Module 4

Implementing Storage Spaces and

Data Deduplication
Module Overview

• Implementing Storage Spaces

• Managing Storage Spaces
• Implementing Data Deduplication
Lesson 1: Implementing Storage Spaces

• Enterprise storage needs

• What are Storage Spaces?
• Components and features of Storage Spaces
• Demonstration: Configuring Storage Spaces
• Changes to file and storage services in
Windows Server 2016
• Storage Spaces usage scenarios
• Discussion: Comparing Storage Spaces to other
storage solutions
Enterprise storage needs

In your storage planning, you should assess

whether your storage solution needs to support
capabilities such as:
• Mirror/parity support
• Data stripping
• Enclosure awareness
• Storage tiering
• Storage replication
• Data deduplication
• Data encryption
• Performance analysis
Enterprise storage needs
What are Storage Spaces?

Use Storage Spaces to:

• Add physical disks of any type and size to a storage pool
• Create highly-available virtual disks from the pool

To create a virtual disk, you need:

• One or more physical disks Physical disks
• A storage pool that includes the disks
• Virtual disks (or storage spaces) Storage pool
that are created with disks from the
Virtual disk
storage pool
• Disk drives that are based on Disk drive
virtual drives
Components and features of Storage Spaces

Features to use Storage Spaces optimally in your

environment
Feature Options
Storage layout Simple
Two-way or three-way mirrors
Parity
Disk sector size 512 or 512e
4 KB
Drive allocation Data-store
Manual
Hot spare
Provisioning schemes Thin provisioning space
Fixed provisioning space
Stripe parameters Number of columns
Interleave
Demonstration: Configuring Storage Spaces

In this demonstration, you will learn how to:

• Create a storage pool
• Create a virtual disk and a volume
Changes to file and storage services in
Windows Server 2016

Windows Server 2016 provides the following new

file and storage services features:
• Storage Spaces Direct
• Storage Replica
• Storage QoS
• Data Deduplication (improved):
• Support for volume sizes up to 64 TB
• Support for file sizes up to 1 TB
• Simplified deduplication configuration for virtualized backup
applications
• Support for Nano Server
• Support for cluster rolling upgrades
• SMB hardening improvements
Changes to file and storage services in
Windows Server 2016

Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012

R2 provides the following new file and storage
services features:
• Multiterabyte volumes
• Data deduplication
• iSCSI Target Server
• Storage spaces and storage pools (tiered storage spaces
in Windows Server 2012 R2)
• Unified remote management of File and Storage Services
in Server Manager
• ReFS
• ODX
Storage Spaces usage scenarios

Storage Spaces features:

• Implement and easily manage scalable, reliable, and
inexpensive storage
• Use inexpensive storage with or without external storage
• Combine multiple drives into storage pools that
administrators can manage as a single entity
• Implement different types of storage in the same pool
• Grow storage pools as required
• Provision storage as required from existing storage pools
• Designate specific drives as hot spares
Storage Spaces usage scenarios

Limitations of Storage Spaces:

• Storage Spaces volumes are not supported on boot or
system volumes
• The contents of a drive are lost when you introduce that
drive into a storage pool
• You must have at least one drive in a simple storage pool
• Fault tolerant configurations have specific requirements:
• A mirrored pool requires a minimum of two drives
• Parity requires a minimum of three drives
• Three-way mirroring requires a minimum of five drives
• All drives in a pool must use the same sector size
• Fibre Channel and iSCSI are not supported
Storage Spaces usage scenarios

When planning your Storage Spaces solution,

consider:
• Fault tolerance:
• Provision virtual disks with mirrored and parity layout

• Performance:
• Provision virtual disks with parity layout
• Use disks of different types to provide tiered storage

• Reliability:
• Use hot spare physical disks in case a physical disk fails

• Extensibility:
• Add physical disks to a storage pool
Storage Spaces Direct Deployment
• Storage Spaces Direct removes the need for using
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
• Simplifies deployment and configuration by using
the existing network as a storage fabric
• In the disaggregated deployment scenario:
• The Hyper-V servers (compute component) are located in a
separate cluster from the Storage Spaces Direct servers (storage
component) as a Scale-Out File Server (SOFS)
• In the hyper-converged deployment scenario:
• The Hyper-V (compute) and Storage Spaces Direct (storage)
components are on the same cluster
• This option does not require deploying a SOFS
• Virtual machine files are stored on the CSVs (Cluster Shared
Volumes), which can be scaled as needed
Lesson 2: Managing Storage Spaces

