This post is a part of the nine-part “What’s New in Windows Server & System Center 2012 R2” series that is featured on Brad Anderson’s In the Cloud blog. Today’s blog post covers Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage and how it applies to the larger topic of “Transform the Datacenter.” To read that post and see … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage: Step-by-step with Storage Spaces, SMB Scale-Out and Shared VHDX (Physical)
Tag: Clustering
Updated Links on Windows Server 2012 File Server and SMB 3.0
In this post, I'm providing a reference to the most relevant content related to Windows Server 2012 that is related to the File Server, the SMB 3.0 features and its associated scenarios like Hyper-V over SMB and SQL Server over SMB. It's obviously not a complete reference (there are new blog posts every day), but … Continue reading Updated Links on Windows Server 2012 File Server and SMB 3.0
File Server Tip: How to rebalance a Scale-Out File Server using a little PowerShell
A Scale-Out File Server is a cluster role that offers the same SMB file share (or set of shares) on every node of the cluster. As clients come in, they are spread across the nodes using a round-robin mechanism based on DNS. In the common case of having many clients and just a few file … Continue reading File Server Tip: How to rebalance a Scale-Out File Server using a little PowerShell
Iron Networks shows a complete private cloud pod at MMS 2013 with Windows Server 2012 (Storage Spaces, SMB3, Hyper-V) and System Center 2012 SP1
I was visiting the expo area at MMS 2013 earlier today and saw that Iron Networks was showing a private cloud pod there, complete with a set of well-matched layers of compute, storage and networking. They were demonstrating several of the latest capabilities in Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, including: Shared SAS … Continue reading Iron Networks shows a complete private cloud pod at MMS 2013 with Windows Server 2012 (Storage Spaces, SMB3, Hyper-V) and System Center 2012 SP1
Slides for the Instructor-Led Lab on Windows Server 2012 Storage from MMS 2013
I delivered an instructor-led lab on Windows Server 2012 Storage at MMS 2013 yesterday (4/8), with a repeat scheduled for tomorrow (4/10) at 2:45 PM. You can find the details on this lab at http://www.2013mms.com/topic/details/WS-IL303 I used a few slides to comment on the contents of the lab, with an overview on the capabilities covered … Continue reading Slides for the Instructor-Led Lab on Windows Server 2012 Storage from MMS 2013
Q and A: I only have two NICs on my Hyper-V host. Should I team them or not?
Question via e-mail: I am using blade servers for my Hyper-V cluster and I can only have two NICs per blade in this configuration. I am considering two options on how to configure the NICs: 1) Use one NIC for internal network and one NIC for external network, connected to the virtual switch2) Team the two NICs … Continue reading Q and A: I only have two NICs on my Hyper-V host. Should I team them or not?
Increasing Availability – The REAP Principles (Redundancy, Entanglement, Awareness and Persistence)
Introduction Increasing availability is a key concern with computer systems. With all the consolidation and virtualization efforts under way, you need to make sure your services are always up and running, even when some components fail. However, it’s usually hard to understand the details of what it takes to make systems highly available (or … Continue reading Increasing Availability – The REAP Principles (Redundancy, Entanglement, Awareness and Persistence)
Hardware options for highly available Windows Server 2012 systems using shared, directly-attached storage
Highly available Windows Server 2012 systems using shared, directly-attached storage can be built using either Storage Spaces or a validated clustered RAID controller. Option 1 – Storage Spaces You can build a highly available shared SAS system today using Storage Spaces. Storage Spaces works well in a standalone PC, but it is also capable … Continue reading Hardware options for highly available Windows Server 2012 systems using shared, directly-attached storage
Hyper-V over SMB – Performance considerations
1. Introduction If you follow this blog, you probably already had a chance to review the “Hyper-V over SMB” overview talk that I delivered at TechEd 2012 and other conferences. I am now working on a new version of that talk that still covers the basics, but adds brand new segments focused on end-to-end … Continue reading Hyper-V over SMB – Performance considerations
Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: New per-share SMB client performance counters provide great insight
Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 include a new set of performance counters that can greatly help understand the performance of the SMB file protocol. These include new counters on both the server side and the client side. In this post, I wanted to call your attention to the new client-side counters that show the … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: New per-share SMB client performance counters provide great insight
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