Partitioning, storage pools, de duplication. 2 2
What in the world are we talking about? 3 3
Well, you have to join us next. 4 4
>> You're watching IT Pro TV. 5 5
[MUSIC] 6 6
That's right. 7 7
You have jumped back into another episode of course of committee A server plus with 8 8
Mr. Wes Brian and myself and we are about to dive into the realm of well storage 9 9
management here or server storage management. 10 10
And this actually kind of is opening up another area of study for us. 11 11
If we haven't actually been familiar with it and 12 12
Wes is gonna actually help us through this. 13 13
And the reason why we actually need to do this is because it's not just 14 14
about saying, hey, we've got hard drives. 15 15
Wes, there's actually ways that we can actually manages to make it more effective 16 16
for entire organization. 17 17
>> That's right, Ronnie. 18 18
So like you said, we can connect those hard drives or solid 19 19
state drives depending on what the storage devices, but they are absolutely useless. 20 20
[LAUGH] And we start doing some partitioning and formatting. 21 21
So, let's go ahead and 22 22
we're gonna show you how to do that inside of server manager here. 23 23
I've gone ahead and I've launched up server manager and 24 24
what I'm using more specifically is the file and storage services. 25 25
All right, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna do some of the basic things 26 26
that they want you to be aware of when it comes to storage management. 27 27
Now, we're doing this from the Windows environment through storage spaces like 28 28
you heard Ronnie mentioned and 29 29
it's a technology that allows you to aggregate multiple drives together. 30 30
And then the operating system can manage and maintain things like parody 31 31
data redundancy and it could move the information it needs to across those 32 32
aggregated drives in order to accomplish things like fault tolerance. 33 33
And again, just being able to have access to the information, 34 34
should you lose one of the drives? 35 35
All right, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to storage pools and 36 36
we're gonna aggregate some of these disks together. 37 37
All right, and you'll notice that I says I have available disk, but 38 38
I do not have the pool. 39 39
All right, now, let me go ahead. 40 40
And what I'm gonna do is we're gonna create a new storage pool and 41 41
I know that this is a little bit hard to see. 42 42
So, let me go ahead and see if we can zoom in here and 43 43
you can see a little bit better about what we're doing here. 44 44
I would encourage you to read these summaries and 45 45
some of the information in these wizards don't just do like I do sometimes and 46 46
I click, click, click, click and don't wonder wonder why something doesn't work. 47 47
But it was explained in the summary. 48 48
So, definitely pay attention to the information we're gonna go ahead and 49 49
choose next. 50 50
All right, and I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna call this pool O1. 51 51
Remember your naming convention is really up to you, and I'm gonna choose next. 52 52
And it's gonna ask me, well, which disks do I wanna use and 53 53
I have a couple of options I could use automatic, which is what I'm gonna do. 54 54
Let storage spaces let the operating system handle this. 55 55
If I had, let's say four discs and I decided I could put one as a hot spare. 56 56
Which means if any of the other disks within that storage pool start to fail. 57 57
It will take the failing drive, pull the information to another location within 58 58
the drive or within the storage pool and it'll bring the other one online, right? 59 59
So, that's a good thing with the storage management like that. 60 60
Well, the operating system does all the work and 61 61
that's one of the benefits of technologies like this. 62 62
I'm gonna go ahead and I'm just gonna leave them all automatic. 63 63
Notice that it tells me what the selected capacity is here at 60GB and 64 64
we're gonna choose next. 65 65
And here's our summary pane. 66 66
And we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna choose create. 67 67
All right, you'll see that it's gathering information, creating the pool. 68 68
All right, so, now we have a pool. 69 69
All right, but what's interesting is this doesn't actually give us the ability to 70 70
use that storage yet. 71 71
We're still some more things that we have to do. 72 72
We have to create a virtual disk and we have to partition off a section of this 73 73
pooled storage, which is what we're gonna do now, Ronnie? 74 74
We do see things like this right in the cloud pulled storage. 75 75
It comes to mind you think, well, have I ever seen this before. 76 76
I think about, cloud providers, right. 77 77
When I need to store information in the cloud provider's network, 78 78
I don't know what the storage is on the back end, right. 79 79
But we have potentially unlimited access to storage, right? 80 80
>> Yeah, the the logical way that they can divide that up. 81 81
And so for us, we're actually saying here is the total pool of storage that we have, 82 82
