Week 10 Objectives

•Overview of Storage•Overview of Virtualization Technologies

• Implementing Hyper-V•Managing Virtual Machine Storage•Managing Virtual Networks•Managing Disks and Volumes• Implementing Storage Spaces

Disk Types and Performance

EIDE

SCSI

SATA

SAS

Cost

Performance

Slow

S

low

~ 150 IO

PS

~210 IO

PS

Fast:

1.5mio IPOS

SSD

As performance increases, so does cost

What Is Direct Attached Storage?

Advantages: Disadvantages:

• Easy to configure

• Inexpensive solution

• Isolated because it attaches only to a single server

• Slower

DAS disks are physically attached to the server

Server with attached disks

What Is Network Attached Storage?

Advantages:

• Relatively inexpensive

• Easy to configure

Disadvantages:

• Slower access times

• Not an enterprise solution

NAS is storage that is attached to a dedicated storage device and accessed through network shares

NAS offers centralized storage at an affordable price File Server

Local Area Network (Ethernet)

File-level access(CIFS, NFS)

NAS Device

What Is a SAN?

Advantages:

• Fastest access times

• Easily expandable

• Centralized storage

• High level of redundancy

Disadvantages:

• More expensive

• Requires specialized skills

SANs offers higher availability with the most flexibility

Servers

Storage Devices

Switches

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

Each pair of disks is mirrored, then the mirrored disksare striped

RAID 1+0

Block level striped set with parity distributed acrossall disks

RAID 6

Block level striped set with parity distributed across all disks

RAID 5

Mirrored drives

RAID 1

Striped set without parity or mirroring

RAID 0

Selecting a Partition Table Format

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

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

Use MBR for disks smaller than 2 TB

Use GPT for disks larger than 2 TB

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

Selecting a File System

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.

When selecting a file system, consider the differences between FAT, NTFS, and ReFS

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

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)

Extending and Shrinking Volumes

• 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

• You can resize NTFS volumes from the Windows operating system, beginning with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003

What Is the Storage Spaces Feature?

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

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

Virtual drives are not virtual hard disks (VHDs); they should be considered a drive in Disk Manager

Physical Disks

Storage Pool

Virtual Disk

Disk Drive

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

Windows PowerShell cmdlet DescriptionGet-StoragePool List storage poolsRepair-VirtualDisk Repair a virtual diskGet-PhysicalDisk |Where{$_.HealthStatus -ne “Healthy”}

List unhealthy physical disks

Reset-PhysicalDisk Remove a physical disk from a storage pool

Get-VirtualDisk |Get-PhysicalDisk

List physical disks used for a virtual disk

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

 

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

Desktop Virtualization

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

Presentation Virtualization

Desktop virtualizationPresentation virtualization

• Users are assigned their own virtual machines that are running a client operating system

• Users log on and run separate sessions on the server

• The desktop and applications run within virtual machines

• The desktop and applications run on the host server

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

What is Microsoft Application Virtualization?

Benefits of App-VApplication 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

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

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)

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

Configuring Dynamic MemoryDynamic Memory settings for a virtual machine:

Startup RAM

Dynamic Memory

Minimum RAMMaximum RAM

Memory buffer

Memory weight

Configuring Virtual Machine Integration Services

Possible integration services:• Operating system shutdown

• Time synchronization

• Data exchange

• Heartbeat

• Backup (volume snapshot)

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

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

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

Creating Virtual Disk Types

• Direct-attached storage

• Fixed-size VHDs

• Dynamically expanding VHDs

Virtual Disk Configuration Options

Feature Options

Storage Layout • Simple• Two-way or three-way

mirror• Parity

Disk sector size • 512 or 512e

Drive allocation • Data store• Manual• Hot Spare

Provisioning schemes

• Thin vs. fixed provisioning

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

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

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)

What Is a Virtual Switch?

Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 supports three different types of virtual switches:•ExternalUsed to map a network to a specific network adapter or network adapter team•InternalUsed to communicate between the virtual machines on the host and between the virtual machines and the host itself•PrivateUsed to communicate between virtual machines, but not between the virtual machines and the host itself•VLAN IDsUsed to extend VLANs within the host's network switch to VLANS on the external network

Hyper-V Network Virtualization

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

Red networkBlue network

Physical network Servers

Top of rack switches

Blue virtual machine

Red virtual machine

Physical server

Virtualization

Managing Virtual Machine MAC Addresses

Virtual Switch Manager Window

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