• Managing Storage Spaces

• Managing disk failure with Storage Spaces
• Storage pool expansion
• Demonstration: Managing Storage Spaces by
using Windows PowerShell
• Event logs and performance counters
Managing Storage Spaces

• You can manage Storage Spaces by using:

• Server Manager
• Windows PowerShell
• Failover Cluster Manager
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager
• Windows Management Instrumentation
• Advanced management requires
Windows PowerShell
 Managing Storage Spaces

Windows PowerShell cmdlet Description

Get-StoragePool List storage pools

Repair-VirtualDisk Repair a virtual disk
Get-PhysicalDisk |
Where {$_.HealthStatus -ne List unhealthy physical disks
“Healthy”}

Reset-PhysicalDisk Remove a physical disk from a storage pool

Get-VirtualDisk |
List physical disks used for a virtual disk
Get-PhysicalDisk

Optimizes a volume, performing such tasks

on supported volumes and system SKUs as
Optimize-Volume
defragmentation, trim, slab consolidation,
and storage tier processing
Storage Tiering

• Storage Tiers assigns different categories of data to

storage media based on frequency of access
• Data will be assigned between 2 Tiers
• Tier 0 (SSD tier)
• Reserved for faster drives (10000RPM++)
• SAS and SSD
• Data that is accessed more frequently
• Tier 1 (HDD tier)
• Reserved for slower drives (7200RPM)
• SCSI and SATA
• Data that is accessed less frequently

• Automatically optimizes storage performance

• Transparently moves data between drives
Managing disk failure with Storage Spaces

To enhance disk fault tolerance:

• Design a complete, fault-tolerant storage solution
• Deploy a highly available storage pool
• Verify hardware and firmware components
• Replace failed disks immediately
• Retain some unallocated space
• Be prepared for multiple disk failures
• Provide fault tolerance at the enclosure level
Storage pool expansion

Vdisk 1
Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1

Vdisk 2 Vdisk 2 Vdisk 2

Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4 Disk 5

Disk 1
Storage pool expansion

Vdisk 1
Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1 Vdisk 1

Vdisk 2 Vdisk 2 Vdisk 2

Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4 Disk 5

Disk 1 Disk 6
Storage pool expansion
Enclosure Awareness, Storage Replication, and
Encryption

• Enclosure awareness
• Provides fault-tolerance for an entire enclosure failure
• Ensures that data copies are spread across available enclosures
• Requires at least three storage enclosures.
• Storage replication
• Provides block-level file replication
• Storage devices, servers, or clusters
• At the same location or between sites
• Used for fault tolerance and disaster recovery
• Data encryption
• IPSec
Demonstration: Managing Storage Spaces by
using Windows PowerShell

In this demonstration, you will learn how to use

Windows PowerShell to:
• View the properties of a storage pool
• Add physical disks to a storage pool
Event logs and performance counters for
analysis
With any storage technology, it is important to monitor
storage behavior and function to ensure ongoing
reliability, availability, and optimal performance
Lesson 3: Implementing Data Deduplication

• What is Data Deduplication?

• Data Deduplication components
• Deploying Data Deduplication
• Demonstration: Implementing Data Deduplication
• Usage scenarios for Data Deduplication
• Monitoring and maintaining Data Deduplication
• Backup and restore considerations with Data
Deduplication
What is Data Deduplication?

• Data Deduplication:
• Identifies and removes duplications within data without
compromising the data’s integrity or fidelity
• Has the goal to store more data on less space

• When you enable Data Deduplication on a volume, a

background task runs with low-priority that:
• Segments data into small, variably-sized chunks
• Identifies duplicate chunks
• Replaces redundant copies with a reference
• Compresses chunks
What is Data Deduplication?
Metadata Data

File1
Name,
attributes,.. A B C M N

Metadata Data

File2
Name,
attributes,.. A B C X Y

Chunk Store

Chunk Stream A
Metadata
File1

Standard Info Sparse Reparse Data Metadata

Chunk IDs, Offsets Chunks

A B C M N
Metadata Chunk Stream B
File2

X Y
Standard Info Sparse Reparse Data Metadata

Chunk IDs, Offsets

Data Deduplication components

The Data Deduplication feature consists of several

components:
• A filter driver, which monitors local or remote I/O
• The Data Deduplication role service, which
controls the three available job types:
• Optimization
• Garbage Collection
• Scrubbing
Data Deduplication components

