Chapter 5 - Server Storage

Question 1

What are Storage Spaces?

Answer 1

A storage virtualization technology in Windows Server 2016. Virtual disks created from free space in a Storage Pool. These virtual disks are like LUNs (logical unit numbers) in a Storage Area Network (SAN) environment.

Question 2

What is a Storage Pool?

Answer 2

A collection of physical disks that can be presented to users as logical disks.

Question 3

What is Tiered Storage?

Answer 3

Disks of different speeds used optimally.

Question 4

What is a iSCSI Target?

Answer 4

SCSI targets advertise storage, just like controllers for hard disk drives of locally attached storage.

Question 5

What is a iSCSI Initiator?

Answer 5

A client in the iSCSI network.

Question 6

What are 3 Storage layout options?

Answer 6

Simple
Two and Three way Mirrors
Parity

Question 7

What is a simple storage layout?

Answer 7

Simple features striping but no parity for resiliency; remember that striping means segments of data are written across multiple physical disks. Why would you choose Simple? The answer lies in performance improvements.

Question 8

What is a two or three way mirrored storage layout?

Answer 8

These spaces support two- or three-way copies of the data they host; note that mirror spaces also stripe data across multiple physical disks.

Question 9

What is a Parity Storage layout?

Answer 9

This Storage Spaces technology is like RAID 5: Data is striped, along with parity information, across multiple physical drives; the parity information permits resiliency.

Question 10

How do you expand a Storage Pool?

Answer 10

Step 1. Add a new virtual disk by navigating to iSCSI in Server Manager. Step 2. Create a new iSCSI virtual disk by specifying the following values:
Storage location Disk name
Size
ISCSI target
Step 3. In Server Manager, click the Refresh button and wait for all the panes to refresh.
Step 4. In the STORAGE POOLS pane, right-click your Storage Pool and then add the new physical disk to the Storage Pool.
Step 5. In the VIRTUAL DISKS pane, right-click Mirrored vDisk and then extend your virtual disk to the desired size.

Question 11

How do you optimize Tired storage?

Answer 11

Mix the type of disks you use such as slow large mechanical disks in conjunction with small, fast SSD disks. Windows Server moves the data based on he frequency of access.
When you add HDDs and SSDs to a Storage Space, Windows Server 2016 registers each type of disk and automatically creates two tiers. By default, each night at 1 a.m., optimization of the disks can occur.

Question 12

How do you manually run optimization on tiered storage?

Answer 12

To manually run the optimization, use the following PowerShell command:

Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName “Storage Tiers Optimization” | Start-ScheduledTask

Question 13

How do you pin files to certain tiers of storage?

Answer 13

using the PowerShell cmdlet Set-FileStorageTier such as:

Set-FileStorageTier -DesiredStorageTierFriendlyName -FilePath [-CimSession ] [-ThrottleLimit ] [-Confirm] [-WhatIf] [ ] [ ]

Question 14

What are some PowerShell cmdlets for iSCSi targets?

Answer 14

Install-WindowsFeature FS-iSCSITarget-Server
New-IscsiVirtualDisk
New-IscsiServerTarget
Add-IscsiVirtualDiskTargetMapping
Connect-IscsiTarget
New-IscsiTargetPortal

Question 15

How do you connect to an iSCSi target?

Answer 15

Step 1: Start-Service msiscsi
Step 2: Set-Service msiscsi -StartupType “Automatic”
Step 3: New-IscsiTargetPortal

Question 16

What are some of the Storage Replica features of Windows Server 2016?

Answer 16

• Synchronous and asynchronous replication choices exist; as the administrator, you can choose based on network latency and geographic distances.
• Storage Replica requires the Datacenter Edition of Windows Server 2016. Storage Replica requires GPT initialized disks.
• Supported replication scenarios include Server-to-Server, Cluster-to-Cluster, and Stretch Cluster.
• Only one-to-one replication is supported; a third replica is not an option.
• Storage Replica performs replication at the block level, and therefore you should not consider it for branch office scenarios with slow WAN links.
• Storage Replica can replicate data involving open files.

Question 17

What are three types of applications suited for Storage Replica?

Answer 17

Virtual Machine, File Server, and SQL server are applications of this feature of Windows 2016

Question 18

What are two types of applications not suited to Storage Replica?

Answer 18

SYSVOL and Microsoft Exchange are not suited to this feature of Windows Server 2016

Question 19

What is SYSVOL?

Answer 19

In Microsoft Windows, the System Volume (Sysvol) is a shared directory that stores the server copy of the domain’s public files that must be shared for common access and replication throughout a domain. The term SYSVOL refers to a set of files and folders that reside on the local hard disk of each domain controller in a domain and that are replicated by the File Replication service (FRS).

Question 20

What is ACE?

Answer 20

Access Control Entity(ACE) is an element in an access control list (ACL). An ACL can have zero or more ACEs. Each ACE controls or monitors access to an object by a specified trustee.

Question 21

What are some types of Access Control Entities?

Answer 21

A security identifier (SID) that identifies the trustee to which the ACE applies.
An access mask that specifies the access rights controlled by the ACE.
A flag that indicates the type of ACE.
A set of bit flags that determine whether child containers or objects can inherit the ACE from the primary object to which the ACL is attached.

Question 22

What is iSCSI?

Answer 22

Internet Small Computer Systems Interface, an Internet Protocol (IP)-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. It provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP network. iSCSI is used to facilitate data transfers over intranets and to manage storage over long distances. It can be used to transmit data over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), or the Internet and can enable location-independent data storage and retrieval.

Question 23

What are some important rules about Storage Spaces?

Answer 23

• To create a storage pool, you need at least one physical disk.
• If you want to create a resilient mirror virtual disk, you need a minimum of two physical disks.
• To create a resilient virtual disk with parity, you need a minimum of three physical disks.
• For three-way mirroring resiliency, you need at least five physical disks. Your disks must be blank and unformatted, with no volumes on any disk.
• Failover Clustering cannot use SATA, USB, or SCSI disks.