but for us to get access to it, 83 83
there's still things that we have to be able to manage and do. 84 84
>> Most definitely and when you create, like we're gonna do here, 85 85
let's select our pool and we'll talk about this as we're doing it. 86 86
So, we're gonna create a new virtual disk. 87 87
And this virtual disk is now a way, and forgive me, 88 88
I'm kind of jumping through this wizard cuz I've done it quite a few times here, 89 89
but this might be the first time you've seen it, slowed down a little bit. 90 90
So, this is the way that we can actually carve up individual pieces of the storage 91 91
pool that we've just created. 92 92
So, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna choose next. 93 93
All right, and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna call this edge detainers. 94 94
I'm gonna say that this storage can, the place that we're gonna use this virtual 95 95
disk, we're gonna dedicate it to the entertainers and some of their files and 96 96
folders if you will. 97 97
>> We're just really providing a name for the amount of space. 98 98
>> It really is. 99 99
It's kind of like a placeholder if you will and we'll choose next. 100 100
Now, this is really cool because you could have JBODs which we talked about before, 101 101
that doesn't allow redundancy. 102 102
If one of the disks fails, you lose all of your information but 103 103
it does have closure awareness. 104 104
So, it does give you a certain level, 105 105
you can start to see a certain level of fault tolerance here. 106 106
We're not worried about the enclosure and 107 107
then here are the levels of performance versus fault tolerance you need. 108 108
Alright, simple. 109 109
It's just data striping, essentially we have a mirror. 110 110
A mirror does exactly that it copies your data across the drives, 111 111
so you're gonna lose the overall capacity of the virtual disk. 112 112
That is important to remember. 113 113
And then parody is a lot like mirroring, but it goes a little bit farther, 114 114
it adds additional parent. 115 115
That doesn't just mirror the information. 116 116
It adds parody much the way a raid five array was and 117 117
because of the extra information to do this, 118 118
it requires the largest amount of drives and it takes the biggest capacity hit. 119 119
So, plan accordingly and keep in mind that that's part of understanding how much 120 120
space you have within the drives that are in the enclosure themselves. 121 121
We're gonna go ahead, I'm just gonna do mirror here, I'm gonna choose next and 122 122
then they have the provisioning type and this is important. 123 123
This is another one of those things that are in the exam objectives 124 124
that you should be aware of. 125 125
What is the provisioning thick versus thin mean? 126 126
Well, thin provisioning, just essentially means when you say, 127 127
regardless of the Microsoft speak here, thin provisioning means, 128 128
Ronnie said placeholder, right. 129 129
Or we were talking about placeholder, this is saying I want to take this container 130 130
and I'm gonna say that this container is gonna be five gigs, but 131 131
we're not gonna use all five gigs, right? 132 132
We're just gonna say it's gonna be five gigs and we'll let it expand over time, 133 133
but we won't let it go any farther than the five gigs. 134 134
And that's good for items optimizing how much storage capacity you have, but 135 135
it does take a little bit of a performance degrade. 136 136
Right, so we might say that we wanna do a fixed provisioning, 137 137
fixed provisioning doesn't really do that. 138 138
Just that placeholder. 139 139
It says quarantine off the entire space allocated now, don't expand it later, 140 140
let's do it right now. 141 141
I can give you a little bit better performance, but 142 142
you do take a capacity hit because you're allocating that entire space right now. 143 143
So, we're gonna go ahead, I'm gonna do a fix for 144 144
provisioning and I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna use 27GB here. 145 145
I'm gonna use the whole entire drive. 146 146
You know what? 147 147
Let's do this a little bit different. 148 148
I tell you what, I'm gonna do. 149 149
Yeah, we'll do we'll do 27 gigs here, and 150 150
then we'll divide it up in some individual volumes coming up. 151 151
All right, so, now it's creating the disk and we can choose close. 152 152
Now, what you didn't see, because I kind of clicked behind it real fast. 153 153
There was this little check box down here that was automatically check for 154 154
me that says, once you get done creating the virtual disk, do you want 155 155
to automatically want to create the volume that's associated with that virtual disk? 156 156
And that's why that wizard one came down and one came back up. 157 157
We're gonna go ahead and choose next. 158 158
And here's where we apply our file system in our drive labels. 159 159
We're gonna go ahead and choose next. 160 160
We'll choose next again. 161 161
All right, and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say, 162 162
