Module 2

Configuring local storage

Module Overview

Managing disks in Windows Server

• Managing volumes in Windows Server
Lesson 1: Managing disks in Windows Server

Selecting a partition table format

Selecting a disk type
Selecting a file system
• Selecting a disk type
• Implementing ReFS
Selecting a partition table format

MBR
• Standard partition table format since early 1980s
• Supports a maximum of four primary partitions per
drive
• Can partition a disk up to 2 TB

GPT
• GPT is the successor of the MBR partition table format
• Supports a maximum of 128 partitions per drive
• Can partition a disk up to 18 exabytes

 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 the Windows operating system

Dynamic disks can:

• Be modified without restarting the Windows system
• 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

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, and volumes
 Implementing ReFS

ReFS has a number of advantages over NTFS:

• Metadata integrity with checksums

• 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
• Resiliency to corruptions with recovery
• Shared storage pools across machines
Selecting a disk type

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Lesson 2: Managing volumes in Windows Server

What are disk volumes?

Options for managing volumes
Demonstration: Managing volumes
Extending and shrinking a volume
What is RAID?
• RAID levels
What are disk volumes?

Windows Server 2016 supports the following

volume types:
• Simple
• Spanned
• Striped
• Mirrored
• RAID-5
Options for managing volumes
Options for managing volumes
Options for managing volumes
Options for managing volumes

• Get-disk
• Clear-disk
• Initialize-disk
• Get-volume
• Format-volume
Demonstration: Managing volumes
In this demonstration, you will see how to:
•Create a new volume with Diskpart
•Create a mirrored volume
•If necessary, start 20740A-LON-DC1 and 20740A-LON-SVR1. Sign in to LON-SVR1 with the username
Adatum\Administrator and the password Pa$$w0rd.
•Demonstration Steps
•Create a new volume with Diskpart
1.On LON-SVR1, in the Windows PowerShell window, type diskpart, and then press Enter.
2.At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:
•List disk
3.At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:
•Select disk 3
4.At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:
•Convert dynamic
5.At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:
•Create volume simple size=500 disk=3
6.At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:
•assign letter=G
7.At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:
•Format
8.Switch to Disk Management.
9.Click Action, and then click Refresh. Point out that you can see the newly created Drive G formatted for NTFS.
•Create a mirrored volume
1.In Disk Management, right-click an area of unallocated space on Disk 3, and then click New Mirrored Volume.
2.In the New Mirrored Volume Wizard, click Next.
3.On the Select Disks page, in the Available list, click Disk 4, click Add >, and then click Next.
4.On the Assign Drive Letter or Path page, click Next.
5.On the Format Volume page, in the File system list, click ReFS.
6.In the Volume label text box, type Mirror, select the Perform a quick format check box, and then click Next.
7.Click Finish to create your mirrored volume.
8.In the Disk Management dialog box, click Yes to convert the disk to dynamic.
Extending and shrinking a volume

• You can resize volumes with Windows Server 2016

• When you want to resize a disk, consider the
following:
• You can extend or shrink NTFS volumes
• You can only extend ReFS volumes
• You cannot resize FAT/FAT32/exFAT volumes
• You can shrink a volume only up to immovable files
• You cannot shrink a volume with bad clusters
What is Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)?

RAID:
• Combines multiple disks into a single logical unit to
provide fault tolerance and performance
• Provides fault tolerance by using:
• Disk mirroring
• Parity information
• Can provide performance benefits by spreading disk
I/O across multiple disks
• Can be configured using several different levels
• Should not replace server backups
RAID levels

RAID 0
Striped set without parity or mirroring

A1 A2
A3 A4
A5 A6
A7 A8

Disk 0 Disk 1
RAID levels

RAID 1
Mirrored drives

A1 A1
A2 A2
A3 A3
A4 A4

Disk 0 Disk 1
RAID levels

RAID 5
Block level striped set with parity distributed across all disks

A1 A2 A3 A4 Ap
B1 B2 B3 Bp B4
C1 C2 Cp C3 C4
D1 Dp D2 D3 D4

Disk 0 Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4

RAID levels

RAID 6
Block level striped set with parity distributed across all disks

A1 A2 A3 A4 Ap Ap
B1 B2 B3 Bp Bp B4
C1 C2 Cp Cp C3 C4
D1 Dp Dp D2 D3 D4

Disk 0 Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4 Disk 5

RAID levels

RAID 1 + 0
Each pair of disks is mirrored, then the mirrored disks are striped

A1 Striped A5 A9 A13
A2 A6 A10 A14
A3 A7 A11 A15
A4 A8 A12 A16
Mirrored

Disk 0 Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3

A1 A5 A9 A13
A2 A6 A10 A14
A3 A7 A11 A15
A4 A8 A12 A16
Disk 4 Disk 5 Disk 6 Disk 7