98-365 – Microsoft MTA Windows Server 2008 – Storage

1. What to expect in this section

Storage is not enough to have a server; you need a place where you can put all files, operating systems, and other things that your users upload every day. This section is dedicated to storage. We will cover storage solutions at a reasonable cost. I will show you a real server as well, because I appreciate that it’s really important to see something like that as well.

2. Storage Technologies.

Storage in windows We’re going to talk about storage in general, see what’s available, and take it from there. I’m not sure if you remember the first one. If you do it again, I’ll be overjoyed because, well, I’m getting old. I do remember floppy discs from many years ago. I recall using Windows three-point-eleven. I don’t remember how many floppy discs we had to use. The Note 20 or something crazy And I recall that number 24 was corrupted, and you had to restart it.

That was fun. As you probably know, we have a lot of types of computer storage. Here is a short list. I’m pretty sure you know this guy pretty well. USB, DVD, and cloud storage Again, something that has grown in popularity in recent years with online backup solutions. Cloud computing. Everything goes to the cloud, including Microsoft solutions. Yeah, these popular Internet connections are reliable. Well, I can argue if it’s a good idea to send everything to the cloud. I don’t like it. Memory cards are networked media. like a Nas server. That’s what you can see on the screen. Network Attached Server It’s a very popular solution as well. There are numerous good companies to choose from, and you can see a variety of features on the screen. Of course. It’s Microsoft training. Still, I can recommend some other solutions.

If you’re after a backup device, something like that will be a great solution. Not expensive. You can have eight hard drives here or something like that. It’s pretty expensive. You can go for a device that can host, say, two hard drives. That’s more than enough for a home network. There are cloud solutions for that. Additional features include the ability to run a web server, manage IP cameras, FTP solutions, and many other things. and additional tools that you can add to a box like that. Another thing you can see on the screen It’s tape. It is a pretty popular solution for backups. A lot of companies have devices like that. There is full support for many devices like that in Microsoft Windows. There are dedicated applications that can make it faster and more reliable. I am pretty sure you have seen a cable like that before. What is that? Yes, a SATA cable. SATA connectors will be the most common, especially for home PCs and small tower services. Here is a picture I wanted to show you. SAS and Satan are both present.

They look very similar. That’s the main difference that you can see. And one point that I want to make is that SAS controllers support SATA drives. It means that if you have a server with a SaaS controller, it means that your server has something like that on board. It means that you can use SATA drives. And actually, I have a server like that at home. You will see that later on. It has a SAS controller. I decided to go with a SATA drive. It is cheaper. I don’t really need the fastest SAS drive. That’s why I decided to go for a SATA drive. But please remember this line here. Scazi is a very popular solution and interface. There are many different types of connectors and connections. Please check your screen. Now that’s Scazi here, and you can see a lot. As an MTA engineer, you have to be able to identify and describe what they do. The main difference is that this is the real world. When you go to a server, you will have time to figure it out. Make sure that you read, go online, and buy a hard drive that will be okay and fit into your server. