Hi All,

I'm wondering what the best storage solution for a small business server is.

I was think two disks in Raid 1 for the OS/File server and then another Raid 1 array for the backup. Thoughts?

We are in the process of consolidating all our data from multiple servers down to one.  We have about 250 TB of data, and we’ve moved about 200 TB of stuff already, and I’m seeing we have tons of duplicate files and folders.

Our data is a mixture of RAW video (.R3D), pictures and general business data.  Some of our data has alternate data streams.  I need to make sure all our data transferred correctly and all the metadata and ADS is intact.

What’s the best way to easily verify all the files are the same and then deduplicate?  I’m looking for those who’ve been there, done that for some advice on tools and methods to make sure everything is good. 

Does Remove-PhysicalDisk in a Failover Cluster work in Windows Server 2016?  Has anyone else been able to get this command to work in 2016?

I have multiple systems running Windows 2016, Failover Clustering and Storage Spaces.  But when a PhysicalDisk is set to retired and the replacement drive is added, the Remove-PhysicalDisk command fails with the following VERBOSE message:

VERBOSE: Removing a physical disk will cause problems with the fault tolerance capabilities of the following storage pool: "pool_hdd".

The old PhysicalDisk has been set to Retired and the Mirror VirtualDisks show as OperationalStatus of OK and Healthy as well as the StoragePool shows as OK and Healthy.  I had no issues with this command Windows 2012 R2, only Windows 2016.  Get-VirtualDisk | Repair-VirtualDisk shows as Completed in Get-StorageJob.

Test Scenario:
Two Compute nodes running Windows 2016 Standard with or without GUI/Desktop, running Failover Clustering in 2016 mode, single Storage Spaces StoragePool in 2016 Version, three VirtualDisks formatted ReFS, Mirror, one for quorum, two others as Failover Clustering File Shares.  Set-StoragePool to RetireMissingPhysicalDisks Always, then pull drive, replace with new drive.  Watch for Repair to complete and VirtualDisks to go from InService to OK, then run Remove-PhysicalDisk on the retired drive.

Here is the full error that I get:

Hi, I am currently working on a POC for implementing DFS in our company (I know kind of late getting on the wagon) and I have done quite a lot of reading and searching about it.

We are looking at leveraging it for both the Namespace and replication aspect of the it within a company of +/- 5000 employees and sites all across Canada from coast to coast.

We are looking to start rather small but once I have shown the beauty of the product I expect this to flourish into a norm when thinking of installing a File server anywhere.

My question is do I need to implement a Namespace server or can I configure the shares and replications on each server that will be using it then having the tool install on my laptop to administer all these changes?

thank you and all help is welcomed.

Hi,

We have a dfs \\domainname\share which points to NetApp storage.
Windows pc's have a mapping of their S-drive to this dfs-share \\domainname\share.
Those pc's have a Forefront client only.

I wonder if it is needed to have an extra antivirus on the NetApp?

Please advise.
J.

Jan Hoedt

Hi! Some kind of strange behavior occurred while using our 4-nodes S2D cluster.  After some connectivity problems (nic teaming bug or, maybe, something else) cluster shutted down, storage pool became "Unhealthy", Operational status "Read only", Reason - "Majority Disks unhealthy" with all Physical Disks "OK" and "Healthy" status. Storage Enclosures and Storage Subsystem are Healthy as well. December commulative update was installed, servers rebooted many times, Cluster and pool were shutted down and brought up again - all with no luck. Logs:

