Managing Windows Server 2012 Storage and File Systems : Storage Management (part 5) - Configuring storage - Using the Disk Management tools, Adding new disks

7/2/2013 9:59:33 PM

3. Configuring storage

When you install disks, you must configure them for use by choosing a partition style and a storage type to use. After you configure drives, you prepare them to store data by partitioning them and creating file systems in the partitions. Partitions are sections of physical drives that function as if they are separate units. This allows you to configure multiple logical disk units even if a system has only one physical drive and to apportion disks appropriately to meet the needs of your organization.

3.1 Using the Disk Management tools

When you want to manage basic or dynamic disks, one of the tools you can use is Disk Management, which is shown in Figure 10. Disk Management also is a snap-in included in Computer Management and can be added to any custom Microsoft Management Console (MMC) you create as well.

Figure 10. Disk Management is the primary tool for managing storage.

Important

Although Disk Management is a trusty favorite for working with disks, it might not be available in future releases of Windows and cannot be used to manage Storage Spaces. Dynamic disks also are being phased out in favor of Storage Spaces and might not be available in future versions of Windows.

Disk Management makes it easy to work with any available internal and external drives on both local and remote systems. When you start Disk Management by tapping or clicking the related option on the Tools menu in Server Manager, you’re automatically connected to the local computer on which you’re running Computer Management. In Computer Management, expand Storage and then select Disk Management. You can now manage the drives on the local system.

To work with a remote system, press and hold or right-click the Computer Management entry in the left pane, and select Connect To Another Computer on the shortcut menu. This opens the Select Computer dialog box (shown in Figure 11). Type the domain name or IP address of the system whose drives you want to view, and then tap or click OK.

Figure 11. Select the remote system to manage with Computer Management.

Important

Server Manager provides a shortcut for remote management as well. Select All Servers in the left pane, press and hold or right-click the remote server to which you want to connect in the Servers panel, and then select Computer Management. This opens Computer Management and connects to the remote server automatically. Keep in mind that the remote management of computers is a feature that must be enabled.

Disk Management has three views:

Disk List Shows a list of physical disks on, or attached to, the selected system. It includes details on type, capacity, unallocated space, and status. It is the only disk view that shows the device type, such as Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) or Integrated Device Electronics (IDE), and the partition style, such as Master Boot Record (MBR) or GUID Partition Table (GPT).
Graphical View Displays summary information for disks graphically according to disk capacity and the size of disk regions. By default, disk and disk-region capacity are shown on a logarithmic scale, meaning the disks and disk regions are displayed proportionally.
Volume List Shows all volumes on the selected computer (including hard-disk partitions and logical drives). It includes details on volume layout, type, file system, status, capacity, and free space. It also shows whether the volume has fault tolerance and the related disk usage overhead. The fault-tolerance information is for software RAID only.

You can also specify that you want all disks to be the same size regardless of capacity (which is useful if you have many disk regions on disks) or that you want to use a linear scale in which disk regions are sized relative to the largest disk (which is useful if you want to get perspective on capacity). To change the size settings for the Graphical View, tap or click View, Settings, and then in the Settings dialog box, click the Scaling tab.

Volume List and Graphical View are the default views. In Figure 10, the Volume List view is in the top right corner, and the Graphical View is in the bottom right corner. To change the top view, select View, choose Top, and then select the view you want to use. To change the bottom view, select View, choose Bottom, and then select the view you want to use.

The command-line counterpart to Disk Management is the DiskPart utility. You can use DiskPart to perform all Disk Management tasks. DiskPart is a text-mode command interpreter that you invoke so that you can manage disks, partitions, and volumes. As such, DiskPart has a separate command prompt and its own internal commands. Although earlier releases of DiskPart did not allow you to format partitions, logical drives, and volumes, the version that ships with Windows Server 2012 allows you to do this using the internal format command.

You invoke the DiskPart interpreter by typing diskpart at the command prompt. DiskPart is designed to work with physical hard disks installed on a computer, which can be internal, external, or a mix of both. Although it will list other types of disks—such as CD/DVD drives, removable media, and universal serial bus (USB)–connected flash random access memory (RAM) devices—and allow you to perform some minimal tasks, such as assigning a drive letter, these devices are not supported.

After you invoke DiskPart, you can list available disks, partitions, and volumes by using the following list commands:

List Disk Lists all internal and external hard disks on the computer
List Volume Lists all volumes on the computer (including hard-disk partitions and logical drives)
List Partition Lists partitions, but only on the disk you selected

Then you must give focus to the disk, partition, or volume you want to work with by selecting it. Giving a disk, partition, or volume focus ensures that any commands you type will act only on that disk, partition, or volume. To select a disk, type select disk N , where N is the number of the disk you want to work with. To select a volume, type select volume N , where N is the number of the volume you want to work with. To select a partition, first select its related disk by typing select disk N , and then select the partition you want to work with by typing select partition N .

If you use the list commands again after selecting a disk, partition, or volume, you’ll see an asterisk (*) next to the item with focus. When you are finished working with DiskPart, type exit at the DiskPart prompt to return to the standard command line.

Example 1 shows a sample DiskPart session. As you can see, when you first invoke DiskPart, it shows the operating system and DiskPart version you are using as well as the name of the computer you are working with. When you list available disks, the output shows you the disk number, status, size, and free space. It also shows the disk-partition style and type. If there’s an asterisk in the Dyn column, the disk is a dynamic disk. Otherwise, it is a basic disk. If there’s an asterisk in the Gpt column, the disk uses the GPT partition style. Otherwise, it is an MBR disk.

