Browse by Tags

I was visiting the expo area at MMS 2013 earlier today and saw that Iron Networks was showing a private cloud pod there, complete with a set of well-matched layers of compute, storage and networking. They were demonstrating several of the latest capabilities in Windows Server 2012 and System Center...

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...

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...

Introduction Increasing availability is a key concern with computer systems. With all the consolidation and virtualization efforts under way, you need to make sure your services are always up and running, even when some components fail. However, it’s usually hard to understand the details...

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...

These are some PowerShell snippets to configure a specific set of systems for Hyper-V over SMB testing. Posting it here mainly for my own reference, but maybe someone else out there is configuring a server with 48 disks split into 6 pools of 8 disks. These systems do not support SES (SCSI Enclosure Services...

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...

This has been a performance tip for File Servers for some time now: disable short names. There are big performance savings in disabling 8.3 naming and also for removing existing short names on a volume. Here’s a diagram from a presentation I delivered last year: The old “8dot3 naming” convention has...

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...

1. Introduction Windows Server 2012 includes a new feature called SMB Multichannel, part of the SMB 3.0 protocol, which increases the network performance and availability for File Servers.   1.1. Benefits SMB Multichannel allows file servers to use multiple network connections simultaneously and...

1. Overview 1.1. Introduction Windows Server 2012 provides Windows PowerShell cmdlets and WMI objects to manage SMB File Servers and SMB File Shares. These new tools are aimed at both System Administrator and Developers. 1.2. Benefits SMB PowerShell cmdlets allow an IT Administrator...

A quick blog post to highlight that I participated in an episode of “From End to Edge and Beyond”, recorded during TechEd North America 2012 with Tom Shinder and Yuri Diogenes. This show is focused on security, so the main focus was on the new SMB Encryption feature in Windows Server 2012...

1. Introduction We recently had our TechEd North America event and all sessìon slides and recordings are now publicly available (links are provided below). We’re also getting ready to deliver our TechEd Europe talks this week. With hundreds of talks to attend and/or review, it will...

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...

The Microsoft TechEd 2012 North America conference is happening this week in Orlando, FL. As part of that event, a number of partners are showing their hardware and/or software at the exhibit area called the TechExpo. I have spent some time there and took a few pictures of a few partners that have...

Robert Smith (Platforms Field Engineer) has recently posted a new blog that cover one important area of Windows performance that few people understand well. In his blog post he talks about how to use Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT) in general and the XPerf tool in particular. Xperf.exe is the command...

IMPORTANT: This blog post is now obsolete. For the latest version of this content, please visit: http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/08/23/windows-server-2012-scale-out-file-server-for-sql-server-2012-step-by-step-installation.aspx 1. Introduction 1.1. Overview In this document...

Introduction For a while now, I have let go of the old CMD.EXE command line and moved over to POWERSHELL.EXE for good. As you probably know, you can run any old command from the new Windows PowerShell. However, there are times when the name or the syntax of old tools might create issues. But it can...

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) hosted the 8th Storage Developer Conference (SDC) in the Hyatt Regency in beautiful Santa Clara, CA (Silicon Valley) earlier this year. As usual, Microsoft was the underwriter of the CIFS/SMB/SMB2 PlugFest, which was co-located with the SDC event. ...

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...

Just a short post to share that I will be speaking at the BUILD conference next month. The conference will happen in Anaheim-CA, from 9/13 to 9/16. You can read more at the official site: http://www.buildwindows.com . The full agenda is not published yet, but you will be able to see details (like title...

This week at TechEd 2011 I will be delivering a presentation about “Windows Server 2008 R2 File Services Consolidation - Technology Update”. If you’re attending the conference in Atlanta-GA, this is session WSV317 on Wednesday at 10:15 AM, plus a repeat on Thursday also at 10:15...

The new Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 is commonly deployed to provide data storage for servers that boot from a local hard drive. However, there are interesting cost savings and management advantages in deploying servers that have no local disk at all and get their syste and boot volumes from the...

If you work with storage, you probably already heard about the “4K Sector Drives”, “Advanced Format Drives” and “512e drives”. These new “4K sector drives” abandon the traditional use of 512 bytes per sector in favor of a new structure that uses 4096 bytes...

1. Introduction The File Server Capacity Tool (FSCT) is a free download from Microsoft that helps you determine the capacity of a specific file server configuration (running Windows or any operating system that implements the SMB or SMB2 protocols). It simulates a specific set of operations (the “Home...