Windows Server 2012 Storage Storage Spaces and Thin Provisioning Harold Wong
Storage Spaces and Thin Provisioning Overview Why should I care? Technology Overview Demo Next Steps
Storage Spaces and Thin Provisioning Overview
What is Storage Spaces & Thin Provisioning? Storage Spaces New in Windows Server 2012 Provides an in-box storage virtualization that can use low-cost commodity storage devices Aggregates unallocated space on physical disks installed in or connected to servers through a pooling model Can provide a cost-effective platform for business critical storage across a variety of scenarios Thin Provisioning Just-in-Time allocations of storage with the ability to reclaim storage ( Trim ) Integrated with Storage Spaces
Storage Spaces and Thin Provisioning Why should I care?
Why should I care? The features of Storage Spaces are designed to meet a variety of challenges in support of highly-available storage Storage pools Can be mapped to combinations of hard disks as well as solid-state drives (SSDs) Can be expanded dynamically by simply adding additional drives, thereby seamlessly scaling to cope with unceasing data growth Multitenancy Administration of storage pools can be controlled through access control lists (ACLs) and delegated on a per-pool basis Can be fully integrated with Active Directory Domain Services Resilient storage Storage Spaces support two optional resiliency modes (mirroring and parity) Per-pool support for disks that are reserved for replacing failed disks (hot spares), background scrubbing, and intelligent error correction allow continuous service availability despite storage component failures
Why should I care? (cont.) Continuous Availability Failover clustering integration delivers continuously available service deployments One or more pools can be clustered across multiple nodes within a single cluster. Storage spaces can then be instantiated on individual nodes, and the storage will seamlessly fail over to a different node when necessary (in response to failure conditions or due to load balancing) Integration with CSVs permits scale-out access to data Optimal storage use through thin provisioning To allow businesses to easily share storage capacity among multiple unrelated data sets and thereby maximize capacity use Trim support permits capacity reclamation when possible Operational simplicity Easily managed through the File Services role in Server Manager Fully remoteable and scriptable management through the Windows Storage Management API, WMI, and Windows PowerShell Designed to be compatible with existing backup-restore and cloning tools, as well as snapshotting infrastructures
Storage Spaces and Thin Provisioning Technical Overview
Storage Spaces Requirements Windows Server 2012 Serial ATA (SATA) or Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) connected disks (in an optional just-a-bunch-ofdisks [JBOD] enclosure) Multinode clustered shared-storage deployments Two or more servers running Windows Server 2012 Requirements as specified for failover clustering and Windows CSV SAS connected JBODs that comply with Windows Certification requirements Drive Type SATA SCSI Stand-Alone File Servers Supported Supported The criterion for determining which drives are eligible to be part of a Pool are: Minimum drive size is 10 GB Drive is empty, i.e. no partition data exists on the drive Drive is not assigned to any other pool The Primordial Pool will consist of Physical Disks that are not assigned to any existing Storage Pool Clustered File Servers iscsi Supported Supported SAS Supported Supported USB Supported
How does Storage Spaces Work? An example
Process of Handling Resources
Storage Spaces Management Interface
Configuring a Storage Pool
Creating a Storage Space (Virtual Disk)
Data Redundancy in Storage Spaces Redundancy Type Description Simple Data is striped across physical disks Maximizes capacity Increases throughput Mirror Data is duplicated on two or three physical disks Increases reliability Reduces capacity by 50 to 66 percent Parity Data and parity information are striped across physical disks Increases reliability Reduces capacity by 13 to 33 percent
Deduplication Capacity Optimization Scale and Performance Reliability and Data Integrity
Managing Storage with PowerShell PowerShell is required to access many of the advanced features afforded by the new Storage Management application programming interface (API) Example: New-StoragePool Parameters configured with GUI and PowerShell Underlying storage pool name Virtual disk name Resiliency setting (Simple, Mirror, or parity) Provisioning type (Thin or Fixed) Virtual disk size Parameters configured only with PowerShell Number of columns: the number of columns the virtual disk contains Number of data copies - number of complete copies of data that can be maintained Disk interleave - number of bytes forming a stripe Physical disks to use - specific disks to use in the virtual disk
Integrating Storage Pools with Failover Clustering Clustered Storage Spaces require fixed provisioning Clustered virtual disks require underlying hardware to support persistent reservations
Thin Provisioning and Trim Requirements Enabled by default in Windows Server 2012 Storage infrastructure that complies with the certification that is required for Windows Server 2012 Standards-compliant hardware for identification Capabilities Identification Windows Server 2012 uses a standardized method to detect and identify thinly provisioned virtual disks Notification When configured physical storage use thresholds are reached, Windows Server 2012 notifies the administrator through events; events can be used for automated actions by sophisticated management applications, such as Microsoft System Center Optimization Windows Server 2012 provides a new API that lets applications return storage when it is no longer needed. NTFS issues trim notifications in real time when appropriate. Trim notifications are issued as part of storage consolidation (optimization), which is performed regularly on a scheduled basis
Storage Spaces and Thin Provisioning DEMO
Understanding and Troubleshooting Storage Spaces http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29002 System Center 2012 Evaluation Download http://aka.ms/hwsc2012 Windows Server 2012 Product Download http://aka.ms/hwws2012 Microsoft Virtual Academy http://aka.ms/virtualacademy Windows Server 2012 Virtual Labs http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/hh968267.aspx