Transcript 70-290: MCSE Guide to Managing a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment Chapter 6: Managing Disks and Data Storage.

70-290: MCSE Guide to Managing
a Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Environment
Chapter 6:
Managing Disks and Data
Storage
Objectives
• Understand concepts related to disk management
• Manage partitions and volumes on a Windows
Server 2003 system
• Understand the purpose of mounted drives and
how to implement them
• Understand the fault tolerant disk strategies
natively supported in Windows Server 2003
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Objectives (continued)
• Determine disk and volume status information and
import foreign disks
• Maintain disks on a Windows Server 2003 system
using a variety of native utilities
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Disk Management Concepts
• Windows Server 2003 supports two data storage
types:
• Basic disks
• Uses traditional disk management techniques
• Has primary partitions, extended partitions, logical
drives
• Dynamic disks
• Does not use traditional disk partitioning
• No restriction on number of volumes implemented
on one disk
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Basic Disks
• Maximum of four primary partitions or three
primary and one extended partition on a disk
• Each primary partition:
• Can use FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file system
• Has a drive letter
• Boot partition
• Operating system files reside on boot partition
• Can be located on a primary partition or logical drive
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Primary Partitions
• A basic drive must contain at least one and no
more than four primary partitions
• One partition is the system (or active) partition
• Contains files to start operating system
• Usually drive C on Windows
• Can also be used for traditional data storage
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Extended Partitions and
Logical Drives
• An extended partition:
• Is created from free hard disk space that is not
partitioned, formatted, or assigned a drive letter
• Allows you to extend the four-partition limit
• Can be divided into logical drives
• Each drive is then formatted and assigned a drive
letter
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Volume Sets and Stripe Sets
• Only on Windows NT Server 4.0
• Volume set
• Two or more partitions combined to look like one
volume with a single drive letter
• Stripe set
• Two or more disks striped for RAID level 0 or 5
• Windows Server 2003 and 2000 provide backward
compatibility
• Can use but not create
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Dynamic Disks
• Can set up a large number of volumes per disk
• Volumes are similar to partitions but with additional
capabilities
• Reasons to implement dynamic disks include
• Can extend NTFS volumes
• Can configure RAID volumes for fault tolerance and
performance
• Can reactivate missing or offline disks
• Can change disk settings with restarting computer
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Simple Volume and Spanned
Volume
• A simple volume:
• Dedicated, formatted portion of space on a dynamic
disk
• NTFS volumes can be extended (not system or boot)
• A spanned volume:
• Space in 2 to 32 dynamic disks
• Treated as a single volume
• Allows you to maximize use of scattered space across
several disks
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Striped Volume
• Referred to as RAID level 0
• Implemented for performance enhancement,
particularly for storage of large files
• Not fault tolerant
• Requires from 2 to 32 disks
• Data is written in 64 KB blocks across rows in the
volume
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Striped Volume (continued)
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Managing Partitions and
Volumes
• Primary tool is Disk Management
• Central facility for
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Viewing information
Creating partitions and volumes
Deleting partitions and volumes
Converting basic disks to dynamic disks
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Managing Partitions and
Volumes (continued)
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Managing Disk Properties
• Disk Management:
• Can be added to a custom MMC
• Most commonly accessed via Storage section of
Computer Management
• Used for the creation, deletion, and management of
disks, partitions, and volumes
• Shares some property sheets with Windows Explorer,
Device Manager
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Managing Disk Properties
(continued)
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Extending Volumes
• Volume can be extended unless
• Functioning as boot or system volume
• Possible tools
• Disk Management
• DISKPART command-line utility
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Mounted Drives
• Mounting a drive is an alternative to assigning it a
drive letter
• A mounted drive is represented as a folder with a
normal path
• To mount a drive:
• Must be on an NTFS volume
• Must be an empty folder
• Reasons:
• 26 drive letter limit
• Path access is convenient
• Backups
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Fault Tolerant Disk Strategies
• Fault tolerance
• The ability to recover gracefully from hardware or
software failure
• Hard disks do fail periodically
• Software RAID provides various levels of fault
tolerance
• A combination of RAID and backup can minimize
disruption and loss of data
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RAID Levels
• Redundant Array of Independent Disk strategies
• Set of standards for:
• Lengthening disk life
• Preventing data loss
• Enabling uninterrupted access to data
• Windows Server 2003 supports level 0, 1, and 5
• RAID level 0
• Striping with no other redundancy features
• RAID level 1
• Disk mirroring (duplicating data from main disk to
backup disk)
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RAID Levels (continued)
• RAID level 2
• Disk striping, error correction across all disks
• RAID level 3
• Disk striping, error correction on 1 disk
• RAID level 4
• Disk striping, error correction across all disks,
checksum on 1 disk
• RAID level 5
• Disk striping, error correction across all disks,
checksum across all disks
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RAID Levels (continued)
• Supported on FAT and NTFS
• Either RAID level 1 or 5 is usually recommended
• Considerations:
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Placement of boot and system files
Number of disks required or supported
Cost (per megabyte of storage)
Amount of memory required
Read and write access speed
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Striped Volume (RAID 0)
