Windows Server 2012: Up and Running

Chapter 6. Storage Management and Clustering

Data accumulation is at an all-time high, as is our dependency on the computer systems we use day to day. This is why storage and high availability of data storage systems are hot topics in technology. Deploying and managing storage and high-availability solutions flexibly and cost-effectively is critical to a well-running IT infrastructure.

Server 2012 delivers key new features and enhancements for storage and for keeping an infrastructure operational in instances of system failure or data corruption. Storage Spaces and ReFS are two major developments in Server 2012 pertaining to storage management.

Storage Spaces is a new feature installed with the File and Storage Services role. Storage Spaces is a low-cost alternative to RAID (but not a substitute, since it’s software-based, and many RAID solutions for business depend on actual hardware-based RAID controllers). With Storage Spaces, you can convert any type of disk: SATA, SAS, and even USB, and create storage pools and additional storage space.

Storage is thinly provisioned through the creation of virtual disks. You can configure internal and external drives storage pools, virtual hard drives created from physical drives. In turn, these storage pools can be configured with Storage Spaces.

With Storage Spaces, it’s possible to dynamically add storage; the feature not only allows for storage scalability, but also can be used for fault tolerance because you can configure the spaces with mirroring ...