Storage Spaces is a storage virtualization feature in Windows Server that allows you to create virtual disks from physical disks added to a storage pool. It provides capabilities like mirroring, parity support, storage tiering and data deduplication without requiring external hardware. The document discusses Storage Spaces components, configuration, management and comparison to other storage solutions. It also includes demonstrations and exercises for implementing and managing Storage Spaces.
Storage Spaces is a storage virtualization feature in Windows Server that allows you to create virtual disks from physical disks added to a storage pool. It provides capabilities like mirroring, parity support, storage tiering and data deduplication without requiring external hardware. The document discusses Storage Spaces components, configuration, management and comparison to other storage solutions. It also includes demonstrations and exercises for implementing and managing Storage Spaces.
Original Description:
Creating a Storage Space / Installing Data Deduplication / Configuring Data Deduplication
Storage Spaces is a storage virtualization feature in Windows Server that allows you to create virtual disks from physical disks added to a storage pool. It provides capabilities like mirroring, parity support, storage tiering and data deduplication without requiring external hardware. The document discusses Storage Spaces components, configuration, management and comparison to other storage solutions. It also includes demonstrations and exercises for implementing and managing Storage Spaces.
Storage Spaces is a storage virtualization feature in Windows Server that allows you to create virtual disks from physical disks added to a storage pool. It provides capabilities like mirroring, parity support, storage tiering and data deduplication without requiring external hardware. The document discusses Storage Spaces components, configuration, management and comparison to other storage solutions. It also includes demonstrations and exercises for implementing and managing Storage Spaces.
What are Storage Spaces? Components and features of Storage Spaces Demonstration: Configuring Storage Spaces Changes to file and storage services in Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces usage scenarios • Discussion: Comparing Storage Spaces to other storage solutions Enterprise storage needs
In your storage planning, you should assess
whether your storage solution needs to support capabilities such as: • Mirror/parity support • Data stripping • Enclosure awareness • Storage tiering • Storage replication • Data deduplication • Data encryption • Performance analysis Enterprise storage needs Microsoft Ignite 2019 • 40 Zbytes Today • 175 Zbytes by 2025 • 50 Billons of Diveces by 2030
Proliferated use of Smartphone,
Laptops, Tablets, growth of IoT and CloudComputing What are Storage Spaces? Use Storage Spaces to: • Is a storage virtualization feature built into Windows Server 2016/2019/ W10 you get a SAN-like functionality • Add physical disks of any type and size to a storage pool • Create highly-available virtual disks from the pool • VDisk: Include both fixed provisioning and thin provisioning No-HW RAID Physical disks To create a virtual disk, you need: • One or more physical disks Storage pool • A storage pool that includes the disks Virtual disk • Virtual disks (or storage spaces) that are created with disks from the Disk drive storage pool Disk drives that are based on virtual drives equivalent of (LUN) on a SAN JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) Implementations
Using Windows Server with DAS is often
much less expensive than using it with a SAN, if the feature set meets your needs Components and features of Storage Spaces
Features to use Storage Spaces optimally in your
environment Feature Options Storage layout Simple Two-way or three-way mirrors Parity Disk sector size 512 or 512e 4 KB Drive allocation Data-store Manual Hot spare Provisioning schemes Thin provisioning space Fixed provisioning space Stripe parameters Number of columns Demonstration: Configuring Storage Spaces
In this demonstration, you will learn how to:
• Create a storage pool • Create a virtual disk and a volume Changes to file and storage services in Windows Server 2016 Windows Server 2016 provides the following new file and storage services features: • Storage Spaces Direct using storage nodes with only local storage
• Storage Replica replication between servers or clusters that are in the same location or different sites • Storage QoS • Data Deduplication (improved): • Support for volume sizes up to 64 TB • Support for file sizes up to 1 TB • Simplified deduplication configuration for virtualized backup applications • Support for cluster rolling upgrades • SMB hardening improvements Changes to file and storage services in Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012
R2 provides the following new file and storage services features: • Multiterabyte volumes • Data deduplication • iSCSI Target Server • Storage spaces and storage pools (tiered storage spaces in Windows Server 2012 R2) • Unified remote management of File and Storage Services in Server Manager • ReFS • ODX Storage Spaces usage scenarios
Storage Spaces features:
• Implement and easily manage scalable, reliable, and inexpensive storage • Use inexpensive storage with or without external storage • Combine multiple drives into storage pools that administrators can manage as a single entity • Implement different types of storage in the same pool • Grow storage pools as required • Provision storage as required from existing storage pools • Designate specific drives as hot spares Storage Spaces usage scenarios
Limitations of Storage Spaces:
• Storage Spaces volumes are not supported on boot or system volumes • The contents of a drive are lost when you introduce that drive into a storage pool • You should add only unformatted, or non-partitioned, drives • You must have at least one drive in a simple storage pool • Fault tolerant configurations have specific requirements: • A mirrored pool requires a minimum of two drives • Parity requires a minimum of three drives • Three-way mirroring requires a minimum of five drives • All drives in a pool must use the same sector size • Fibre Channel and iSCSI are not supported Storage Spaces usage scenarios
When planning your Storage Spaces solution,
consider: • Fault tolerance: • Provision virtual disks with mirrored and parity layout
• Performance: • Provision virtual disks with parity layout • Use disks of different types to provide tiered storage
• Reliability: • Use hot spare physical disks in case a physical disk fails
• Extensibility: • Add physical disks to a storage pool Discussion: Comparing Storage Spaces to other storage solutions
• What are the advantages of using Storage
Spaces compared to using SANs or NAS? • What are the disadvantages of using Storage Spaces compared to using SANs or NAS? • In what scenarios would you recommend each option?
