Week 10 Objectives

1. Week 10 Objectives • Overview of Storage Managing Disks and Volumes Implementing Storage Spaces • Overview of Virtualization Technologies Implementing Hyper-V Managing Virtual Machine Storage Managing Virtual Networks

2. Disk Types and Performance • As performance increases, so does cost SSD SAS Performance SCSI Slow Slow ~ 150 IOPS ~210 IOPS Fast: 1.5mio IPOS SATA EIDE Cost

3. What Is Direct Attached Storage? DAS disks are physically attached to the server Advantages: Disadvantages: • Easy to configure • Inexpensive solution • Isolated because it attaches only to a single server • Slower Server with attached disks

4. What Is Network Attached Storage? NAS is storage that is attached to a dedicated storage device and accessed through network shares Advantages: NAS Device • Relatively inexpensive • Easy to configure Local Area Network (Ethernet) Disadvantages: • Slower access times • Not an enterprise solution File-level access (CIFS, NFS) NAS offers centralized storage at an affordable price File Server

5. What Is a SAN? SANs offers higher availability with the most flexibility Advantages: • Fastest access times • Easily expandable • Centralized storage • High level of redundancy Servers Switches Disadvantages: • More expensive • Requires specialized skills Storage Devices SANs can be implemented using Fibre Channel or iSCSI

6. 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

7. RAID Levels RAID 5 RAID 1+0 RAID 6 RAID 0 RAID 1 Each pair of disks is mirrored, then the mirrored disks are striped Block level striped set with parity distributed across all disks Block level striped set with parity distributed across all disks Striped set without parity or mirroring Mirrored drives

8. Selecting a Partition Table Format MBR • Standard Partition table format since early 1980s • Supports a maximum of 4 primary partitions per drive • Can partition a disk up to 2 TB 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 EB • Use MBR for disks smaller than 2 TB • Use GPT for disks larger than 2 TB

9. Selecting a Disk Type • Basic disks are: • Disks initialized for basic storage • The default storage for Windows operating system • 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

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

11. What Is ReFS? ReFS is a new file system that is built in to Windows Server 2012. Advantages include: • 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

12. What Are Mount Points and Links? • A mount point is a reference to a location on a disk that enables Windows operating system access to disk resources • Use volume mount points: • To mount volumes or disks as folders instead of using drive letters • When you do not have drive letters available for creating new volumes • To add disk space without changing the folder structure • A link file contains a reference to another file or directory • Link options: • Symbolic file link (or, soft link) • Symbolic directory link (or, directory junctions)

13. Extending and Shrinking Volumes • You can resize NTFS volumes from the Windows 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

14. 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 the storage pool To create a virtual disk, you need the following: Disk Drive Virtual Disk • 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 Storage Pool Physical Disks Virtual drives are not virtual hard disks (VHDs); they should be considered a drive in Disk Manager

15. Advanced Management Options for Storage Spaces • Basic Management for Storage Spaces is available in Server Manager • For disk failure: • Do not use chkdsk or scan disk • Remove the drive and add a new one • Advanced management requires Windows PowerShell

16. Server Virtualization with Hyper-V • Benefits of server virtualization with Hyper-V: • Invisible to users • Guest machines can use different operating systems • More efficient use of hardware • Service and application isolation • Workload consolidation • Simplifies server deployment • Virtual machine templates • Virtual machine self-service portals

17. What Is Windows Azure? • Windows Azure is a cloud-based platform for hosting virtual machines and applications • You pay only for the resources that you use • You can increase and decrease capacity automatically and swiftly • You can use Windows Azure to: • Host websites • Host production applications • Host virtual machines • Test proof-of-concept solutions

18. Desktop Virtualization Desktop virtualization includes the following technologies: • Client (Local) Hyper-V • VDI

19. Presentation Virtualization Differences between desktop virtualization and presentation virtualization • Presentation virtualization technologies include: • Remote Desktop Services • Full Desktop with RDC • Applications using RemoteApp • Remote Access through RD Gateway

20. What is Microsoft Application Virtualization? • Benefits of App-V • Application isolation • Incompatible applications can run on the same server • Application streaming • Application deployment is quicker • Application portability • Applications can follow users across multiple computers • UE-V • Application and operating system settings follow users across multiple computers

