Previously we provided an overview of what storage pools are and how they enhance our server computing environments. Up until this point, you have probably spent most of your time planning for your storage requirements. Now it’s time to put your plans in motion. Building a storage pool and creating a home for your data involves the following tasks:
■ Configure a storage pool
■ Create storage spaces
■ Create volumes
You can complete each of these tasks using the File and Storage Services panel of Server Manager.
NOTE Table 3-4 highlights the more commonly used DiskPart commands. For more information, refer to “DiskPart” at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ library/bb490893.aspx .
ptg14504686 Configuring a Storage Pool
To configure a storage pool, perform the following steps:
1. Open Server Manager and click File and Storage Services .
2. Click Storage Pools from the navigation pane.
3. Windows includes a default pool that is named the primordial pool, as shown in Figure 3-16 . The default pool shows you all available physical disks that can be configured with a pool on your server. This includes newly added disks. If no disks are available for configuration, then your disks do not meet the requirements for storage pools, as discussed previously. If you add a hot swap disk, select the Rescan option from the Tasks drop-down list to rescan for the new disks.
Figure 3-16 File and Storage Services Storage Pools.
4. Click the Tasks list under Storage Pools and click New Storage Pool . This will launch the New Storage Pool Wizard as shown in Figure 3-17 . Click Next to continue.
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Figure 3-17 New Storage Pool Wizard.
5. Enter a storage pool name and description if desired, and select the primordial pool containing the available disks you want to use, as shown in Figure 3-18 . Click Next when complete.
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6. Figure 3-19 shows the next screen where you can select the physical disks to use for the storage pool. If required, one or more disks can be selected and designated as a hot spare. This is used for hardware resilience, as described earlier in this chapter. You also can choose to add a hot spare later by adding an additional physical disk to the storage pool and marking it as a hot spare. Click Next when finished.
Figure 3-19 Select physical disks for the new storage pool.
7. Confirm your configuration from the Confirm selections screen, as shown in Figure 3-20 , and click Create .
ptg14504686 Figure 3-20 Confirm storage pool selections.
8. After the new storage pool has been created, you will be presented with a View results screen, as shown in Figure 3-21 . Click Close when complete. Note, if you are ready to start carving up your storage pool, check the box to create a virtual disk when this wizard closes.
ptg14504686 Creating Storage Spaces
After creating a storage pool, you will need to allocate one or more storage spaces or virtual disks to your server. You can do this by performing the following steps:
1. Open Server Manager and click File and Storage Services .
2. Click on Storage Pools from the navigation pane.
3. Right-click a configured storage pool and select New Virtual Disk to launch the New Virtual Disk Wizard, as shown in Figure 3-22 .
NOTE As discussed earlier, storage pool capacity can be expanded at any time by adding physical disks. This is accomplished by right-clicking the storage pool and choosing Add Physical Disk .
NOTE As discussed earlier, storage pools can utilize disk enclosures containing disks of different performance levels. The disks can be configured into different tiers where data is automatically moved between faster and slower disks depend- ing on the current I/O load demand. Tiering begins with the New-StorageTier cmdlet but requires some thought and planning. For more information on using disk enclosures and storage space tiering, refer to “Step-by-step for Storage Spaces Tiering in Windows Server 2012 R2” at http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/ archive/2013/08/28/step-by-step-for-storage-spaces-tiering-in-windows-server- 2012-r2.aspx .
ptg14504686 Figure 3-22 New Virtual Disk Wizard.
4. Click Next to continue to the Select the Storage Pool screen. Choose the appropriate storage pool, and click Next .
5. Specify the virtual disk name and provide an optional description; then click Next .
6. The next screen asks you to select the storage layout from three options, as shown in Figure 3-23 . As discussed earlier in this chapter, each option pro- vides a different level of resiliency and storage capacity.
ptg14504686 Figure 3-23 Select the storage layout for the new virtual disk.
7. After choosing the storage layout, you will be presented with two options for the provisioning type, as shown in Figure 3-24 . Select the option that best meets your needs and click Next . For this example, we will use fixed provi- sioning as the default. You can choose from the following:
■ Thin: Storage is taken from the pool on an as-needed basis. The more
data you write to your virtual disk, the smaller the storage pool becomes. Although this maximizes storage usage, you must be careful not to over- commit or overallocate storage.
■ Fixed: The size of the new virtual disk is allocated using the same
amount of storage from the storage pool. For example, if you create a 20-GB virtual disk, 20 GB is consumed from the storage pool. Even though storage might be “wasted,” you can always guarantee that you won’t overcommit your storage and allocate more than your pool has available.
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Figure 3-24 Specify the provisioning type for the new virtual disk.
8. After a provisioning type is chosen, the next step is to specify the size of the virtual disk. Figure 3-25 shows the total storage pool free space and provides you with the ability to enter the size of your virtual disk. For this example, we will create a 20-GB virtual disk. Click Next to continue.
ptg14504686 Figure 3-25 Specify the size of the virtual disk.
9. Confirm your virtual disk configuration, as shown in Figure 3-26 , and click Create .
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10. The New Virtual Disk wizard will create and initialize the virtual disk as shown in Figure 3-27 . Upon completion, you will be asked to close the win- dow, where by default, you will be stepped through creating a new volume on the virtual disk. Click Close when you are ready to proceed.
