In this post, I'm providing a reference to the most relevant content related to Windows Server 2012 that is related to the File Server, the SMB 3.0 features and its associated scenarios like Hyper-V over SMB and SQL Server over SMB. It's obviously not a complete reference (there are new blog posts every day), but hopefully this is a useful collection of links for Windows Server 2012 users.
Summaries of SMB 3.0 features in Windows Server 2012:
- Overview of SMB 3.0 in WIndows Server 2012 [Video] [TechEd]
- SNIA Tutorial: SMB Remote File Protocol (including SMB 3.0) (SNW Fall 2012)
- Windows Server 2012: Which version of the SMB protocol (SMB 1.0, SMB 2.0, SMB 2.1 or SMB 3.0) you are using on your File Server?
- Windows Server 2012, File Servers and SMB 3.0 – Simpler and Easier by Design
- Windows Server Blog - Taking Server Application Storage to Windows File Shares
- List of all video recordings related to SMB 3.0 from TechEd North America
Step-by-step instructions:
- Hyper-V over SMB configuration with Windows Server 2012 - Step-by-step Installation using PowerShell (Hyper-V over SMB, clustered)
- Windows Server 2012 Scale-Out File Server for SQL Server 2012 - Step-by-step Installation (SQL Server over SMB, clustered)
- Sample PowerShell Scripts for Storage Spaces, standalone Hyper-V over SMB and SQLIO testing (Hyper-V over SMB, Storage Spaces, not clustered)
Articles on File Storage for Application Servers (Hyper-V over SMB, SQL Server over SMB):
- File Storage Strategies for Private Cloud (including Hyper-V over SMB performance) [Video] [MMS 2013]
- Hyper-V over SMB [Video] [TechEd 2012]
- SQL Server over SMB [Video] [TechEd 2012]
- Hyper-V over SMB: Remote File Storage Support in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V (SNW Fall 2012 Presentation)
- Overview of Hyper-V over SMB from the SNW Spring 2012 Conference
- ESG Lab Report showing Windows Server 2012 Storage and Networking performance (includes Hyper-V over SMB performance)
- Hyper-V over SMB – Sample Configurations
- Hyper-V over SMB – Performance considerations
- Hardware options for highly available Windows Server 2012 systems using shared, directly-attached storage
Articles on SMB Transparent Failover and SMB Scale-Out:
- SMB Transparent Failover – making file shares continuously available
- File Server for Scale-Out application data
- Deep dive on Transparent Failover and Scale-Out [Video] [TechEd 2012]
- Understand and Troubleshoot Scale-out File Servers in Windows Server "8" Beta
- How does New-SmbShare know whether the new share should be standalone, clustered or scale-out?
- Increasing Availability – The REAP Principles (Redundancy, Entanglement, Awareness and Persistence)
Articles on SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) and SMB Multichannel:
- SMB Multichannel and NIC Teaming [Video] [TechEd 2012] (SMB Multichannel covered on the second half)
- SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) and Cluster-in-a-box [Video] [TechEd 2012] (SMB direct covered on the second half)
- The basics of SMB Multichannel, a feature of Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0
- High Throughput File Servers with SMB Direct, Using the Three Flavors of RDMA network adapters (SNW Fall 2012 Presentation)
- MMS 2013 Demo: Hyper-V over SMB at high throughput with SMB Direct and SMB Multichannel
- Deploying Windows Server 2012 with SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) and the Chelsio T4 cards using iWARP – Step by Step
- Deploying Windows Server 2012 with SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) and the Mellanox ConnectX-3 using 10GbE/40GbE RoCE – Step by Step
- Deploying Windows Server 2012 with SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) and the Intel NetEffect NE020 card using iWARP – Step by Step
- Deploying Windows Server 2012 with SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) and the Mellanox ConnectX-2/ConnectX-3 using InfiniBand – Step by Step
Articles on Failover Clustering related to File Server Clusters:
- How to Enable CSV Cache - Used by Scale-out File Servers
- How to Configure an Alias for a Clustered SMB Share with Windows Server 2012
- Draining Nodes for Planned Maintenance with Windows Server 2012
Articles on other SMB 3.0 features and capabilities:
- The basics of SMB PowerShell, a feature of Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0
- The built-in SMB PowerShell aliases in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8
- Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0 – VSS for SMB File Shares
- A developer's view on VSS for SMB File Shares
- Episode 20 of "From End to Edge and Beyond" covers SMB Encryption in Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0
- Windows PowerShell Reference Sheet for File and Storage Services in Windows Server “8” Beta
- How to use the new SMB 3.0 WMI classes in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 (from PowerShell)
- SMB Management API
Windows Server File Server Tips and Questions:
- Switch to the High Performance power profile
- Make sure your network interfaces are RSS-capable
- Use multiple subnets when deploying SMB Multichannel in a cluster
- Disable 8.3 Naming (and strip those short names too)
- Continuous Availability does not work with volumes using 8.3 naming or NTFS compression
- Enable CSV Caching on Scale-Out File Server Clusters
- Avoid loopback configurations for Hyper-V over SMB
- Run the File Services Best Practices Analyzer (BPA)
- Use PowerShell to find the free space on the volume behind an SMB file share
- New per-share SMB client performance counters provide great insight
- Minimum version of Mellanox firmware required for running SMB Direct in Windows Server 2012
- How much traffic needs to pass between the SMB Client and Server before Multichannel actually starts?
