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 ---------------- 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 … Continue reading SQLIO, PowerShell and storage performance: measuring IOPs, throughput and latency for both local disks and SMB file shares
Tag: Windows Server 2012
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
Hyper-V over SMB – Sample Configurations
This post describes a few different Hyper-V over SMB sample configurations with increasing levels of availability. Not all configurations are recommended for production deployment, since some do not provide continuous availability. The goal of the post is to show how one can add redundancy, Storage Spaces and Failover Clustering in different ways to provide additional fault … Continue reading Hyper-V over SMB – Sample Configurations
Sample PowerShell Scripts for Storage Spaces, standalone Hyper-V over SMB and SQLIO testing
These are some PowerShell snippets to configure a specific set of systems for Hyper-V over SMB testing.Posting it here mainly for my own reference, but maybe someone else out there is configuring a server with 48 disks split into 6 pools of 8 disks.These systems do not support SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) so I could … Continue reading Sample PowerShell Scripts for Storage Spaces, standalone Hyper-V over SMB and SQLIO testing
Minimum version of Mellanox firmware required for running SMB Direct in Windows Server 2012
There are two blog posts explaining in great detail what you need to do to use Mellanox ConnectX-2 or ConnectX-3 cards to implement RDMA networking for SMB 3.0 (using SMB Direct). You can find them at: Deploying Windows Server 2012 with SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) and the Mellanox ConnectX-3 using 10GbE/40GbE RoCE – Step … Continue reading Minimum version of Mellanox firmware required for running SMB Direct in Windows Server 2012
How much traffic needs to pass between the SMB Client and Server before Multichannel actually starts?
One smart MVP was doing some testing and noticed that SMB Multichannel did not trigger immediately after an SMB session was established. So, he asked: How much traffic needs to pass between the SMB Client and Server before Multichannel actually starts? Well... SMB Multichannel works slightly different in that regard depending on whether the client is … Continue reading How much traffic needs to pass between the SMB Client and Server before Multichannel actually starts?
Is accessing files via a loopback share the same as using a local path?
Question from a user (paraphrased): When we access a local file via loopback UNC path, is this the same as accessing via the local path? I mean, is "C:myfoldera.txt" equal to "myservermysharea.txt" or I'll be using TCP/IP in any way?Answer from SMB developer: When accessing files over loopback, the initial connect and the metadata operations … Continue reading Is accessing files via a loopback share the same as using a local path?
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)
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