maybe let's see, let's say 10 gigs for this one. 163 163
All right, notice how we're able to kind of divide up the storage as we want. 164 164
I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna keep the drive letter E for entertainer. 165 165
So, I can remember, I'm not gonna do a volume label. 166 166
You could do a volume label if you want. 167 167
I don't really care for volume labels. 168 168
I have a label on it by the drive letter. 169 169
And we're gonna, we could use REFS or NTFS. 170 170
I'm just gonna use NTFS. 171 171
And I'm gonna choose next. 172 172
And here's the data duplication that they also want you to be aware of. 173 173
Now, I need you to be aware of this too. 174 174
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, cuz I don't want you to try this at home get to this 175 175
point and say, hey, Wes I never seen data de duplication when I was creating and 176 176
assigning my volume drive letters. 177 177
Why do you have this and I don't, well, truth be told to do data duplication, you 178 178
actually have to install that as a part of the file and storage services role. 179 179
You'll see that by default, only one of 12 is installed. 180 180
Well, that's one of those 12 that are in there is data de duplication. 181 181
So, I went ahead and saved us some time and I did that ahead of time. 182 182
So, you didn't just have to see me next to a wizard restart the server and 183 183
it looks like nothing happened. 184 184
It's under the hood, right, now, what we're gonna do is we're gonna choose 185 185
general purpose file server cuz that's all I'm using this for. 186 186
And how long do we want to allow files to stay in this storage before we did do them 187 187
or de duplicated. 188 188
I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna say seven days, right. 189 189
Three is a little aggressive. 190 190
Maybe I wanna know more than a week, if I have two files that are the same, 191 191
they haven't been touched in a week. 192 192
I want you to go ahead and remove them and save the capacity so 193 193
I don't store two of those files. 194 194
Now, the other thing too is that data de duplication by default happens in 195 195
the background so that you stay optimized cuz it could be resource intensive. 196 196
But I also wanna enable throughput optimization. 197 197
I wanna say, you know what? 198 198
On Saturday and Sunday at 12 a.m., nobody is gonna be in this storage array at all. 199 199
Go ahead, run at full speed. 200 200
Don't worry about optimizing it for performance during business hours. 201 201
Nobody's working with it de duplicated right then. 202 202
All right, so, it's got all weekend to do that. 203 203
And we go ahead and we choose OK. 204 204
All right, now, next up, we're gonna go ahead and choose next here. 205 205
We get our summary. 206 206
Remember to review your summary to summary to make sure if you have 207 207
unfortunately done any mistakes or maybe you need to make some changes. 208 208
And we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna choose creates. 209 209
All right, so, we're already doing a lot of storage management, 210 210
getting our storage provision so that users can actually connect to them, but 211 211
we need to go a little bit farther. 212 212
Right, because what you're gonna see, let me close this wizard down and 213 213
let me kind of get out of here and open up file Explorer and then choose this PC. 214 214
And I know that's very tiny. 215 215
Just bear with me one moment what kind of zoom in there so you can see it. 216 216
There's my drive letter E. 217 217
That is the storage that we just provisions, and 218 218
you can see it just like a mapped drive inside of your server operating system. 219 219
But the problem is, we now want to make sure that we secure this storage, so 220 220
I'm gonna set a few permissions here, and we're gonna go ahead and 221 221
we're gonna right click on that and we're gonna choose properties. 222 222
And here is our properties menu. 223 223
I'm gonna choose sharing. 224 224
Notice that this is already shared out. 225 225
We're gonna go ahead and we're gonna show the share permissions looks like the share 226 226
name as agitators for here. 227 227
We look at the permissions, 228 228
the permissions are full control share permissions. 229 229
And then I also wanna double check the security permissions cuz I wanna make sure 230 230
that the users have the appropriate NTFS permissions so 231 231
that they can use this storage. 232 232
Now, when I look at users, one of the things I noticed is that there is read and 233 233
execute list and read. 234 234
But the problem is we don't have a write permission. 235 235
All right, they cannot save to this storage without the right permission. 236 236
I don't need them to have the modify permission cuz I don't want them to delete 237 237
files, but I definitely want them to be able to put files there. 238 238
So, we need to edit the local NTFS permissions, 239 239
we'll select edit, select security, principal, scroll down. 240 240
