Storage and NT File System

INFO333 – Lecture 6

2010

Mariusz Nowostawski

Noria Foukia

Content

• Storage Types

• Adding Storage

• Managing Storage

• NT File System

• Distributed File System

• Disk: physical device• Partition: area of the disk functions as physically separate

unit of storage• Volume: area of partition used for storing data• Storage types used by WS2008

– Basic storage (divides a hard disk into partitions)– Dynamic storage (divides a hard disk into volumes only)

• Basic disk supports the following types of partitions– Primary partition – a physical unit of storage created on a basic

disk– Extended partitions – created from free space that has not yet

been partitioned– all versions of Windows and MS-DOS

(Skill 1) Storage Types (1)

• Dynamic disks support following types of volumes – Simple volume – consists of disk space from a single hard disk,

an entire disk, or multiple regions on the same disk that are linked together: one disk and one partition

– Spanned volume – consists of disk space from multiple disks as single volume

– Striped volume (RAID-0 - Redundant Array of Independent Disks) – combines areas of free disk space from two or more hard disks as single volume: data is written across all drives in the striped set at the same rate

– Mirrored volume (RAID-1) – identical copy of volume is created using the free disk space on two physical hard disks: for fault tolerance

– RAID-5 volume – is a fault-tolerant, striped, dynamic volume that combines free disk space from 3 to 32 physical hard disks: parity allows the system to continue running in the event of a single disk failure

• WIN2000, WINXP, and WS2003/2008

Storage Types (2)(Skill 1)

Dynamic Volumes(Skill 1)

Storage Types (3)

Basic vs. Dynamic• Default: all disks are basic

– hard disk on WS2008 basic storage– compatibility with older Windows OSs - limited

capabilities• Basic easily converted to dynamic

– Upgrade basic disk, existing partitions are converted into simple volumes: no loss

• Dynamic disk to basic causes all data to be lost!– More flexible and powerful with more than one disk

• A basic disk to dynamic disk– Existing partitions converted to volumes– Free space left can be used to create

additional volumes

• Simple volume – Can be part of disk’s partition or an entire disk – Can be created only on a single dynamic disk

(Skill 5) Storage Types (4)

Storage Types (5)

• Creating a spanned volume – Unallocated space on multiple disks into a

logical volume– Organize disk space on up to maximum 32

disks

• Combine the space used multiple volumes, on multiple disks, into one spanned volume by a single drive letter

(Skill 6)

• Creating a striped volume– Can combine disk space from maximum 32

disks to create a striped volume– Data divided in blocks of 64 KB on each

segment of the volume

Storage Types (6)(Skill 6)

• Mirrored volumes– Fault tolerance: two drives are duplicates of each

other

– 50% available disk space is consumed by fault tolerance

• Drive with sufficient space to hold the mirrored data

– De-Fragmentation• Rearrange files and unused space: move segments of each

file/folder to 1 location single, contiguous space hard drive

Storage Types (7)(Skill 6)

Recovery with Mirroring

Adding Storage (1)

• Physically install of disk(s)

• Basic disk create partitions

• Dynamic disk create volumes

• Format volumes

• Assign drive letters to created volumes

Disk Management Console

Partition Wizard

Volume Wizard – Creating Volume

Volume Wizard – Formatting Volume

Volume Wizard – Mapping Drive

Adding Storage (2)

• Simple volume from creation– free space on a single disk

• Simple volume extension– free space on same disk if it is not system /

boot volume

• Using New Volume Wizard in Disk Management Console (DMC)

Extending Volume Wizard

Managing Storage (1)

• Checking Disk: chckdisk

• De-fragment disk: Disk De-fragmenter

• Configuring disk quotas– Volume-by-volume– Exceptionally per-user: include every file owned

by a user– Alert users near quota limit– Restrict users from exceeding quota limit– Admin can log events related to quota events

De-fragmenting Disk

Managing Storage (2)

• Configuring disk quotas– Export quota entries quota settings apply to

another volume formatted with NTFS

– Does not export current quota usage

• Monitoring via Quota Entries (QE) dialog box

• QE accessed by volume’s properties in WE (Windows Explorer) or DMC

Checking Disk

QE in Volume’s Properties

• WS2003/2008: FAT, FAT32, and NTFS• NT (New Technology) FS is a recoverable file

system: Volumes with no data loss if server crashes

• Permissions to control user access to files and folders via ACLs

• NTFS file names up to 256 characters in length• NTFS is required for AD• NTFS minimizes the number of disk accesses to

find a file

NT File System (1)(Skill 2)

Compression• Storage on a hard disk: NTFS volumes, only specific files

and folders or the entire volume• If you add a new file or folder to compressed folder,

compressed automatically• No compression for encrypted file

Encryption• Ensure (what?) by using an encryption key• No encryption for a compressed file

NT File System (2)(Skill 3)