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

Performance
SCSI

SATA

EIDE Cost
What Is Direct Attached Storage?

DAS disks are physically attached to the server

Advantages: Disadvantages:
• Easy to configure • Isolated because it is only
• Inexpensive solution attached to a single server
• Slower

Server with attached disks

What Is Network Attached Storage?

NAS is storage that is attached to a

NAS
dedicated storage device and accessed
through network shares

Advantages:
NAS Device
• Relatively inexpensive
• Easy to configure

LAN (Ethernet)
Disadvantages:
• Slower access times File-level access
(CIFS, NFS)
• Not an enterprise solution

NAS offers centralized storage at an

affordable price
File Server
What Is a SAN?

SANs offers higher availability with the most flexibility

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

Disadvantages:
• More expensive
• Requires specialized skills
Storage Device

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
RAID 1+0
RAID0+1 6
RAID
RAID0 4
52
1
3
Each pair of disks is mirrored, then the mirrored disks
Block level striped set with parity distributed across
Each set of disks is striped, then the stripe set is mirrored
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Block level Bit level
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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
FAT provides:
• Basic file system • FAT32 to enable larger disks
• Partition size limitations • exFAT developed for flash
drives
NTFS provides:
• 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 highly-available virtual
disks from it

To create a virtual disk, you need the Disk Drive

following:
• One or more physical disks Virtual Disk
• Storage pool that includes the disks
• Virtual drives that are created with disks from Storage Pool
the storage pool
• Disk drives that are based on virtual drives 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 Options
• Simple
Storage Layout • Two-way or three-way mirror
• Parity

Disk sector size • 512 or 512e

• Data store
Drive allocation • Manual
• Hot Spare

Provisioning schemes • 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 Description

Get-StoragePool List storage pools
Repair-VirtualDisk Repair a Virtual Disk
Get-PhysicalDisk | List unhealthy physical disks
Where{$_.HealthStatus –ne “Healthy”}
Reset-PhysicalDisk Remove a physical disk from a storage
pool
Get-VirtualDisk | List physical disks used for a virtual
Get-PhysicalDisk 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