We'll choose OK. 241 241
And then we'll choose close and 242 242
now we have set our we've set our access control list where we need to. 243 243
All right, so, now at this point we have. 244 244
Oops me, forgive me there. 245 245
We have provisions, right. 246 246
We've created a storage layout. 247 247
We've done formatting, we've done data duplication. 248 248
We've now set our ACS or our permissions if you will. 249 249
There's another thing that you can also do and 250 250
you can do this in a couple of locations, right? 251 251
So for instance, if I wanted to, 252 252
I can also go a little bit farther in the storage management and 253 253
I could right click and I'll choose properties again, down here somewhere. 254 254
There we go. 255 255
And I want you to look at an area called quota. 256 256
All right, this is a point where I can enable quota management as well. 257 257
And I could limit the space. 258 258
Now, I'm not gonna go ahead and do this, but 259 259
I want you to be aware of it because it is on the exam and I want you to know 260 260
what a storage quota is, storage quota says and you can set this up by user too. 261 261
All right, so I can say, hey Ronnie, we, 262 262
we've set this up as a 27 gigabyte location. 263 263
Ronnie, you're part of our team, you get five gigs, 264 264
Mike Rodrick, you get five gigs Wes, you get five gigs. 265 265
And then I could do a couple of things after I set those quotas as we get closer, 266 266
let's say Ronnie or I get closer to meeting are the upper end of our quota. 267 267
That said, send an email, let me know. 268 268
This could be a soft quota where it says we get to five gigs, 269 269
send me an email but don't stop the blocking, let it go over. 270 270
But let me be aware of it. 271 271
That's a soft quota. 272 272
It's kind of a guideline. 273 273
If you will, [LAUGH] hard quota says when you get to five gigs, 274 274
you might not even get to five gigs because if that file brings you over 275 275
the five gig part, we're gonna block you from storing that altogether. 276 276
So, that is an example of where you could do storage quotas too. 277 277
Now, one of the last things that we need to do is we need to be able to make sure 278 278
that hey, can we even use this storage, can we connect to the storage? 279 279
So, the last thing I want to show you, I'm gonna go ahead and 280 280
I'm gonna minimize our server. 281 281
I have another server here in the background that I'm using and 282 282
we're gonna use that to connect and find out if we can actually get 283 283
access to the shared resource that we have just created. 284 284
So, I'm gonna go ahead. 285 285
And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna, I'm gonna open up file Explorer here and 286 286
I'm gonna go ahead and let's see if I can do this. 287 287
All right, well maybe not. 288 288
So, I'm gonna type in backslash backslash. 289 289
I'm gonna type in the share name. 290 290
Edge retainers, back slash. 291 291
Oops, you know what, how about we do the right UNC path? 292 292
Yes, I get that. 293 293
You need to make sure that you use the right UNC path or it won't work. 294 294
So, [LAUGH] file SRV01 backslash and there's agitators and it shows up and 295 295
it looks a little lackluster there because I dropped right down into the folder. 296 296
But there we go. 297 297
There is our, what I keep doing that. 298 298
I meant to minimize that. 299 299
Let's try that again. 300 300
5th time's a charm. 301 301
All right, now I can get into this storage here and if I wanted to, I could 302 302
create maybe let's say a new folder and I could call this Ronnie if I wanted. 303 303
And now Ronnie has a storage location that he can utilize to save his 304 304
files on his network. 305 305
All right, ladies and gentlemen, so that's a little bit about storage management. 306 306
You've seen us do some things like for instance provisioning and formatting. 307 307
We did data duplication. 308 308
We set permissions to make sure that we secure access to only the authorized 309 309
people in this case are agitators have access to that location. 310 310
We also showed you where you can configure quotas as well as testing the connectivity 311 311
to make sure that the storage that you just set up and 312 312
the management thereof you can actually utilize it. 313 313
>> Thank us once again for actually helping us out there. 314 314
As you walked us through that demonstration, it is an important reminder 315 315
for all of us preparing for the server plus exam and for our server plus career. 316 316
That will be managing storage and 317 317
we actually need to know some of those details behind that. 318 318
Regardless of whether you're on a Windows machine or 319 319
whether you're on a Linux machine. 320 320
Well, server storage is going to be key elements that will actually have to be 321 321
able to accomplish and do. 322 322
Well, that will wrap it up for this episode, but 323 323
there's plenty of more comp tia server plus to come. 324 324
So, we'll see in the very next episode. 325 325
>> Thank you for watching IT Pro TV.