Get-StoragePool S2D | fl *


Usage                             : Other
OperationalStatus                 : Read-only
HealthStatus                      : Unhealthy
ProvisioningTypeDefault           : Fixed
SupportedProvisioningTypes        : Fixed
MediaTypeDefault                  : Unspecified
ReadOnlyReason                    : By Policy
RepairPolicy                      : Parallel
RetireMissingPhysicalDisks        : Never
WriteCacheSizeDefault             : Auto
Version                           : Windows Server 2016
FaultDomainAwarenessDefault       : StorageScaleUnit
ObjectId                          : {1}\\WSFC4-LEN\root/Microsoft/Windows/Storage/Providers_v2\SPACES_StoragePool.ObjectId="{b882b9f2-798d-436c-8de1-3b4f3e9f9498}:SP:{a251c59e-af1b-446a-b77e-756441ad082b}"
PassThroughClass                  :
PassThroughIds                    :
PassThroughNamespace              :
PassThroughServer                 :
UniqueId                          : {a251c59e-af1b-446a-b77e-756441ad082b}
AllocatedSize                     : 20195473096704
ClearOnDeallocate                 : False
EnclosureAwareDefault             : False
FriendlyName                      : S2D
IsClustered                       : True
IsPowerProtected                  : False
IsPrimordial                      : False
IsReadOnly                        : False
LogicalSectorSize                 : 4096
Name                              :
OtherOperationalStatusDescription :
OtherUsageDescription             :
PhysicalSectorSize                : 4096
ResiliencySettingNameDefault      : Mirror
Size                              : 22383222063104
SupportsDeduplication             : True
ThinProvisioningAlertThresholds   : {70}
WriteCacheSizeMax                 : 18446744073709551614
WriteCacheSizeMin                 : 0
PSComputerName                    :
CimClass                          : ROOT/Microsoft/Windows/Storage:MSFT_StoragePool
CimInstanceProperties             : {ObjectId, PassThroughClass, PassThroughIds, PassThroughNamespace...}
CimSystemProperties               : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimSystemProperties

Get-PhysicalDisk

FriendlyName         SerialNumber       CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage           Size
------------         ------------       ------- ----------------- ------------ -----           ----
Intel Raid 1 Volume  OS                 False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select   130 GB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMEVB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMHKB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMKNB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMK1B           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDM0BB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX40 BTHC536304DC400VGN False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 372.5 GB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMDBB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMJBB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDM1BB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX40 BTHC536502K0400VGN False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 372.5 GB
ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX40 BTHC536603VB400VGN False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 372.5 GB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDM2LB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX40 BTHC536603WQ400VGN False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 372.5 GB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMKPB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMETB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMGSB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX40 BTHC536603UZ400VGN False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 372.5 GB
ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX40 BTHC53660476400VGN False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 372.5 GB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDM0MB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDMJ2B           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDM0HB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX40 BTHC53660460400VGN False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 372.5 GB
HGST HUC101812CSS204 06VDM2NB           False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select  1.09 TB
ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX40 BTHC536306R6400VGN False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 372.5 GB

Get-VirtualDisk | fl *


Usage                             : Other
NameFormat                        :
OperationalStatus                 : Detached
HealthStatus                      : Unknown
ProvisioningType                  :
AllocationUnitSize                :
MediaType                         :
ParityLayout                      :
Access                            : Read/Write
UniqueIdFormat                    : Vendor Specific
DetachedReason                    : Majority Disks Unhealthy
WriteCacheSize                    : 1073741824
FaultDomainAwareness              :
ColumnIsolation                   :
ObjectId                          : {1}\\WSFC4-LEN\root/Microsoft/Windows/Storage/Providers_v2\SPACES_VirtualDisk.ObjectId="{b882b9f2-798d-436c-8de1-3b4f3e9f9498}:VD:{a251c59e-af1b-446a-b77e-756441ad082b}{3032d188-054f-4fba-b914-973b70d0c773}"
PassThroughClass                  :
PassThroughIds                    :
PassThroughNamespace              :
PassThroughServer                 :
UniqueId                          : 88D132304F05BA4FB914973B70D0C773
AllocatedSize                     : 10093173145600
FootprintOnPool                   : 20188493774848
FriendlyName                      : MIXED_FOR_VMs
Interleave                        :
IsDeduplicationEnabled            : False
IsEnclosureAware                  :
IsManualAttach                    : True
IsSnapshot                        : False
IsTiered                          : True
LogicalSectorSize                 : 4096
Name                              :
NumberOfAvailableCopies           :
NumberOfColumns                   :
NumberOfDataCopies                :
NumberOfGroups                    :
OtherOperationalStatusDescription :
OtherUsageDescription             :
PhysicalDiskRedundancy            :
PhysicalSectorSize                : 4096
ReadCacheSize                     : 0
RequestNoSinglePointOfFailure     : False
ResiliencySettingName             :
Size                              : 10093173145600
UniqueIdFormatDescription         :
PSComputerName                    :
CimClass                          : ROOT/Microsoft/Windows/Storage:MSFT_VirtualDisk
CimInstanceProperties             : {ObjectId, PassThroughClass, PassThroughIds, PassThroughNamespace...}
CimSystemProperties               : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimSystemProperties

