The IT Melting Pot!

In my previous posts I talked about how to use NFS and iSCSI technologies hosted on Windows Server 2012 and how to deploy those to my Home Lab ESXi servers.

• WS2012 Storage – iSCSI Target Server – Create an iSCSI target using PowerShell
• WS2012 Storage – iSCSI Target Server – Configuring an iSCSI Initiator on VMware vSphere 5.1
• WS2012 Storage – NFS Server – Configure NFS for VMware vSphere 5.1

One point I did not covered was: How to do the Initial setup with the physical disk, Storage pooling and the creating the Virtual Disk(s) ?

The cost to acquire and manage highly available and reliable storage can represent a significant part of the IT budget. Windows Server 2012 addresses this issue by delivering a sophisticated virtualized storage feature called Storage Spaces as part of the WS2012 Storage platform. This provides an alternative option for companies that require advanced storage capabilities at lower price point.

Overview

• Terminology
• Storage Virtualization Concept
• Deployment Model of a Storage Space
• Quick look at Storage Management under Windows Server 2012Identifying the physical disk(s)
  • Server Manager – Volumes
  • PowerShell – Module Storage
• Creating the Storage Pool
• Creating the Virtual Disk
• Initializing the Virtual Disk
• Partitioning and Formating

Terminology

Storage Pool: Abstraction of multiple physical disks into a logical construct with specified capacity
Group of physical disks into a container, the so-called storage pool, such that the total capacity collectively presented by those associated physical disks can appear and become manageable as a single and seemingly continuous space.

There are two primary types of pools which are used in conjunction with Storage Spaces, as well as the management API in Windows Server 2012: Primordial Pool and Concrete Pool.

Primordial Pool: The Primordial pool represents all of the disks that Storage Spaces is able to enumerate, regardless of whether they are currently being used for a concrete pool. Physical Disks in the Primordial pool have a property named CanPool equal to “True” when they meet the requirements to create a concrete pool.

Concrete Pool: A Concrete pool is a specific collection of Physical Disks that was formed by the user to allow creating Storage Spaces (aka Virtual Disks).

Storage Virtualization Concept

Deployment Model of a Storage Space (Virtual Disk)

In order to understand the deployment model of a Storage Space, I created the following diagram…