Figure 3-27 New virtual disk results.
Creating and Managing Volumes
After you have created a new storage space/virtual disk, the next step is to configure one or more volumes on the virtual disk. If you have just created a new virtual disk, Windows will present you with the New Volume Wizard; otherwise you can man- age volumes via the Server Manager storage pools panel. To create a new volume, perform the following:
NOTE At this point, your new virtual disk has been presented to the operating system and can be managed via File and Storage Services and the Disk Manage- ment snap-in, as covered previously. Use these tools for tasks such as extending, shrinking, or deleting the virtual disk.
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1. After the New Volume Wizard launches, click Next to continue. Select the server and disk on which to create the volume and click Next (see Figure 3-28 ).
Figure 3-28 Select the server and disk from the New Volume Wizard.
2. Enter the volume size and click Next .
3. Specify a drive letter or specify a path in which to mount the volume as shown in Figure 3-29 . Click Next to continue.
ptg14504686 Figure 3-29 Assign a drive letter or folder for the volume.
4. Select a file system setting and allocation unit size, and supply an optional Volume label; then click Next .
5. From the Confirm Selections screen, verify that all configurations are correct and click Create .
6. Once completed, your new volume will be accessible and ready for use.
Using PowerShell
As with most administrative functions, Microsoft has provided a handful of Power- Shell cmdlets for managing storage pools and storage spaces. Table 3-5 contains a few of these commands.
NOTE Remember, you can also extend, shrink, or delete volumes as covered earlier.
ptg14504686 Table 3-5 PowerShell Cmdlets for Managing Storage Pools
Command Explanation
Get-Storage Pool Outputs a list of physical disks in a specified storage pool New-StoragePool Creates a new storage pool
Add-PhysicalDisk Add a newly installed physical disk to expand an existing storage pool New-VirtualDisk Creates a new virtual disk or storage space from available storage in the
specified storage pool
Exam Preparation Tasks
Review All the Key Topics
Review the most important topics in the chapter, noted with the key topics icon in the outer margin of the page. Table 3-6 lists a reference of these key topics and the page numbers on which each is found.
Table 3-6 Key Topics for Chapter 3 Key Topic
Element
Description Page
Number Table 3-2 Describes the various storage space configurations 85 List Shows the advantages of dynamic disks 86 List Shows the disadvantages of dynamic disks 86 List Describes the MBR and GPT partition styles 88 Figure 3-9 Shows the process to convert from basic to dynamic disks 95 Table 3-3 Lists and explains the various dynamic volume types 96 List Describes the benefits of virtual hard disks 101 Figure 3-13 Shows how to create and attach a virtual hard disk 102
NOTE For more information on using PowerShell to configure and manage stor- age pools and storage spaces, refer to “Deploy Storage Spaces on a Stand-Alone Server” at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj822938.aspx .
ptg14504686 Key Topic
Element
Description Page
Number Table 3-4 Describes the commonly used DiskPart commands 105 Figure 3-16 Shows the default primordial storage pool 106 Figure 3-17 Shows how to configure a new storage pool using the new
Storage Pool Wizard
107
Figure 3-24 Shows the two options for provisioning virtual disks 113 Table 3-5 Describes the PowerShell commands to manage storage
pools
118
Complete the Tables and Lists from Memory
Print a copy of Appendix B , “Memory Tables” (found on the CD), or at least the section for this chapter, and complete the tables and lists from memory. Appendix C , “Memory Tables Answer Key,” is also on the CD and includes completed tables and lists to check your work.
Definitions of Key Terms
Define the following key terms from this chapter, and check your answers in the glossary.
Basic Disk, DiskPart, Dynamic Disk, Fixed Provisioning, GPT, MBR, Mount, RAID, Storage Pool, storage space, Thin Provisioning, VHD.
ptg14504686 ■ Shared Folders in Windows Server 2012 R2: This section introduces
the concept of file sharing and discusses the available file sharing options and the permissions you can assign to shared folders on your server. ■ Offline Files: This section shows you how to configure the Offline Files
feature, which enables you to provide the capability for users to access shared files and folders when not connected to the server at which they are located.
■ Creating and Configuring Work Folders: Work Folders is a new Windows Server 2012 R2 role service that offers a simplified means of synchronizing user data on a file server with client computers and other devices maintained by users on your network. This section shows you how to configure servers and client computers for Work Folders.
■ NTFS Permissions: This section introduces the permissions you can assign to files and folders stored on partitions formatted with the NTFS file system. It then goes on to discuss how permissions assigned at differ- ent levels interact with one another, as well as the effective permissions a user receives when accessing a shared resource across the network. ■ Access-Based Enumeration of Files and Folders: This section
describes the function of access-based enumeration of files and folders and shows you how to enable or disable the feature.
■ Configuring Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS): This section reviews VSS, best practices for using VSS, and how to enable and config- ure it under Windows Server 2012 R2.
■ Configuring NTFS Quotas: This section reviews NTFS Quotas and shows you how to manage and configure Quotas using File Explorer and File Server Resource Manager.
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