We have recently moved a file server from 2008 R2 to 2012 R2 and are experience very bad Windows Search results. I have Windows Search installed on the file server and have indexed the contents (over 1 million files). What I have found is if I search for our specific test file in the parent directory it will not return all the results. For example we search "withdraw" and it missing things like "withdraw v3", "withdraw v2", and other variations. 

However if I go into a subfolder that the file may be in (or within child folders of that subfolder) then it finds it. Some of these files I am talking about could be 6 levels deep on the file system.

I have already tried rebuilding the index and third party search tools find it without any issues. Is there some sort of limitation I am not aware about?

The server is 2012 R2 and the workstations are Windows 7 Pro. We do use DFS but I have tried mapping a drive to the share directly and it does the same.

Hello,

I have encountered an error when I wanted to create a volume on initialised disk (doesn't matter if it is MBR or GPT) that is connected through iSCSI from our SAN (QSAN P300Q-D316).

If I create a disk on the SAN with block size of 64K (so far I have notices it happens on anything more than 4K), stripe height 64K assign it a LUN and then try to initialise it with 64K allocation unit, it will end on a try of formatting the partition and assigning it a drive letter (both actions fails), Virtual Disk Service quits unexpectedly and is unresponsive with error on RPC (even after restart). Disk part doesn't work either.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks,

JAK

I've created a SMB-Quick Share from my file sharing server which has the folder name in all uppercase letters, the share name is in all uppercase letters, and even the path name I gave in all uppercase letters but when I go to the network share the shared folders name is all lowercase. 

How can I get the shared folders name to display uppercase?

(Running Windows Server 2016)

Brian Hoyt

another thread reads:

"From the description, if FileIntegrity is set to Off, it will not trying to "examines other copies and trying to recover a disk error from a healthy copy" - however it will still do the "auto correction" which is its default behavior. The "auto correction" behavior is similar to a check disk in NTFS - which is not rely on Fileintegrity"

so, does "auto correction" correct bit rot, or do i need to recover bit rot error from a healthy copy which is only done when FileIntegrity Enable is set $True??

is "auto correction" always enabled?

what is difference between "auto correction" and "FileIntegrity" checking?

does the following command:

Set-FileIntegrity H:\ -Enable$True

enable file integrity checking for all current and future subdirectories and files on H:\ ??

i ask because i have used the command above but when i check individual files they all say FileIntegrity Enabled is False and i was not expecting this behavior and i haven't found it explicitly documented.

Hi there!

Hope you all are doing great in your respective locations?

I noticed recently that the my Administrator login account (built-in) disappears from my Windows server 2008 r2 screen. I logged in with a user account that belong to administrator group but I could not see the files on the desktop that I saved when I logged in with Admin.

Please help me out with this issue. How do I ensure that the administrator login does not disappears again???

I will be grateful.

