70-290:%20MCSE%20Guide%20to%20Managing%20a%20Microsoft%20Windows%20Server%202003%20Environment%20Chapter%206:%20Managing%20Disks%20and%20Data%20Storage

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70-290 MCSE Guide to Managing a Microsoft
Windows Server 2003 EnvironmentChapter 6
Managing Disks and Data Storage
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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