4.1 © 2004 Pearson Education, Inc. Exam 70-290 Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 Environment Lesson 4: Organizing a Disk for Data

4.1 © 2004 Pearson Education, Inc.

Exam 70-290 Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 Environment

Lesson 4: Organizing a Disk for Data Storage

Goals Introduce storage types Create a primary partition Create an extended partition and a logical drive Upgrade a disk from basic to dynamic Create a simple volume Introduce spanned, striped and mirrored volumes Understand and implement a RAID-5 volume Defragment volumes and partitions Recover from disk failures




Storage types used by Windows Server 2003 Basic storage (divides a hard disk into partitions)Dynamic storage (divides a hard disk into volumes)

Basic disk supports the following types of partitionsPrimary partition – a physical unit of storage created on a

basic diskExtended partitions – created from free space that has not

yet been partitioned

(Skill 1)

Introducing Storage Types




Dynamic disks support the following types of volumes Simple volume – consists of disk space from a single hard disk,

an entire disk, or multiple regions on the same disk that are linked together

Spanned volume – consists of disk space from multiple disks. Striped volume (RAID-0) – combines areas of free disk space

from two or more hard disks Mirrored volume (RAID-1) – is created using the free disk space

on two physical hard disks RAID-5 volume – is a fault-tolerant, striped, dynamic volume that

combines free disk space from 3 to 32 physical hard disks

Introducing Storage Types (2)

(Skill 1)




Figure 4-1 Types of partitions on a basic disk

(Skill 1)




Figure 4-2 How data is written to dynamic volumes

(Skill 1)




Figure 4-3 Limitations of dynamic disks

(Skill 1)




Creating a Primary Partition

One primary partition on a basic disk stores the files required for the computer to boot

System files can be on an extended partition, but the boot files must reside on a primary partition or a volume

Use the Disk Management snap-in, or disport.exe, to create additional primary partitions using unallocated space on the hard disk

The Disk Management snap-in is included in the pre-configured Computer Management console.

(Skill 2)




Figure 4-4 Available disk configuration

(Skill 2)

Provides information about each physical disk and the partitions or volumes on each disk

Provides information about the type of disk, the file system used to format the disk, the disk capacity, and the status of the disk




Figure 4-5 Assigning the drive letter

(Skill 2)




Figure 4-6 Formatting the partition and labeling the volume

(Skill 2)




Figure 4-7 Properties dialog box for the primary partition

(Skill 2)




Figure 4-8 Changing the drive letter of a primary partition

(Skill 2)




Figure 4-9 The Change Drive Letter or Path dialog box

(Skill 2)




Creating an Extended Partition and a Logical Drive

Basic disks can have a maximum of four partitions per drive using the default master boot record (MBR) partitioning style

Extended partitions Do not store data like primary or logical partitionsAct as containers for logical partitions, where the data

is actually stored

(Skill 3)




Figure 4-10 Starting the New Partition Wizard

(Skill 3)

Right-click onthe Unallocateddisk area




Figure 4-11 Creating an extended partition

(Skill 3)

Newly created extended partition on Disk 0




Figure 4-12 Setting the size for the extended partition

(Skill 3)




Figure 4-13 A logical drive on an extended partition

(Skill 3)

A logical drive has been created on Disk 1




Upgrading a Disk from Basic to Dynamic

By default, the hard disk on a Windows Server 2003 computer is initialized with basic storage

When you upgrade a basic disk, the existing partitions are converted into simple volumes

Use the Disk Management snap-in to upgrade a basic disk to a dynamic disk

(Skill 4)




Figure 4-14 The Convert to Dynamic Disk dialog box

Figure 4-15 The Disks to Convert dialog box

(Skill 4)




Figure 4-16 The Disk Management message box

Figure 4-17 The Convert Disk to Dynamic warning message

Figure 4-18 The Confirm message box

(Skill 4)

You will have to reboot if you are converting a disk that includes the boot volume, system volume or a volume that includes the paging file




Creating a Simple Volume

Upgrading a basic disk to a dynamic diskAny existing partitions are converted to volumesAny free space that is left on the drive can be used to

create additional volumes Simple volume

Can be part of a disk or an entire disk Can be created only on a single dynamic disk

(Skill 5)




Figure 4-19 Creating a simple volume

(Skill 5)




Figure 4-20 Setting the size for the simple volume

(Skill 5)




Figure 4-21 Newly created simple volume

(Skill 5)

Note that if you created the primary partition and the logical drive on the extended partition on the same disk, they were converted to simple volumes when the disk was upgraded to dynamic