10 minutes Lesson 2: Managing Storage Spaces
Managing Storage Spaces
Managing disk failure with Storage Spaces Storage pool expansion Demonstration: Managing Storage Spaces by using Windows PowerShell • Event logs and performance counters Managing Storage Spaces
• You can manage Storage Spaces by using:
• Server Manager • Windows PowerShell • Failover Cluster Manager • System Center Virtual Machine Manager • Windows Management Instrumentation • Advanced management requires Windows PowerShell Managing Storage Spaces
Windows PowerShell cmdlet Description
Get-StoragePool List storage pools Repair-VirtualDisk Repair a virtual disk Get-PhysicalDisk | Where {$_.HealthStatus -ne List unhealthy physical disks “Healthy”}
Reset-PhysicalDisk Remove a physical disk from a storage pool
Get-VirtualDisk | List physical disks used for a virtual disk Get-PhysicalDisk
Optimizes a volume, performing such tasks
on supported volumes and system SKUs as Optimize-Volume defragmentation, trim, slab consolidation, and storage tier processing Managing disk failure with Storage Spaces
To enhance disk fault tolerance:
• Design a complete, fault-tolerant storage solution • Deploy a highly available storage pool • Verify hardware and firmware components • Replace failed disks immediately • Retain some unallocated space • Be prepared for multiple disk failures • Provide fault tolerance at the enclosure level Storage pool expansion
Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1
Vdisk 2 Vdisk 2 Vdisk 2
Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4 Disk 5
Disk 1 Storage pool expansion
Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1
Vdisk 2 Vdisk 2 Vdisk 2
Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4 Disk 5
Disk 1 Disk 6 Storage pool expansion Demonstration: Managing Storage Spaces by using Windows PowerShell
In this demonstration, you will learn how to use
Windows PowerShell to: • View the properties of a storage pool • Add physical disks to a storage pool Event logs and performance counters
With any storage technology, it is important to monitor
storage behavior and function to ensure ongoing reliability, availability, and optimal performance Lab A: Implementing Storage Spaces
Exercise 1: Creating a Storage Space
• Exercise 2: Enabling and configuring storage tiering Logon Information
Virtual machines: 20740C-LON-DC1
20740C-LON-SVR1 User name: Adatum\Administrator Password: Pa55w.rd
Estimated Time: 40 minutes
Lab Scenario
Adatum corporation has purchased a number of
hard disk drives and SSDs and you have been tasked with creating a storage solution that can utilize these new devices to the fullest. With mixed requirements in Adatum for data access and redundancy, you must ensure that you have a redundancy solution for critical data that does not require fast disk read and write access. You also must create a solution for data that does require fast read and write access. You decide to use Storage Spaces and storage tiering to meet the requirements. Lab Review
At a minimum, how many disks must you add to a
storage pool to create a three-way mirrored virtual disk? • You have a USB-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? Lesson 3: Implementing Data Deduplication
What is Data Deduplication?
Data Deduplication components Deploying Data Deduplication Demonstration: Implementing Data Deduplication Usage scenarios for Data Deduplication Monitoring and maintaining Data Deduplication • Backup and restore considerations with Data Deduplication What is Data Deduplication?
