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?
Tag: Windows Server 2012
New ESG Lab Validation Report shows Performance of Windows Server 2012 Storage and Networking
There is a new ESG report out that shows the Storage and Networking performance of Windows Server 2012. It highlights the findings around a few key new features, including: Storage Spaces SMB 3.0 File Servers Deduplication CHKDSK Online Scanning Offloaded Data Transfers (ODX) The numbers speak for themselves and the report provides plenty of tables, … Continue reading New ESG Lab Validation Report shows Performance of Windows Server 2012 Storage and Networking
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
Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Run the File Services Best Practices Analyzer (BPA)
Windows Server 2012 includes a built-in mechanism called Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) to check your configuration and make sure everything is set to the proper values. These set of rules, which come in specific sets for each role you install, can be run through Server Manager or also via PowerShell. For the Windows Server 2012 … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Run the File Services Best Practices Analyzer (BPA)
Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Avoid loopback configurations for Hyper-V over SMB
When deploying Hyper-V over SMB (storing your live configuration and live VHD/VHDX files on an SMB 3.0 file share), make sure you don’t use a loopback configuration. A loopback configuration means that the Hyper-V role and the File Server role are on the same computer. While you can actually have both roles on the same … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Avoid loopback configurations for Hyper-V over SMB
Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Enable CSV Caching on Scale-Out File Server Clusters
Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) in Windows Server 2012 has a great new feature to allow using system memory as a write-through cache. Since Scale-Out File Server Clusters use CSV, enabling this CSV cache has a huge impact on the performance of this type of File Server. This has a direct impact on common scenarios like … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Enable CSV Caching on Scale-Out File Server Clusters
Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Continuous Availability does not work with volumes using 8.3 naming or NTFS compression
When deploying the Continuous Availability feature of the new File Server clusters in Windows Server 2012, be careful not to use volumes that have either 8.3 naming or NTFS compression enabled. If you have these features enabled on the volume, the File Server won’t be able to properly track the ongoing operations on the volume … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Continuous Availability does not work with volumes using 8.3 naming or NTFS compression
Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Disable 8.3 Naming (and strip those short names too)
This has been a performance tip for File Servers for some time now: disable short names. There are big performance savings in disabling 8.3 naming and also for removing existing short names on a volume. Here’s a diagram from a presentation I delivered last year: The old “8dot3 naming” convention has been obsolete for a … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Disable 8.3 Naming (and strip those short names too)
Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Use multiple subnets when deploying SMB Multichannel in a cluster
SMB Multichannel will let you use multiple network interfaces at once for added throughput and network fault tolerance. When using it with non-clustered file servers, you have the most flexible options, including using multiple NICs on the same subnet. In fact, you can have all the multiple NICs on the same server configured automatically via … Continue reading Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Use multiple subnets when deploying SMB Multichannel in a cluster
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