- Is it possible to run SMB Direct from within a VM?
- Can I use SMB3 storage without RDMA?
- I only have two NICs on my Hyper-V host. Should I team them or not?
- How to rebalance a Scale-Out File Server using a little PowerShell
Private Cloud Solution Architecture:
- Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0 demos at TechEd showcase File Server with multiple storage configurations and technologies
- Common Network Configuration for Hyper-V, including QoS
- Cloud Datacenter Network Architecture in the Windows Server “8” era
- Cloud Datacenter Storage Approaches in the Windows Server 2012 era
- Building Your Cloud Infrastructure: Converged Data Center with File Server Storage
- Let’s Build a Cloud… With PowerShell! - Part 1: Deployment and Configuration
TechNet Radio (includes Video) with Bob Hunt and Jose Barreto:
- Road to TechEd 2012 - File Storage Support in Windows Server 2012 (June 4th 2012)
- Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V over SMB (August 31st 2012)
- Windows Server 2012 - How to Scale-Out a File Server and use it for Hyper-V (September 5th 2012)
- Hyper-V over SMB: Step-by-Step Installation using PowerShell (September 16th 2012)
- SMB Multi-channel Basics for Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0 (October 8th 2012)
- SQL Server over SMB 3.0 Overview (October 23rd 2012)
- SMB 3.0 Encryption Overview (November 26th 2012)
- SMB 3.0 Deployment Scenarios (December 6th 2012)
- Hyper-V over SMB 3.0 Performance Considerations (January 14th 2013)
- Hyper-V Local vs. Hyper-V SMB Performance (February 7th 2013)
- Windows Server 2012 File Server Tips and Tricks (March 5th 2013)
- Windows Server 2012 File Server and SMB 3.0 – Simpler By Design (April 11th 2013)
Case Studies
- Hosting Provider Uses Industry-Standard Storage to Slash Storage Costs by 30 Percent
- Microsoft Uses Operating System to Triple Storage Capacity, Reduce Time-to-Market
- IT Services Provider Boosts Network Availability, Resilience with Server Upgrade
Knowledge Base articles (Support KBs) related to Windows Server 2012 SMB 3.0:
- KB 2709568: New SMB 3.0 features in the Windows Server 2012 file server
- KB 2695839: Some SMB share properties are only available in updated tools
- KB 2694998: File Server Cluster names longer than 15 chars are not supported
- KB 2686098: SMB connections fail with error "Invalid Signature"
- KB 2777646: SMB Multichannel skips non-routable IP addresses of a network interface if routable IP addresses are also configured
- KB 2772113: Event 1801 is logged when you add a file share to a continuously available Windows Server 2012 cluster
- KB 2801054: VSS_E_SNAPSHOT_SET_IN_PROGRESS error when you try to back up a virtual machine in Windows Server 2012
- KB 2813630: Virtual machine enters a paused state or a CSV volume goes offline when you try to create a backup of the virtual machine on a Windows Server 2012-based failover cluster
- KB 2838669: Update that improves cluster resiliency in Windows Server 2012 is available
Protocol Documentation:
- [MS-SMB2]: Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol Versions 2 and 3 Specification (Windows 8)
- [MS-SMBD]: SMB2 Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) Transport Protocol Specification
- [MS-FSRVP]: File Server Remote VSS Provider Protocol Specification
- [MS-SWN]: Service Witness Protocol Specification
Older posts and videos:
- Windows Server Blog - SMB 2.2 is now SMB 3.0. Great overview of SMB 3.0 scenarios and features
- Storage and Continuous Availability Enhancements in Windows Server 8
- High-Performance, Continuously Available File Share Storage for Server Applications
- SMB 3 Security Enhancements in Windows Server 2012 (Includes SMB Encryption)
- Windows Server 2012 Beta - Test cases for Hyper-V over SMB (includes PowerShell examples)
- Windows Server 2012 Beta - Hyper-V over SMB - Quick Provisioning a VM on an SMB File Share
- Enabling Hyper-V Remote Management - Configuring Constrained Delegation For SMB and Highly Available SMB
- System Center 2012 CTP for Windows Server “8” Beta support - Includes support for Hyper-V over SMB
- Fast and Efficient File Servers for Server Applications. Covers SMB Multichannel and SMB Direct.
