Managing a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment

Chapter 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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Activity 6-1: Viewing and Managing Disk Properties with

Disk Management• Objective: Use Disk Management to view the

properties of a hard disk and partition• From AdminXX account

• Start My Computer Manage Expand Storage Disk Management

• Explore information available for partitions, disks, and volumes as directed

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Activity 6-2: Creating and Deleting a Primary Partition

• Objective: Use Disk Management to create and delete a new primary partition

• Create a new NTFS partition using the New Partition Wizard

• Assign a drive letter• Verify that the new partition was created• Delete the partition

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Activity 6-3: Creating an Extended Partition

• 6-3 Objective: To create an extended partition using the New Partition Wizard• Once an extended partition has been created, you can

create a logical drive

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Activity 6-4: Creating a Logical Drive

• 6-4 Objective: To create a logical drive within the new partition using the New Partition Wizard

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Activity 6-5: Converting a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk

• Objective: To convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk using Disk Management

• Convert and verify according to exercise• If necessary to convert from dynamic to basic

• Must be empty, backup first

• Once a dynamic disk is available• Can create different types of volumes on the disk

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Activity 6-6: Creating a Simple Volume

• Objective: To create a simple volume on a dynamic disk

• Create using New Volume Wizard• Format in NTFS file system

• Assign a drive letter

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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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Activity 6-7: Extending a Volume Using DISKPART

• Objective: To extend a volume using the DISKPART command

• Open the command line and enter the DISKPART command

• Select the simple volume and extend the size by 50 MB

• Verify that the size of the volume has been increased

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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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Activity 6-8: Mounting an NTFS Volume

• Objective: To mount an NTFS volume• Create an empty folder• Use Disk Management to mount a drive to the

folder• Test by creating a test folder on the drive and

viewing it from the mounted folder

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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 can’t 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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Activity 6-9: Using the Disk Defragmenter Utility

• Objective: to analyze and defragment a volume using the Disk Defragmenter utility

• The utility graphically displays the fragmentation status of the disk before and after defragmentation

• Command-line version of command is DEFRAG• Can be used to schedule defragmentation when used

with a batch file and Task Scheduler

• Get complete syntax and options with DEFRAG /?

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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

• Doesn’t 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