1. Introduction Every new version of Windows brings updates to our main remote file protocol, known as SMB (Server Message Block). If you’re not familiar with it, you can find some information in this previous blog post: Windows Server 2012 R2: Which version of the SMB protocol (SMB 1.0, SMB 2.0, SMB 2.1, SMB … Continue reading What’s new in SMB 3.1.1 in the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2
Tag: Windows Server 2012
SMB3 Networking Links for Windows Server 2012 R2
Someone asked me for a good collection of links about SMB3 Networking, including SMB Multichannel, SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) and SMB Performance. Here’s what I offered: SMB Multichannel TechEd 2012 - SMB Multichannel and NIC Teaming (SMB Multichannel covered on the second half) Jose’s Blog - The basics of SMB Multichannel, a feature … Continue reading SMB3 Networking Links for Windows Server 2012 R2
The Deprecation of SMB1 – You should be planning to get rid of this old SMB dialect
I regularly get a question about when will SMB1 be completely removed from Windows. This blog post summarizes the current state of this old SMB dialect in Windows client and server. 1) SMB1 is deprecated, but not yet removed We already added SMB1 to the Windows Server 2012 R2 deprecation list in June 2013. … Continue reading The Deprecation of SMB1 – You should be planning to get rid of this old SMB dialect
Windows PowerShell equivalents for common networking commands (IPCONFIG, PING, NSLOOKUP)
Network troubleshooting is part any System Administrator’s life. Maybe you need to check the IP address of a machine or test if its networking connection is working. Maybe you need to see if DNS is properly configured or check the latency between two hosts. If you have been in this field long enough, you probably … Continue reading Windows PowerShell equivalents for common networking commands (IPCONFIG, PING, NSLOOKUP)
Case Studies on Storage Spaces, Scale-Out File Servers with SMB3 or both
There are many customers out there using Storage Spaces and Scale-Out File Servers with SMB3 since their initial release in Windows Server 2012 a few years back. Every once in a while, someone will ask me for details on how these technologies were deployed by customers. The best source for those examples is the Microsoft … Continue reading Case Studies on Storage Spaces, Scale-Out File Servers with SMB3 or both
Using PowerShell to select Physical Disks for use with Storage Spaces
1. Introduction If you use PowerShell to configure Storage Spaces, you probably noticed that selecting physical disks is an important part of the process. You must select disks to create a pool and you might also need to do it also when you create a virtual disk using a subset of the disks. … Continue reading Using PowerShell to select Physical Disks for use with Storage Spaces
Storage Spaces Survival Guide (Links to presentations, articles, blogs, tools)
In this post, I'm sharing my favorite links related to Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 R2. This includes TechEd Presentations, TechNet articles, Blogs and tools related to Storage Spaces in general and more specifically about its deployment in a Failover Cluster or Scale-Out File Server configuration. It's obviously not a complete reference (there are … Continue reading Storage Spaces Survival Guide (Links to presentations, articles, blogs, tools)
DiskSpd, PowerShell and storage performance: measuring IOPs, throughput and latency for both local disks and SMB file shares
1. Introduction I have been doing storage-related demos and publishing blogs with some storage performance numbers for a while, and I commonly get questions such as “How do you run these tests?” or “What tools do you use to generate IOs for your demos?”. While it’s always best to use a real workload … Continue reading DiskSpd, PowerShell and storage performance: measuring IOPs, throughput and latency for both local disks and SMB file shares
Using file copy to measure storage performance – Why it’s not a good idea and what you should do instead
1. Introduction Every once in a while I hear from someone that they believe they have a performance problem with their Scale-Out File Server. When I dig a little further, it’s very common to find that file copies are being used as the mechanism for measuring storage performance for all kinds of scenarios. This blog … Continue reading Using file copy to measure storage performance – Why it’s not a good idea and what you should do instead
Sample C# code for using the latest WMI classes to manage Windows Storage
This blog post shows a bit of C# code to use the Windows Storage Management API (SM-API) classes that were introduced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. You can find a list of these classes at class described at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh830612.aspx, including MSFT_PhysicalDisk, MSFT_StoragePool or MSFT_VirtualDisk. I found a number of examples with the … Continue reading Sample C# code for using the latest WMI classes to manage Windows Storage
Jose Barreto's Blog 