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Drive Pooling Returns to Windows Server 8

P

Philmatic

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 15, 2011
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116
Wow, surprising news coming out of Build in Anaheim... looks like Windows Server 8 will include a technoclogy Microsoft is calling "Storage Places", it's being described as this:

A new Windows Server 8 capability highlighted on Wednesday is 'storage spaces', which will let users take just-a-bunch-of-disks (JBOD) collections and carve out a space or pool that shows up as drive using the new Server Manager. Users can use this feature to simply attach JBODs to Windows Server 8, explained Brian Surace, a senior program manager on the Windows team. No external storage array was used to create the pool. The improved Server Message Block 2.1 (SMB 2.1) protocol was used to help make this pooled storage available, he said.
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Source: http://www.mswhs.com/2011/09/drive-pooling-returns-to-windows-server-8/

Even if they don't implement this in a future version of WHS, I wouldn't mind installing Windows Server 8 and rolling my own backup solution.
 
The flagrant lack of disk managing technology in Windows server makes me rather ill. This idea sounds stupid. If some lone fellow can make tools for free in their spare time that do this and much more for windows (Lisuesce, FlexRAID, SanpRAID....) whay can't MS? How can they even consider Windows server an enterprise product?

Boobs

They gave up on DE for WHS and immediately people start popping out of the woodwork who seem to be making it work just fine if not better than the original.
 
The lack of something like DE has little value medium or larger businesses. They will run raid will a real raid card. In the case of where they need mass storage but not the services/tools that MS Server provides there are a ton of choices. I think the decision to drop DE was correct since it was only adding risk and little value to their product line.

Now...do I think it sucks they ditched DE in 2011...pretty much. But, I understand why.
 
DE was never even a factor for customers of Windows Server - they didn't ask for it and in fact would have revolted at the implementation in WHS v1. Remember, Windows Server is for enterprise customers with huge storage demands.

I need more info about Pools and Spaces in Server 8. I know that it allows you to create a pool, then provision virtual disks of any size, and have mirroring/parity to protect those disks. There's even over-provisioning support and its supposed to work across a network.

What I have no idea about, is whether its a new FS, or still NTFS, and data on disks is still readable outside the pool. This is critical for a reliable file server, and would really make it a better version of DE.
 
MrCrispy said:
What I have no idea about, is whether its a new FS, or still NTFS, and data on disks is still readable outside the pool. This is critical for a reliable file server, and would really make it a better version of DE.
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I read somewhere that it is beneath NTFS, like the DE implementation in the early betas of Vail.

Edit, I found where I had read it, it was a comment on this page: http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/bu...dows-server-8-storage-feature-overview-140577

"This is below the filesystem but there are optimizations for sequential writes. We also preserve the disk locations for data on writes which helps reads out, and reads tend to dominate performance and tend to affect response times. Of course for the mirror options, we are just about as optimal as anyone can be since there is no parity."
 
the real answer is because anyone serious about storage & enterprise isn't running windows
 
S-F said:
The flagrant lack of disk managing technology in Windows server makes me rather ill. This idea sounds stupid. If some lone fellow can make tools for free in their spare time that do this and much more for windows (Lisuesce, FlexRAID, SanpRAID....) whay can't MS? How can they even consider Windows server an enterprise product?

Boobs

They gave up on DE for WHS and immediately people start popping out of the woodwork who seem to be making it work just fine if not better than the original.
Click to expand...

Because of everything else their OS does...... and what everyone else said.

I love the hate for MS in Enterprise... have you actually ever used it in an Enterprise envionment? Love to see anything come close to what AD/DC and Exchange can do..for free.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Because of everything else their OS does...... and what everyone else said.

I love the hate for MS in Enterprise... have you actually ever used it in an Enterprise envionment? Love to see anything come close to what AD/DC and Exchange can do..for free.
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True, but most enterprises run a mixed bag of servers in order to take advantage of the strengths of each OS. And with virtualization, that will only continue to be the case. Why choose when you can achieve the benefits of both.

With that said, there are LDAP, and enterprise email services within Linux. But they are no robust or scalable enough for large... plus end users would have to be trained. However if you're already buying the software, licenses and hardware for a Windows Server in order to use AD, adding an Exchange server wouldnt be a difficult decision. And if you're going that route on two circumstances, you could see how doing the same for file services and backups could easily be thought of as a good idea (I think it is... though on an enterprise wide server backup, I would use tape). So I am happy to see more choices being offered, because those choices bring options. Different environments need different options, and bringing them from the same source is what sells more of that source.
 
One thing you have to remember is with DE, you will never get performance past a single spindle.
The majority of services for environments past 20 people will benefit from having multiple spindles, so the requirement for DE/native JBOD are limited to the home and very low end business markets.
 
It handles multiple NIC's, and may be the platform for vhd2. Vhd1 is stuck on 2TB's.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Because of everything else their OS does...... and what everyone else said.

I love the hate for MS in Enterprise... have you actually ever used it in an Enterprise envionment? Love to see anything come close to what AD/DC and Exchange can do..for free.
Click to expand...

Did you watch the HyperV Win8 demo? Live migration to any other server without the need for clustering. That's just f'n awesome.
 
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