• Reasons to use:
• Reduce wear on disk drives by equalizing load
• Increase disk performance
• No specific fault tolerance support
• Can be created using New Volume Wizard
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Mirrored Volume (RAID 1)
• Creates a copy of data on a backup disk
• Requires 2 disks
• Highly effective fault tolerance since a complete
copy of data is available
• Disk read performance is equal to non-mirrored
• Disk write time is doubled
• Created through New Volume Wizard
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Mirrored Volume (continued)
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RAID-5 Volume
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Requires a minimum of 3 disks
Provides good fault tolerance
Parity information distributed across all drives
Performance slower than with a striped volume
(parity information must be computed and stored)
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RAID-5 Volume (continued)
• Read access is equal to striped volume
• Storage requirement for parity information is 1/n
with n the number of disks
• Created through New Volume Wizard
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RAID-5 Volume (continued)
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Software RAID and Hardware
RAID
• Software RAID uses existing hardware and
implements particular software strategies
• Hardware RAID requires specialized hardware
(more expensive) but lessens the burden on the OS
• Often implemented on the adapter for disk drives
• Often includes a battery backup
• Advantages include: faster read and write, mixed
RAID levels, failed disk hot-swap, better setup
options
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Monitoring Disk Health and
Importing Foreign Disks
• Disk Management provides status information on
disks and volumes
• Number of different status descriptions
• Windows Server 2003 provides the ability to
import disks from other servers if necessary
(foreign disks)
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Disk and Volume Status
Descriptions
• Optimal descriptions:
• Disk should be ONLINE
• Volume should be HEALTHY
• Common volume messages include:
• Failed, failed redundancy, formatting, healthy,
regenerating, resyncing, unknown
• Common disk messages include:
• Audio CD, foreign, initializing, missing, no media, not
initialized, online, online (errors), offline, unreadable
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Importing Foreign Disks
• Used when a server fails
• Disks from the server can be moved to another server
• When first connected, the disk status will be
foreign and it will not be accessible
• Use the Import Foreign Disks option on the disk
• If multiple disks are imported
• Each disk is imported individually
• Default is that disk will use its original drive letter but
an available letter is chosen if there is a conflict
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Other Disk Maintenance and
Management Utilities
• Introduces disk-related utilities other than Disk
Management
• Some provide extra features or functions
• Some are similar but are accessible from the command
line
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Check Disk
• Allows you to scan a disk for bad sectors and file
system errors
• Disk can’t be in use during scan
• Two start options:
• Automatically fix file system errors
• Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors
• CHKDSK command-line utility has similar
functionality
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CONVERT
• CONVERT is a command-line utility
• Converts existing FAT and FAT32 partitions or
volumes to NTFS
• Leaves existing data intact
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Disk Cleanup
• Allows an administrator to determine where disk
space is being used and could potentially be freed
• Files that can be removed include:
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Temporary internet files
Downloaded program files
Files in recycle bin
Windows temporary files
No longer used Windows components and programs
• Can also compress files
• Command-line version is CLEANMGR
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Disk Defragmenter
• Free disk space eventually become fragmented as
files are created and removed
• Results in slower access and higher disk wear
• Defragmentation attempts to place files in
contiguous areas
• Defragmentation should be done periodically
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DISKPART
• Command-line utility for managing disks,
volumes, partitions
• Uses include:
• Configuring active partition, assigning drive letters,
implementing fault tolerance schemes, etc.
• Can manage disks from within scripts
• Get the complete syntax and options with
DISKPART /?
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FORMAT
• Used to implement a file system on an existing
partition
• Also used on MS-DOS and Windows 9X
• Has a variety of advanced settings
• Setting allocation unit (cluster) size
• Command-line version can be run from scripts
• Get the complete syntax and options with
FORMAT /?
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FSUTIL
• Used with FAT, FAT32, and NTFS file systems
• Includes many advanced features, requires
experienced user
• Information available includes:
• Listings of drives, volume information, NTFS-specific
data
• Tasks include:
• Managing disk quotas, displaying free space
• Get complete information in Help and Support
Center
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MOUNTVOL
• Used to create, delete, or list volume mount points
from command line
• VolumeName parameter is difficult to use
• Complicates adding new mount point
• Doesn’t affect removing mount points
• Get complete syntax and options with
MOUNTVOL /?
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Summary
• Windows Server 2003 supports data storage types:
• Basic disk
• Divided into 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and 1
extended partition with logical drives
• Dynamic disk
• Can be divided into a number of volumes on 1 disk
• A number of disks can be configured in 1 volume
• Support simple, spanned, striped, mirrored, RAID-5
volumes
• Primary tool for disk management:
• Disk Management
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Summary (continued)
• Fault tolerance implemented through RAID
strategies
• Most highly recommended are:
• RAID level 1 (mirrored volumes)
• RAID level 5 (striped, distributed parity info)
• Hardware RAID very effective but more costly
• A number of command-line tools and other
utilities are available for disk management and
cleanup
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