In this post, I’m sharing my favorite links related to Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 R2. This includes TechEd Presentations, TechNet articles, Blogs and tools related to Storage Spaces in general and more specifically about its deployment in a Failover Cluster or Scale-Out File Server configuration. It’s obviously not a complete reference (there are…
Using PowerShell to create a custom reference for Azure PowerShell cmdlets and parameters
I was looking into the list of Azure PowerShell cmdlets and I could not find a page with all cmdlets and parameters in a single list. There are individual pages for each cmdlet on TechNet, but not all cmdlets in one page. There is a list of all cmdlets in one page, but that does…
Migrating File Servers from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 R2
Introduction If you have SMB File Servers running Windows Server 2003, you are probably already aware that the extended support for that OS will end on July 14, 2015. You can read more about this at: http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2014/08/26/best-practices-for-windows-server-2003-end-of-support-migration.aspx. If you’re still using Windows Server 2003, you should be planning your migration to a newer version…
Testing Windows Server and the Scale-Out File Server – What should your lab look like?
With the release of Windows Server Technical Preview, a common question comes to the surface again. What kind of lab hardware do I need to play with it? Ideally, you would get one of those new Cloud Platform System (CPS) racks with a 32-node Hyper-V cluster, a 4-node Scale-Out File Server and 4 JBODs…
Open Server Summit includes keynotes from AMD, Dell, Diablo, HP, Huawei, Intel, Lenovo and Microsoft
The server market is busier than ever. You’re probably following how virtualization evolved into clouds and how everything is now software-defined. Behind the buzzwords, there is amazing new technologies in the datacenter, across the compute, networking and storage layers. The challenge for all of us is really to keep up with all these different server…
Windows Server Storage Sessions from TechEd Europe 2014 (includes links to recordings and slides)
This blog post includes a list of the Storage-related sessions from TechEd Europe 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. You can use it as an easy reference to the Storage sessions, including links to the recordings and the slides for each one. Day Time Code Title (with link to recording and slides) Speaker(s) Tue 8:30 AM…
Storage Quality of Service Guide Released for Windows Server Technical Preview
As part of the Windows Server Technical Preview released a few weeks ago, we announced the evolution of the Storage Quality of Service (Storage QoS) feature. Now, in addition to that TechNet page with an overview, we released the Storage QoS Step-by-Step Guide. An Overview of Storage QoS Storage Quality of Service…
SmbStorageTier.ps1: A simple way to pin files to tiers in Scale-Out File Servers
Storage Spaces Tiering Storage Spaces has an interesting new feature introduced in Windows Server 2012 R2: you can create a single space using different types of disk (typically HDDs and SSDs) and it will automatically move hot data to the fast tier and cold data to the slow tier. You can read more…
DiskSpd, PowerShell and storage performance: measuring IOPs, throughput and latency for both local disks and SMB file shares
1. Introduction I have been doing storage-related demos and publishing blogs with some storage performance numbers for a while, and I commonly get questions such as “How do you run these tests?” or “What tools do you use to generate IOs for your demos?”. While it’s always best to use a real workload…
How to use the Test-StorageHealth.ps1 PowerShell script with different configurations
If you’ve tried the Test-StorageHealth.ps1 PowerShell script, you noticed it assumes a verify specific Scale-Out File Server configuration: 4 cluster nodes 2 cluster networks 33 cluster shared volumes 16 deduplicated volumes 240 physical disks 3 storage pools 4 storage enclosures The scripts assumes you’re using a typical Scale-Out File Server configuration described in these TechNet…