While my Windows 10 machine (i.e. same as Server 2016 in that aspect) was doing it's TieringEngineService task I saw in Process Hacker it is reading and writing to:

<tiered-storage-driveletter>System Volume Information\Heat\NoLog\TieringHeatData.db

But google, bing and duckgogo are not my friend here. There is practically NO information at all about and TieringHeatData.db. Not even sysinternals tools or anything. What it contains is obvious. But isn't there a tool which gives more information about that, and more tiering-statistics? In case of Server 2016/2012 it would be great to see in the heatmap whether the SSD's and the amount of actually hot data match, or whether they are too too small and therefore too slow. It is also important to see how it changes, if the amount of hot data gets more and more so I can act before the SSDs get too small.

I'm rebuilding/reconfiguring a storage pool layout under Server 2016.  It had a parity storage space, which I migrated the data off of and removed, and have also marked several disks in the pool as retired.

I then initiated an Optimize-StoragePool command against the pool, and in another window, initiated a Get-StorageJob to check on the commands.

This is what I see:

Name      IsBackgroundTask ElapsedTime JobState PercentComplete BytesProcessed BytesTotal
----      ---------------- ----------- -------- --------------- -------------- ----------
Optimize  False            00:27:37    Running  0
Rebalance True             00:00:00    New      0               0              0
Repair    True             08:09:12    Running  0               0              645050400768
Repair    True             00:00:00    Running  16              1183238324224  7143577092096

What are those repair jobs, and where did they come from?  Are they automatically initiated when the other disks were marked retired? I am a bit puzzled since I don't have a parity space at this point, I was under the impression that repair commands wouldn't do much.  

And then of course, the time values don't make any sense to me, one job has no elapsed time but it 16% complete, the other has 8 hours and appears to have not done anything?  Those numbers seem switched to me, and if I subsequently run the command, BytesProcessed on the job with no ElapsedTime will have increased.

To summarize:

Where did the repair jobs come from?

What the heck is Get-StorageJobs actually telling me?

Oh, and if I end up having to reboot the machine (cleanly) while jobs are processing, what happens?

Thanks!

Hello,

I need Some advices on mounting a new Physical server to replace old one.

The old server (Windows 2008R2) was connected to a SAN and provided with 8 disks (Partitions) == has networked storage

Our project is to transfer/migrate the old server to the new one, but the new server is a standalone server (Local storage).

The new server has 6 disks with 350Go.

What I'm looking for is to configure the server with RAID5 and I will be able to create the 8 partitions.

Thank you for your help

Hi,

I would like to change Staging folder patch to another drive. Kindly let me know whether its advisable to do it and what do and donts I need follow it.

Regards,

Dipak Borole

We have successfully created a 3-Node S2D Cluster.

Roles are installed and up2date on all 3.

But if i want to share a SMB Folder, i cannot select any Server or folder. Resource manager for file servers is installed. Everything else is greyed out.

Hi,

I have a below request from customer. Here is what have been done so far. Please help. I know there will be some / lot of confusions. Let me know if more info is needed.

There is a windows 2003 cluster(two node cluster "server1" and "server2") which  has two file share cluster groups "cluster group 1" and "cluster group 2" with each having single disk assigned to them "disk1" and "disk2" respectively. There is a third non-cluster server "server 3" (windows 2012 R2). This server has 3 drives C:, D: and E: drive.

The data from "disk1" of "cluster group 1" has been copied to D: drive on third server using robocopy. Similarly data from "disk2" of "cluster group 2" has been copied to E: drive on third server.

Customer wants to stop above cluster groups. Rename the third server to "server1" and change IP (use the IP of "cluster group1"). Add additional IP (IP of "cluster group 2") on the same NIC on third server. Now customer wants to know if there is any possibility to restrict or bind these IP addresses to D: and E: drives respectively. In other words, if users access\\<first IP>, he / she should see only D: drive data. If user accesses\\<second IP>, user should see only E: drive data. This should in other words behave like cluster share access how it used to be earlier.

Is there any way to achieve this? Please help.

-Umesh.S.K

Hi All,

I'm wondering what the best storage solution for a small business server is.

I was think two disks in Raid 1 for the OS/File server and then another Raid 1 array for the backup. Thoughts?