- Preliminary performance results with Windows Server 2012 Beta and SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA)
- Overview of SMB Direct, SMB Multichannel and SMB Scale-Out from the SNW Spring 2012 Conference
- Application Compatibility and API Support for SMB 2.2, CSVFS, and ReFS
- Windows 8 SMB 2.2 File Sharing Performance
- Windows Server 8 - Storage Changes [Video] - Thomas Pfenning talks about Storage and Availability in Windows Server 2012
- New Server form factors, Continuous Availability [Video] - John Loveall shows the new Cluster-in-a-box systems.
- Microsoft Management Summit keynote [Video] - Brad Anderson on System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012
- How Microsoft Secures Sensitive Data Using File Classification Infrastructure [Video] - Nir Ben Zvi talks about FCI
- SNIA’s Storage Developer Conference - SDC 2011 content (slides and videos) now available for download
- Links to //build/ sessions on Storage, Networking and Hyper-V - Links to //Build to both videos and PowerPoint files
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Change tracking:
- 04/24/2012: Original post
- 05/01/2012: Update: Added links to two SNW Spring 2012 presentation
- 05/03/2012: Update: Added links to protocol documentation, blog post on SMB Encryption and private could blog post
- 05/18/2012: Update: Added links to SDC presentations, plus blogs on basics of SMB PowerShell and SMB PowerShell
- 06/13/2012: Update: Added 3 new blog post, one new KB article, one new video link
- 08/02/2012: Update: Additional blog posts and links to TechEd recordings
- 08/26/2012: Update: Two additional blog posts
- 11/27/2012: Update: Added 10 file server tips, SNW Fall 2012 presentations, TechNet Radio links. Moved older posts down.
- 01/03/2013: Update: Added 1 TechNet Radio link, 1 white paper, 1 KB article. Added numbers of KB articles next to links.
- 02/02/2013: Update: Added links to a few new blog posts and white papers
- 03/11/2013: Update: Added links to 2 new TechNet Radio shows, 5 new blog posts, separate group for step-by-steps
- 04/11/2013: Update: Added 1 link to TechNet Radio show, 5 new blog posts, 3 new KB articles
- 05/05/2013: Update: Added 1 MMS link, 1 new TechNet article, 1 new tip, new section on case studies with 3 entries
Windows Server 2012 includes a new feature called SMB Multichannel, part of the
@Aleksandar
The link was fixed. Thanks for catching that.
This is a very comprehensive and superb post with all the necessary links to knowing/understanding SMB 3.0. I have a question on NIC Teaming which I hope I can get some answers on. In one of the video presentation (link in the blog post) there is mention of a NIC team that can be set as Active/Standby. When the Active is down, the standby kicks in and becomes Active. And when the original Active is recovered, the team automatically fails back to the original Active. Can this automatic fallback be prevented? i.e.: I do not want the team to switch the Active back to the original NIC, but keep the Standby running as Active, until such time when the Standby experiences a problem. (something similar to using the Smart Load Balancing/Auto-Failback Disable (SLB/AfD), when teaming NICs using the BroadCOM suite on Windows 2008 R2).
I apologize if this isn't the right place for posting such questions: I have a small business network and a client app written in .NET. Multiple users use this app to insert and query in rapid succession into and from an access database which is located on a network drive; a connection is opened once before the inserts and querying begins. The app then uses the oledbdataadapter.fill and .update methods with datatable, and I'm compiling with VS 2010 Express with updated references afaik.
The client works well with a single user whether he uses SMB 1.0 or 2.0, and it works fine with multiple users if they are all configured to use SMB 1.0. However, in a mixed environment of SMB 1.0 and 2.0 (which so far is unavoidable since we have XP machines we sometimes use) we often see the following exception thrown by oledbdataadapter:
"Your network access was interrupted. To continue, close the database, and then open it again."
Once in a while, the dataadapter will also just return an empty table. Our server is Windows Server 2010 and is using SMB 2.1. Any help is appreciated.
This is awesome Jose! Thanks!
@sunilnair4u
I talked to the PM working with NIC teaming about your question.
Unfortunately, there is no way to prevent failback in the NIC teaming situation you mentioned.
Hi
I have a team and a hyper-v virtual switch (hyper-v port / lacp) with 2 Server Intel i350-T2 (DualPort) Cards. RSS in the Windows Builtin-Driver is enabled on both Ports. The maximum Number of RSS Queues is set to 4.
The Switch is a Zyxel 1910-24 with LACP.
Effektiv Speed by copying Files from Host A to Host B is only 1 Gb / max.