• Data Deduplication: • Identifies and removes duplications within data without compromising the data’s integrity or fidelity • Has the goal to store more data on less space • Minimum file size 32KB for Start Dedup process • When you enable Data Deduplication on a volume, a background task runs with low-priority that: • Segments data into small, variably-sized chunks • Identifies duplicate chunks • Replaces redundant copies with a reference • Data is not deduplicated while the file is being written. 2016 uses post-process deduplication: EJ: Optimization run every hour • Chunk Store= \System Volume Information\Dedup\ChunkStore\* What is Data Deduplication?
File Share With 5 millons files
What is Data Deduplication? Metadata Data
File1 Name, attributes,.. A B C M N
Metadata Data
File2 Name, attributes,.. A B C X Y
Chunk Store
Chunk Stream A Metadata File1
Standard Info Sparse Reparse Data Metadata
Chunk IDs, Offsets Chunks
A B C M N Metadata Chunk Stream B File2
X Y Standard Info Sparse Reparse Data Metadata
Chunk IDs, Offsets
Data Deduplication components
The Data Deduplication feature consists of several
components: • A filter driver, which monitors local or remote I/O • The Data Deduplication role service, which controls the three available job types: • Optimization: Perform both deduplication and compression • Garbage Collection: Chunks no longer referenced are cleaned up • Scrubbing: Repairs chunk store corruption Data Deduplication components
Data Deduplication disk space savings
A view of optimized data (80% savings)
Chunk After deduplication: Store 2 TB physical size
Regular Storage File Metadata NTFS File System Chunk Store Deploying Data Deduplication
Prior to installing and configuring Data
Deduplication in your environment, you need to plan your deployment using the following steps: • Target deployments • Determine which volumes are candidates for deduplication • Evaluate savings with the Deduplication Evaluation Tool (ddpeval.exe) • Plan the rollout, scalability, and deduplication policies Deploying Data Deduplication
After completing your planning, you need to use
the following steps to deploy Data Deduplication to a server in your environment: • Install Data Deduplication components on the server • Enable Data Deduplication • Configure Data Deduplication jobs • Configure Data Deduplication schedules Demonstration: Implementing Data Deduplication
In this demonstration, you will learn how to:
• Install the Data Deduplication role service • Enable Data Deduplication • Check the status of Data Deduplication Usage scenarios for Data Deduplication
Ideal candidates for deduplication
o Folder redirection servers
o Virtualization depot or provisioning library o Software deployment shares o SQL Server and Exchange Server backup volumes o Scale-out File Servers (SoFS) CSVs o Virtualized backup VHDs (e.g., DPM) o VDI VHDs (only personal VDIs)
Not ideal candidates for deduplication
o Hyper-V hosts o WSUS o SQL Server and Exchange Server database volumes
You should consider using (local or Remote) the Deduplication
Evaluation Tool (ddpeval.exe) to evaluate the volumes before you enable deduplication Usage scenarios for Data Deduplication
Example deduplication savings on data at rest
Monitoring and maintaining Data Deduplication
• Monitor Data Deduplication by using:
• Windows PowerShell cmdlets • Event Viewer logs • Performance Monitor data • File Explorer
• Maintain Data Deduplication by using the
Windows PowerShell cmdlets • Be prepared to troubleshoot issues with Data Deduplication Backup and restore considerations with Data Deduplication
One of the benefits of using Data
Deduplication is that backup and restore operations are typically faster Lab B: Implementing Data Deduplication
Exercise 1: Installing Data Deduplication
• Exercise 2: Configuring Data Deduplication
Logon Information Virtual machines: 20740C-LON-DC1 20740C-LON-SVR1 User name: Adatum\Administrator Password: Pa55w.rd
Estimated Time: 40 minutes
Lab Scenario
After you have tested the storage redundancy and
performance options, you decide that it also would be beneficial to maximize the available disk space that you have, especially on generic file servers. You decide to test Data Deduplication solutions to maximize storage availability for users. New: After you have tested the storage redundancy and performance options, you now decide that it would also be beneficial to maximize the available disk space that you have, especially around virtual machine storage which is in ever increasing demand. You decide to test out Data Deduplication solutions to maximize storage availability for virtual machines. Lab Review
• Your manager is worried about the impact that
using data deduplication will have on the write performance of your file servers’ volumes. Is this concern valid? Module Review and Takeaways
Review Questions • Common Issues and Troubleshooting Tips