Data Deduplication disk space savings

A view of optimized data (80% savings)

Chunk
After deduplication:
Store
2 TB physical size

Optimized
Non-optimized files Savings = 8 TB
file stubs

Before deduplication: 10 TB
Data Deduplication components
Server Windows
WMI
Manager PowerShell

Management
File
I/O Deduplication Service
Collect Scrub
Optimize
Garbage Data

Deduplication Jobs

Deduplication Filter Driver Deduplication Job Access

Regular Storage
File
Metadata NTFS File System Chunk Store
Deploying Data Deduplication

Prior to installing and configuring Data

Deduplication in your environment, you need to
plan your deployment using the following steps:
• Target deployments
• Determine which volumes are candidates for
deduplication
• Evaluate savings with the Deduplication Evaluation Tool
• Plan the rollout, scalability, and deduplication policies
Deploying Data Deduplication

After completing your planning, you need to use

the following steps to deploy Data Deduplication
to a server in your environment:
• Install Data Deduplication components on the server
• Enable Data Deduplication
• Configure Data Deduplication jobs
• Configure Data Deduplication schedules
Demonstration: Implementing Data Deduplication

In this demonstration, you will learn how to:

• Install the Data Deduplication role service
• Enable Data Deduplication
• Check the status of Data Deduplication
Usage scenarios for Data Deduplication

Consider using Data

Deduplication for the following
areas:

File shares .vhd libraries

Software
deployment
shares
 Usage scenarios for Data Deduplication

Example deduplication savings on data at rest

Monitoring and maintaining Data Deduplication

• Monitor Data Deduplication by using:

• Windows PowerShell cmdlets
• Event Viewer logs
• Performance Monitor data
• File Explorer

• Maintain Data Deduplication by using the

Windows PowerShell cmdlets
• Be prepared to troubleshoot issues with Data
Deduplication
Backup and restore considerations with Data
Deduplication

One of the benefits of using Data

Deduplication is that backup and
restore operations are typically faster
Lab A: Implementing Storage Spaces

• Exercise 1: Creating a Storage Space

• Exercise 2: Enabling and configuring storage
tiering
Logon Information

Virtual machines: 20740C-LON-DC1

20740C-LON-SVR1
User name: Adatum\Administrator
Password: Pa55w.rd

Estimated Time: 40 minutes

Lab Scenario

Adatum corporation has purchased a number of

hard disk drives and SSDs and you have been
tasked with creating a storage solution that can
utilize these new devices to the fullest. With mixed
requirements in Adatum for data access and
redundancy, you must ensure that you have a
redundancy solution for critical data that does not
require fast disk read and write access. You also
must create a solution for data that does require
fast read and write access.
You decide to use Storage Spaces and storage
tiering to meet the requirements.
Lab Review

• At a minimum, how many disks must you add to a

storage pool to create a three-way mirrored virtual
disk?
• You have a USB-attached disk, four SAS disks, and
one SATA disk that are attached to a Windows
Server 2012 server. You want to provide a single
volume to your users that they can use for file
storage. What would you use?
Lab B: Implementing Data Deduplication

• Exercise 1: Installing Data Deduplication

• Exercise 2: Configuring Data Deduplication

Logon Information
Virtual machines: 20740C-LON-DC1
20740C-LON-SVR1
User name: Adatum\Administrator
Password: Pa55w.rd

Estimated Time: 40 minutes

Lab Scenario

After you have tested the storage redundancy and

performance options, you decide that it also would be
beneficial to maximize the available disk space that you
have, especially on generic file servers. You decide to test
Data Deduplication solutions to maximize storage
availability for users.
New: After you have tested the storage redundancy and
performance options, you now decide that it would also
be beneficial to maximize the available disk space that you
have, especially around virtual machine storage which is in
ever increasing demand. You decide to test out Data
Deduplication solutions to maximize storage availability
for virtual machines.
Lab Review

• Your manager is worried about the impact that

using data deduplication will have on the write
performance of your file servers’ volumes. Is this
concern valid?
Module Review and Takeaways

• Review Questions
• Common Issues and Troubleshooting Tips