Get-SmbServerNetworkInterface says that RSS Capable = false (IP of the Host)
also
Get-SmbClientNetworkInterface says that RSS Capable = false (vEthernet)
I had the same Problem with other Nics, so i ordered this new Intel Interfaces.
Any idea whats going wrong here? How checks Windows, if a card is capable or not?
Tx a lot.
@Dustyny1 – Have you baselined the storage subsystem on the server side? The most common bottleneck I have seen is the backend storage subsystem. If the storage does not perform locally, SMB 3.0 will not go beyond that.
Thanks for the update. I wish you'd mirror this post to TechNet Wiki
@Fabrizio
You should be able to use NIC Teaming and SMB Multichannel and achieve the aggregated throughput of the team if you're using LACP and the right type of teaming (Address Hash). You might want to try increasing the number of SMB connections per RSS NIC (also applies to team) by using:
Set-SmbClientConfiguration -ConnectionCountPerRssNetworkInterface 8
•Windows Server 2012 Beta – Test cases for Hyper-V over SMB (includes PowerShell examples) link doesn't work.
@Alexandere
LACP on the team is certain a good way to go. The only other option is to use the Hyper-V port option, connect the team to the vSwitch and pull 4 ports off the virtual to the parent for SMB3 traffic (you typically only get one, but you can manually add 3 more using PowerShell). This will give SMB Multichannel the opportunity to use the multiple virtual NICs and properly balance the load.
The command for adding additional virtual NICs to the parent is:
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -SwitchName <name> -ManagementOS
You should run this 3 times in order to get 4 total NICs in the parent for SMB traffic. This will give each of them a unique MAC address (as if each were coming from a different VM), and the Hyper-V port option in NIC teaming will properly spread them across the physical NICs in the team.
Try this one out and let us know how it works for you. It should give you both the network fault tolerance and the aggregate bandwidth you are looking for, without requiring LACP or using a single switch.
Hi,
I have a question regarding SMB 3.0 and NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012. When creating a NIC Team with 2x10GbE you have to choose between the switch modes independent/dependent and address hash/hyper-v port.
Since independent switch mode can send on both nics but only receive on one nic is it true that I won´t get 20GbE both ways with this mode using smb multichannel?
If using LACP and dependent switch mode I would have to connect both ethernet cables to the same 10GbE switch for creating a LACP team, loosing redundancy.
We are about to design an environment with two SMB3 scale out file servers running active/active cluster connected with FC to SAN storage. These file servers will be connected with two 10GbE ports each to two separate HP 10GbE switches giving a total of 40GbE in theory. Hyper-V hosts (DL380G8) will also have an dual port 10GbE adapter in a NIC team for SMB3 traffic and Quad port 1GbE for VM Guest network.
So is LACP for the SMB3 storage the only way to go?
Our final goal is 30 Hyper-V hosts and about 1000 VMs
Thanks
Alexander
@RandallT
To be clear, if your server is using SMB 2.1 (Windows Server 2008 R2) but your client is using SMB 1.0 (Windows XP), the negotiated session will be SMB 1.0.
Having said that, you seem to be having a specific issue with shared access to the a single file. SMB does allow for this, but the application should not open the files exclusively and locks are sometimes recommended to avoid common concurrent access issues. This is not diferent from having two instances of an application in the same computer accessing a file in a local disk.
I haven't used Access in a long while and I'm not sure what the expected behavior is. I would suggest you post the question to an access blogger or forum.
Hi Jose,
Great link collection about Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0 !
Thanks a lot.
Cheers, James van den Berg
Any chance we'll see some articles on what to expect for performance, how to troubleshoot, and optimize?
I'm running in to a performance problem when using Hyper-V over SMB 3 and I'm not sure how to go about troubleshooting it. I'm using Mallanox connectx 2 Infiniband adapters and I can pass data at 3GBs so I have really fast interlinks but from my tests, SMB great for large sequential transfers (3GBs) where I max out the PCIe bus (8x) but on smaller transfers 4-512k performance and iOPs is really heavily impacted and writes speed falls off a cliff (20-40MBs).
I am interested in the client side of the equation also. In particular, I am looking for more information on the transparent caching (Windows 7/8) features and how they interact on the client side with the new SMB 3.0 services.
Can you point me in the right direction to getting more internal details – possibly a contact who might be familiar with the internal details and performance of the various interactions?
Hello!
I'm having strange behaviours. I've done a NIC teaming with LACP to provide channel aggregation to multiple protocols, I've disabled RSS because not all NICs are RSS capable, but file transfers between 2 servers stay at 2gb/s even if I have teamed 4 nics.
is this expected?
In this post, I'm providing a reference to the most relevant content related to Windows Server 2012
In this post, I’m providing a reference to the most relevant content related to Windows Server 2012