage

pool in order to create a three-way mirrored virtual disk?

You have a USD-attached disk, four SAS disks, and one

SATA disk that are attached to a Windows Server 2012

server. You want to provide a single volume to your users
that they can use for file storage. What would you use?

Module Review and Takeaways

Review Questions
Best Practices
Tools