21. What is Hyper-V? • Hyper-V • Is the hardware virtualization role in Windows Server 2012 • Gives virtual machine guests direct access to the host's hardware • Compatible Windows Server operating systems • Windows Server 2012 • Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012

22. Hardware Requirements for Hyper-V • Factors to consider when planning hardware for servers running Hyper-V: • Processor characteristics • Must have an x64 platform that supports hardware assisted virtualization and Data Execution Protection • Processing capacity • Memory • Storage subsystem performance • Network throughput (typically multiple NICs)

23. Virtual Machine Hardware Virtual machines have the following simulated hardware by default: • BIOS • Memory • Processor • IDE Controller 0 and 1 • SCSI Controller • Synthetic Network Adapter • COM 1 and 2 • Diskette Drive • You can add the following hardware to a virtual machine: • SCSI Controller (up to 4) • Network Adapter • Legacy Network Adapter • Fibre Channel adapter • RemoteFX 3D video adapter

24. Configuring Dynamic Memory Dynamic Memory settings for a virtual machine: Startup RAM Dynamic Memory Minimum RAM Maximum RAM Memory buffer Memory weight

25. Configuring Virtual Machine Integration Services Possible integration services: • Operating system shutdown • Time synchronization • Data exchange • Heartbeat • Backup (volume snapshot)

26. Configuring Virtual Machine Start and Stop Actions • Possible automatic start actions: • Nothing • Automatically start if it was running when the service stopped • Always start this virtual machine automatically • Possible automatic stop actions: • Save the virtual machine state • Turn off the virtual machine • Shut down the guest operating system

27. Hyper-V Resource Metering Parameters that you can measure with resource metering: • Average CPU use • Average physical memory use, including: • Minimum memory use • Maximum memory use • Maximum disk space allocation • Incoming network traffic for a network adapter • Outgoing network traffic for a network adapter

28. What Is a VHD? A virtual hard disk is a file that represents a traditional hard disk drive VHDX format has the following benefits over the VHD format: • The disks can be larger (64 TB versus 2 TB) • The disk is less likely to become corrupted • The format supports better alignment when deployed to a large sector disk • The format supports larger block size for dynamic and differencing disks

29. Creating Virtual Disk Types • Dynamically expanding VHDs • Fixed-size VHDs • Direct-attached storage

30. Virtual Disk Configuration Options

31. Managing VHDs • Potential maintenance operations on virtual hard disks: • Convert from fixed to dynamic • Convert from dynamic to fixed • Convert from VHD to VHDX format • Convert from VHDX to VHD format • Shrink a dynamic virtual hard disk • Expand a dynamic or fixed virtual hard disk

32. Reducing Storage Needs with Differencing VHDs • Differencing disks reduce space used by storage at the cost of performance • You can link multiple differencing disks to a single parent disk • You cannot modify parent disk • You can use Inspect Disk tool to reconnect a differencing disk to a missing parent

33. Using Snapshots • Point-in-time copy of a virtual machine • Does not affect running state of a virtual machine • Snapshot files: • Virtual machine configuration .xml file • Saved-state files • Differencing disk (.avhd)

34. What Is a Virtual Switch? Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 supports three different types of virtual switches: • External Used to map a network to a specific network adapter or network adapter team • Internal Used to communicate between the virtual machines on the host and between the virtual machines and the host itself • Private Used to communicate between virtual machines, but not between the virtual machines and the host itself • VLAN IDs Used to extend VLANs within the host's network switch to VLANS on the external network

35. Hyper-V Network Virtualization Blue network Red network Red virtual machine Blue virtual machine Virtualization Top of rack switches Physical network Physical server Servers • Server virtualization • Runs multiple virtual servers on a physical server • Each virtual server operates as if it is running as a physical server • Network virtualization • Runs multiple virtual networks on a physical network • Each virtual network operates as if it is running as a physical network

36. Managing Virtual Machine MAC Addresses Virtual Switch Manager Window

37. Configuring Virtual Network Adapters Properties of a network adapter: • Virtual Switch • VLAN ID • Bandwidth Management Advanced features of a network adapter: • MAC address allocation • DHCP Guard • Router Guard Hardware acceleration features of synthetic network adapters • Virtual Machine Queue • IPsec task offloading • SR-IOV • Port Mirroring • NIC Teaming