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Windows Server 2012 : Deploying Storage Spaces (part 1) - Understanding Storage Spaces - Concepts and terminology
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3/6/2014 3:16:48 AM
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1. Understanding Storage Spaces
Storage virtualization basically involves doing two
things:
For example, a storage-virtualization solution might allow you
to pool together several internal and externally-connected hard drives
into a single pool of storage. You could then provision portions of
this storage for your various file servers without needing to be
concerned about which drives are being used by each file server or
where on the drives any particular data is being stored. The benefits
of this approach are obvious to experienced administrators and include
the following:
-
Increased flexibility You can
create new pools and expand existing ones without adding any new
physical storage devices. -
Increased scalability
Additional physical storage can easily be added and used when
needed to meet increasing business demands. -
Increased elasticity You can
pre-allocate storage capacity by using thin provisioning. Capacity
can be increased to meet growing demand even when the underlying
physical storage is insufficient. -
Increased efficiency You can
reclaim storage capacity when it is no longer needed to use
physical storage resources more efficiently. -
Lower cost By using low-cost,
commodity-based hard drives, you can create large pools of
storage. These pools can easily meet the needs of small and
midsized businesses.
Windows Server 2012 now includes support for storage
virtualization through a new feature called Storage Spaces, which
allows you to aggregate internal and external physical disks into
pools of low-cost storage that can have different levels of
resiliency. These pools are simple to administer, can be allocated
either manually or automatically, can be delegated for administration
purposes, and can be delivered using either thin or fixed
provisioning.
1.1 Concepts and terminology
To implement and use Storage Spaces, you first need to
understand its basic concepts and terminology. The following is a
list of terminology associated with Storage Spaces:
-
Storage Management Application
Programming Interface (SMAPI) A collection of Windows
Management Instrumentation (WMI) interfaces for platform-neutral
and vendor-neutral management of storage that are included in
Windows Server 2012 and in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine
Manager (VMM). -
Storage Management Provider
(SMP) An interface that provides a mechanism for
discovering, managing, and provisioning storage. Windows Server
2012 includes support for the following types of SMPs:
-
Storage Spaces provider
This SMP is included in Windows Server 2012 and is used for
implementing storage virtualization using Storage
Spaces. -
Storage Management Initiative
Specification (SMI-S) providers These providers
support the Storage Management Initiative Specification
(SMI-S) standard of the Storage Network Industry Association
(SNIA) and can be used for platform-neutral and
vendor-neutral implementation of storage virtualization
using third-party storage solutions such as SANs.
-
Storage subsystem Uses an
SMP to expose physical storage devices so that they can be
virtualized into storage pools. -
Storage pool A collection
of physical disks that can be used to create virtual disks. A
single storage pool can consist of physical disks having
different sizes and using different storage interconnects. For
example, you could mix and match Small Computer System Interface
(SCSI) and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives to create a
pool.
You can create and delete storage pools to manage virtualized
storage in your environment. Each physical disk can be included in
only one storage pool at a time, and once you add a physical disk to
a pool, the disk is no longer exposed in Disk Management for
directly creating partitions or volumes on.
-
Primordial storage pool The
default pool that contains all physical storage devices in a
storage system that the Storage Spaces provider is able to
enumerate, regardless of whether these devices have been added
to other pools or not. Physical disks are displayed in the
primordial pool only when they have no partitions or volumes
created on them. If there are no available unused disks
connected to your file server, the primordial pool is not
displayed in Server Manager. -
Virtual disk A logical unit
number (LUN) that has been provisioned from a storage pool.
Virtual disks behave like physical disks but have increased
flexibility, scalability, and elasticity because they represent
virtualized storage instead of physical storage. Virtual disks
are also sometimes referred to as
spaces. -
Volume A portion of a
virtual disk that has been formatted with a file system such as
NTFS. -
Share A folder in the file
system of a volume that has been made accessible over the
network to users who have appropriate permissions.
Important
Dynamic disks and Storage Spaces
In previous versions of Windows Server, you could use
dynamic disks for implementing software RAID 0 or RAID 1
redundancy for both the boot volume and data volumes. Dynamic
disks were first introduced in Windows Server 2003 and were
implemented using the new Virtual Disk Service (VDS) API included
in that platform. Beginning with Windows Server 2012, however, the
VDS API was superseded by SMAPI. This means that dynamic disks are
now considered deprecated for all usages except mirroring the boot
volumes. Storage Spaces should now be used instead of dynamic
disks when you need to provide resiliency for data volumes. In
addition, the following tools that rely on the VDS APIs should
also be considered deprecated:
Note that you can still use these commands on Windows Server
2012, but they will not work with Storage Spaces or with any SMAPI
components or tools.
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