Introducing Spanned, Striped and Mirrored Volumes

Spanned volumes Creating a spanned volume

Combines the unallocated space on multiple disks into one logical volume

A spanned volume can organize disk space on up to a maximum of 32 disks

Spanned disks allow you to combine the space used by multiple, smaller volumes, on multiple disks, into one spanned volume represented by a single drive letter

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-22 Creating a spanned volume

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-23 Selecting the disks to create a spanned volume

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-24 Details of the spanned volume

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-25 Newly created spanned volume

(Skill 6)

Spanned volume createdusing 300 MB of diskspace from two harddisks on your machine




Striped volumes As with spanned volumes, you can combine disk

space from a maximum of 32 disks to create a striped volume

On a striped volume, data is divided in blocks of 64 KB across each segment of the volume

Data is simultaneously written across all of the disks so that it is added to the disks at the same rate

Introducing Spanned, Striped and Mirrored Volumes (2)

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-26 Assigning a drive letter to the striped volume

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-27 Newly created striped volume

(Skill 6)




Mirrored volumes A mirrored volume provides fault tolerance because

you create two drives that are duplicates of each other

Mirrored volumes are inefficient in some respects because fifty percent of the available disk space is consumed by fault tolerance

Introducing Spanned, Striped and Mirrored Volumes (3)

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-28 Selecting the disks for a mirrored volume

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-29 Selecting the file system, name, and format the volume

(Skill 6)




Figure 4-30 Newly created mirrored volume

(Skill 6)

Mirrored volume created by combining free space from two hard disks




Understanding and Implementing a RAID-5 Volume

Consists of disk space on at least three physical hard disks

Provides fault tolerance by writing one block of parity information for each stripe of data

If a disk fails, the system uses the parity information and the data from the remaining disks and performs a logical XOR (Exclusive OR) operation to determine what the missing section of data should be

(Skill 7)




Figure 4-31 Setting the size for a RAID-5 volume

(Skill 7)

300 MB of space will be used from each disk for a total of 600 MB of usable storage space 1/3 (300 MB) will be lost to parity data




Figure 4-32 Details of the RAID-5 volume

(Skill 7)

Summary of thesettings for theRAID-5 volume




Figure 4-33 Newly created RAID-5 volume

(Skill 7)

A RAID-5 volume created using disk space from three hard disks




Defragmenting Volumes and Partitions The Disk Defragmenter rearranges files and unused

space, moving the segments of each file and folder to one location so that they occupy a single, contiguous space on the hard disk

Enhancements In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, file system

defragmenter support is no longer dependent on compressed file routines and the Cache Manager

Limitations on defragmenting volumes with cluster sizes larger than 4 KB and on moving single NTFS file clusters have been remedied

(Skill 8)




Defragmenting Volumes and Partitions (2)Disk Defragmenter window Partitions to analyze and defragment

Lists the volumes you can view and defragmentProvides details such as the type of File System,

amount of Free Space, and Capacity of the drive Analysis display

Provides a graphical display of the fragmentation on the drive

Defragmentation displayProvides a constantly-updating representation of the

volume during defragmentation

(Skill 8)




Figure 4-34 The Disk Defragmenter utility in the Computer Management console

(Skill 8)




Figure 4-35 The Defragment Now button on the Tools tab

(Skill 8)




Figure 4-36 Analyzing a disk

(Skill 8)

Click to view the analysis report for the selected disk volume




Figure 4-37 Viewing the status of a disk after defragmentation

(Skill 8)

Select to analyze a disk for fragmentation

Select to defragment the disk

Select to open a report detailing the number of fragmented files in each identified file, the file size, and file name




Figure 4-38 The Analysis Report

(Skill 8)




Recovering from Disk Failures

In the event of disk or volume failures, it is important to repair the disk or volume as quickly as possible to minimize the damage

Disk Management snap-inUsed to monitor the status of a disk or volume to

determine if it is functioning normally Used to review information about the disk including its

status

(Skill 9)




Corrective actions Offline or Missing Status

Make sure the disk is plugged in and attached to the computer

If Windows 2003 cannot locate the disk, use the Reactivate Disk command to bring the disk online

Online Disks (w/Errors) StatusA disk with the Online Disks (w/Errors) status is

accessible, but may contain I/O errors In such a situation, you can try to reactivate the disk to

bring it back online

Recovering from Disk Failures (2)

(Skill 9)




Figure 4-39 Failed Redundancy

(Skill 9)

One disk in a 3-disk RAID array has failed because the disk is Offline, so redundancy has failed




Figure 4-40 Failed disks and Reactivating a Missing disk

(Skill 9)




Figure 4-41 Reactivating a Volume

(Skill 9)

Documents

4.1 © 2004 Pearson Education, Inc. Exam 70-290 Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 Environment Lesson 4: Organizing a Disk for Data