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 →

SMB Direct and RDMA performance demo from TechEd (includes summary, PowerShell scripts and links)

IMPORTANT NOTE:SQLIO has been deprecated, as shown at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sql_server_team/archive/2015/12/11/sqlio-disk-subsystem-benchmark-tool-is-being-retired.aspx DiskSpd is the suitable replacement for SQLIO. You can find details on that at http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2014/10/13/diskspd-powershell-and-storage-performance-measuring-iops-throughput-and-latency-for-both-local-disks-and-smb-file-shares.aspx ---------------- Overview My last TechEd demo showed some interesting performance data for SMB3 over RDMA (SMB Direct), including the latest small IO improvements in Windows Server 2012 R2. Since I … Continue reading SMB Direct and RDMA performance demo from TechEd (includes summary, PowerShell scripts and links) →

Troubleshooting File Server Networking Issues in Windows Server 2012 R2

In this blog post, I’m sharing a few troubleshooting tips related to File Server Networking in Windows Server 2012 R2. For each one, I first describe the issue that is commonly reported, followed by a quick explanation of the root cause of the issue and finally a way to solve it. Let me know if … Continue reading Troubleshooting File Server Networking Issues in Windows Server 2012 R2 →

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… →

Automatic SMB Scale-Out Rebalancing in Windows Server 2012 R2

Introduction This blog post focus on the new SMB Scale-Out Rebalancing introduced in Windows Server 2012 R2. If you haven’t seen it yet, it delivers a new way of balancing file clients accessing a Scale-Out File Server. In Windows Server 2012, each client would be randomly directed via DNS Round Robin to a node … Continue reading Automatic SMB Scale-Out Rebalancing in Windows Server 2012 R2 →

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 →

Step-by-step for Storage Spaces Tiering in Windows Server 2012 R2

1. Overview In this document, I am sharing all the steps I used to create a demo or test environment of a storage space with storage tiers on Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview so that you can experiment with some of the new technologies yourself. You need only a single computer with one SSD and … Continue reading Step-by-step for Storage Spaces Tiering in Windows Server 2012 R2 →

Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage: Step-by-step with Storage Spaces, SMB Scale-Out and Shared VHDX (Virtual)

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 (Virtual) →

Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage: Step-by-step with Storage Spaces, SMB Scale-Out and Shared VHDX (Physical)

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 →