Deploying a Windows Server 2012 R2 Scale-Out File Server Cluster using Azure VMs

0) Overview In this document, I am sharing the steps I used to create a Windows Server 2012 R2 Scale-Out File Server Cluster environment using only Azure VMs, for demo, test or development purposes. This includes a few important tips and tricks to install Active Directory and Windows Server Failover Clustering in an Azure VM … Continue reading Deploying a Windows Server 2012 R2 Scale-Out File Server Cluster using Azure VMs →

Storage Developer Conference – SDC 2013 slides now publicly available. Here are the links to Microsoft slides…

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) hosted the 10th Storage Developer Conference (SDC) in the Hyatt Regency in beautiful Santa Clara, CA (Silicon Valley) on the week of September 16th 2013. This week, the presentation slides were made publicly available. You can find them all at http://snia.org/events/storage-developer2013/presentations13 For those focused on Microsoft technologies, here are some … Continue reading Storage Developer Conference – SDC 2013 slides now publicly available. Here are the links to Microsoft slides… →

What’s new in SMB PowerShell in Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows Server 2012 R2 introduced a new version of SMB. Technically it’s SMB 3.02, but we continue to call it just SMB3. The main changes are described at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831474.aspx. With this new release, we made a few changes in SMB PowerShell to support the new scenarios and features. This includes a few new cmdlets and … Continue reading What’s new in SMB PowerShell in Windows Server 2012 R2 →

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 →

How to use the new SMB 3.0 WMI classes in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 (from PowerShell)

If you're an IT Administrator, you're likely to use the new SMB PowerShell cmdlets to manage your SMB 3.0 file shares. You can find details about those at http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/06/27/the-basics-of-smb-powershell-a-feature-of-windows-server-2012-and-smb-3-0.aspx However, if you're a developer, you might be interested in learning about the WMI v2 classes that are behind those PowerShell cmdlets. They are easy to … Continue reading How to use the new SMB 3.0 WMI classes in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 (from PowerShell) →

How does New-SmbShare know whether the new share should be standalone, clustered or scale-out?

I got a question the other day about one of the scripts I published as part of a step-by-step for Hyper-V over SMB, Here's the relevant line from that script: New-SmbShare -Name VMS3 -Path C:ClusterStorageVolume1VMS -FullAccess FST2.TestAdministrator, FST2.TestFST2-HV1$, FST2.TestFST2-HV2$, FST2.TestFST2-HVC$ The question was related to how does New-SmbShare know to create the share on the … Continue reading How does New-SmbShare know whether the new share should be standalone, clustered or scale-out? →

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 →

Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Use PowerShell to find the free space on the volume behind an SMB file share

A while back, I showed how to use PowerShell V2 and our old SMB WMIv1 object to explain how to find the free space behind a file share (essentially the free space for the volume that contains the file share). That post is available at http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2010/04/08/using-powershell-v2-to-gather-info-on-free-space-on-the-volumes-of-your-remote-file-server.aspx. While that post was a good example of how … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Use PowerShell to find the free space on the volume behind an SMB file share →