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
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:
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
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 cant 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:
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 Doesnt 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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