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In this post, I'm providing a reference to the most relevant content related to Windows Server 2012 R2 that is related to the File Server, the SMB 3.02 features and its associated scenarios like Hyper-V over SMB and SQL Server over SMB. It's obviously not a complete reference (there are always new blogs...

Introduction This blog post focus on the new SMB Scale-Out Rebalancing introduced in Windows Server 2012 R2. If you haven’t seen it yet, it delivers a new way of balancing file clients accessing a Scale-Out File Server. In Windows Server 2012, each client would be randomly directed via...

Note: This blog post is a Windows Server 2012 R2 update on a previous version focused on Windows Server 2012 . 1. Introduction With the release of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, I am frequently asked about how older versions of Windows will behave when connecting to or from these new...

A Scale-Out File Server is a cluster role that offers the same SMB file share (or set of shares) on every node of the cluster. As clients come in, they are spread across the nodes using a round-robin mechanism based on DNS. In the common case of having many clients and just a few file server cluster...

Overview I delivered a demo of Hyper-V over SMB this week at MMS 2013 that’s an evolution of a demo I did back in the Windows Server 2012 launch and also via a TechNet Radio session . Back then I showed a two physical servers running a SQLIO simulation. One played the role of the File...

Question received via e-mail: Is it practical use SMB3 storage without RDMA or do we have a use case for production rather than development or test? I thought RDMA would be essential for production deployment of Hyper-V SMB storage. Answer: RDMA is not a requirement for the Hyper-V over SMB...

1. Introduction I have been doing storage-related demos and publishing blogs with some storage performance numbers for a while, and I commonly get questions such as “How do you run these tests?” or “What tools do you use to generate IOs for your demos?”. While it’s...

1. Introduction If you follow this blog, you probably already had a chance to review the “Hyper-V over SMB” overview talk that I delivered at TechEd 2012 and other conferences. I am now working on a new version of that talk that still covers the basics, but adds brand new segments focused...

This post describes a few different Hyper-V over SMB sample configurations with increasing levels of availability. Not all configurations are recommended for production deployment, since some do not provide continuous availability. The goal of the post is to show how one can add redundancy, Storage Spaces...

Question from a user (paraphrased): When we access a local file via loopback UNC path, is this the same as accessing via the local path? I mean, is "C:\myfolder\a.txt" equal to " \\myserver\myshare\a.txt " or I'll be using TCP/IP in any way? Answer from SMB developer: When accessing files over loopback...

A while back, I showed how to use PowerShell V2 and our old SMB WMIv1 object to explain how to find the free space behind a file share (essentially the free space for the volume that contains the file share). That post is available at http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2010/04/08/using-powershell...

When deploying Hyper-V over SMB (storing your live configuration and live VHD/VHDX files on an SMB 3.0 file share), make sure you don’t use a loopback configuration. A loopback configuration means that the Hyper-V role and the File Server role are on the same computer. While you can actually have both...

SMB Multichannel will let you use multiple network interfaces at once for added throughput and network fault tolerance. When using it with non-clustered file servers, you have the most flexible options, including using multiple NICs on the same subnet. In fact, you can have all the multiple NICs on the...

When you install a fresh copy of Windows Server 2012 and configure it with the File Server role, the default Power Setting balances power efficiency and performance. For this reason, even if you have a few high speed network interfaces and the fastest SSD storage out there, you might not be getting...

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is hosting the 9th Storage Developer Conference (SDC) in the Hyatt Regency in beautiful Santa Clara, CA (Silicon Valley) on the week of September 17th. As usual, Microsoft is underwriting the SMB/SMB2/SMB3 Plugfest, which is co-located with the SDC event...

1) Introduction We have covered the basics of SMB Direct and some of the use cases in previous blog posts and TechNet articles. You can find them at http://smb3.info . However, I get a lot of questions about specifically which cards work with this new feature and how exactly you set those up. This...

1) Introduction We have covered the basics of SMB Direct and some of the use cases in previous blog posts and TechNet articles. You can find them at http://smb3.info . However, I get a lot of questions about specifically which cards work with this new feature and how exactly you set those up. This...

There is a new blog post by Claus Joergensen, a Principal Program Manager in the File Server team, that covers the "VSS for SMB File Shares" feature in Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0. Claus covers many details on using VSS for SMB File Shares to create backups, including several scenarios using Hyper...

We had a great time showing Windows Server 2012 at TechEd North America and I wanted to share that the recording for our team’s sessions are now publicly available. That includes our sessions on SMB 3.0 and a number of demos, many of them using one of the Cluster-in-box configurations we were...

There is a new blog post by Claus Joergensen, a Principal Program Manager in the File Server team, that covers the SMB Transparent Failover feature in Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0. Claus covers all the details about making file shares continuously available, including step-by-step instructions using...

If you're planning to attend the TechEd 2012 North America event in June, here are the scheduled sessions with speakers from the File Server team: Code Title Speaker(s) Day Time Track Level WSV328 The Path to Continuous Availability with Windows Server 2012 ...

This blog post is now obsolete. For the latest post on this topic, visit http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/07/31/deploying-windows-server-2012-with-smb-direct-smb-over-rdma-and-the-mellanox-connectx-2-connectx-3-using-infiniband-step-by-step.aspx 1) Introduction We have covered...

This blog post is obsolete. For the latest post on this topic, see http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/07/31/deploying-windows-server-2012-with-smb-direct-smb-over-rdma-and-the-intel-neteffect-ne020-card-using-iwarp-step-by-step.aspx 1) Introduction We have covered the basics...

SNW Spring 2012 in Dallas is about a week away. Co-owned by Computerworld and Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), SNW is a conference focused on Information Infrastructure with tracks covering: Backup and Archiving in the Cloud Big Data Business Continuity Cloud Storage ...

Last month at the //Build/ conference we had a large number of presentations delivered and made available to download and stream. Several Microsoft Partners and Developers that are focused on Storage, Networking or Hyper-V have asked me for a list of links to help them find the Widows Server 8 sessions...