Welcome to the Storage Blog at Microsoft

JasonBuffington — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:11:00 GMT

Hello,

My name is Gabriel Broner, and I’m the General Manager for Storage Solutions Division at Microsoft.

The Storage Solutions team at Microsoft develops some great technologies and products that you may or may not be familiar with by name – but likely depend on:

Windows Server storage, file and network technologies like:

VSS – Volume Shadowcopy Services

SMB – Server Message Blocks – the networking protocols between Windows clients and servers

Windows Backup Technologies – Client and Server Windows Backup

Windows Clustering – known by some as MSCS, or Microsoft Cluster Services

We also work with hardware partners to deliver Storage appliances based on optimized and enhanced versions of the Windows Server operating system, including:

Windows Storage Server

Windows Unified Data Storage Server

And we are delivering file/block/data related products like:

System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, for backup and recovery in Windows environments

We are launching this Storage Blog as our unified voice across all of the storage technologies and products that Microsoft is delivering.

So, please subscribe to this feed to stay informed on what Microsoft is working on that impact storage in today’s infrastructures (click here to subscribe).

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We are excited to see both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista service pack 1 getting ready to “release to manufacturing”. There are several great storage technologies and enhancements in these that we want to make you aware of. Here are two that beta customers have been most excited about:

SMB 2.0

SMB has been the backbone of communication between Windows clients and servers for a number of years. And with all of the innovations in higher-speed networking topologies, it was finally time for us to really optimize how our operating systems communicated in this faster-capacity environment.

SMB 2.0 delivers considerable scalability and performance improvements over SMB 1.0 and is especially efficient when transferring large amounts of data over high latency networks. Branch office and remote employees ought to be really pleased with the results. And if it works well over a WAN, imagine the LAN performance.

If you would like to get more connected on SMB 2.0 and our other networking and file enhancements with Windows Server 2008, check out:

FileCab – the File System product team blog

FileForum – the File Services and Storage Forum

Clustering

Microsoft first delivered “MSCS 1.0”, originally codenamed WolfPack, way back in Windows NT 4.0. It has continued to evolve with new capabilities with each subsequent release of the Windows Server operating system.

In Windows Server 2008, new capabilities between IP subnets and other quorum features have really broadened the capabilities of Windows Clustering. Creating a cluster has never been easier – simply select your nodes, give the cluster a name, and run the built-in validation test to ensure your configuration will work – 3 simple steps!

Adding clustered services and applications is just as easy – pick the application, give it a name for clients to access, and select your shared storage disk. With these new Wizards you will have your cluster up and running in no time and with very little effort.

To get more connected on Windows Clustering in Windows Server 2008, check out:

ClusterStuff – the Windows Clustering product team blog

ClusterForum – the Windows Clustering newsgroup

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There are other exciting additions to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 that were delivered around storage, networking and clustering technologies. As well as some innovations that you may not be using in some of our existing products:

Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 – (www site)

Data Protection Manager 2007 – (www site) (blog)

As you can see, there are lots of things going on with Storage, here at Microsoft. In future posts:

You’ll hear more about what we are doing in support of large data platforms, like SQL Server 2008

You’ll get updates on new projects like what is coming beyond Data Protection Manager 2007

And maybe even some hints on what new storage solutions are being built on the about to be released Windows Server 2008 platform

So, start watching for more from the Storage Blog – it’s going to be a great 2008.

The Storage Blog at Microsoft : Executive-posts

Welcome to the Storage Blog at Microsoft

SMB 2.0

Clustering

written by Gabriel Broner / posted by Jason