Example 1. Using DiskPart: An example

C:\> diskpart

   Microsoft DiskPart version 6.2.9200
   Copyright (C) 1999-2012 Microsoft Corporation.
   On computer: CORPSVR02

   DISKPART> list disk

   Disk ###   Status        Size      Free    Dyn   Gpt
   --------   ----------   -------   ------   ---   ---
     Disk 0   Online       465 GB      0 B     *     *
     Disk 1   Online       292 GB      27 GB
     Disk 2   Online       378 GB      90 GB

   DISKPART> list volume

     Volume ###   Ltr   Label       Fs    Type       Size      Status   Info
     ----------   ---   ---------   ----- -------    -------   ------   ------
     Volume 0      F    HRM_SSS_X64  UDF   DVD-ROM    3525 MB   Healthy
     Volume 1           System Rese  NTFS  Partition  100 MB    Healthy   System
     Volume 2      C                 NTFS  Partition  234 GB    Healthy   Boot
     Volume 3      D    New Volume   REFS  Partition  218 GB    Healthy
     Volume 4      E    Recovery     NTFS  Partition   12 GB    Healthy
     Volume 5      G    Store n Go   FAT32 Removable   28 GB    Healthy

   DISKPART> select disk 0

   Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

   DISKPART> list partition

     Partition ###   Type               Size     Offset
     -------------   ----------------   ------   -------
     Partition 1    Primary             100 MB   1024 KB
     Partition 2    Primary             234 GB   101 MB
     Partition 3    Primary             218 GB   234 GB
     Partition 4    Primary              12 GB   453 GB


   DISKPART> select partition 2

   Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

   DISKPART> list partition

     Partition ###   Type               Size      Offset
     -------------   ----------------   -------   -------
     Partition 1    Primary             100 MB    1024 KB
*    Partition 2    Primary             234 GB    101 MB
     Partition 3    Primary             218 GB    234 GB
     Partition 4    Primary              12 GB    453 GB

   DISKPART> exit

   Leaving DiskPart...

   C:\>

3.2 Adding new disks

Windows Server 2012 supports both Standard Format and Advanced Format hard drives. Standard Format drives have 512 bytes per physical sector and are also referred to as 512b drives. Advanced Format drives have 4096 bytes per physical sector and are also referred to as 512e drives. 512e represents a significant shift for the hard-drive industry, and it allows for large, multiterabyte drives.

When working with physical disks, keep in mind that disks perform physical media updates in the granularity of their physical sector size. 512b disks work with data 512 bytes at a time; 512e disks work with data 4096 bytes at a time. Having a larger physical sector size is what allows drive capacities to jump well beyond previous physical capacity limits.

512e disks might require some architecture changes in your applications. For best performance, applications must be updated to read and write data properly in this new level of granularity (4096 bytes). Otherwise, when there is only a 512-byte write, 512e hard disks must perform additional work to complete the sector write.

Wondering how to determine whether a disk is 512b or 512e? Use Fsutil to determine bytes per physical sector by typing the following at an elevated prompt:

Fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo DriveDesignator

Here, DriveDesignator is the designator of the drive to check, such as

Fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo c:

Thanks to hot-swapping and Plug and Play technologies, the process of adding new internal disks is much easier than in the past. If a computer supports hot swapping of disks, you can install new internal disks without having to shut down the computer. Simply insert the hard disk drives you want to use. If the computer doesn’t support hot swapping, you need to shut down the computer, insert the drives, and restart the computer.

Either way, after you insert the drives you want to use, log on and access Disk Management in the Computer Management tool or in Server Manager. If the new drives have already been initialized, meaning they have disk signatures, they should be brought online automatically when you select Rescan Disks from the Action menu. If you are working with new drives that haven’t been initialized, meaning they lack a disk signature, when you choose to initialize the new disk, Windows Server 2012 opens the Initialize Disk dialog box. In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select either the MBR or GPT partitioning style. When you tap or click OK, Windows writes a disk signature to the disks and initializes the disks with the basic disk type.

If you don’t want to use the Initialize Disk dialog box, you can close it and use Disk Management instead to view and work with the disk. In the Disk List view, the disk is marked with a red downward-pointing arrow icon, the disk’s type is listed as Unknown, and the disk’s status is listed as Not Initialized. You can then press and hold or right-click the disk’s icon and select Online. Press and hold or right-click the disk’s icon again, and select Initialize Disk. You can then initialize the disk. In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select either the MBR or GPT partitioning style. Next tap or click OK so that Windows can write a disk signature and initialize the disk with the basic disk type.

As discussed previously, storage performance is primarily a factor of a disk’s access time (how long it takes to register a request and scan the disk), seek time (how long it takes to find the requested data), and transfer rate (how long it takes to read and write data). By enabling disk write caching, you can reduce the number of times the operating system accesses the disk by caching disk writes and then performing several writes at once. In this way, disk performance is primarily influenced by seek time and transfer rate.

The drawback of disk write caching is that in the event of a power or system failure, the cached writes might not be written to disk, and this can result in data loss. Windows Server 2012 disables disk write caching by default, but you can enable it on a per-disk basis. Keep in mind that some server applications require disk write caching to be enabled or disabled, and if these applications use a particular set of disks, these disks must use the required setting for disk write caching.

To configure disk write caching, start Computer Management, expand the System Tools node, and select Device Manager. In the details pane, expand Disk Drives, press and hold or right-click the disk drive you want to work with, and then select Properties. In the Device Properties dialog box, click the Policies tab. Select or clear Enable Write Caching On The Disk as appropriate. If the drive has a separate power supply that allows it to flush its buffer in case of power failure, also select Turn Off Windows Write-Cache Buffer Flushing On The Device. Tap or click OK.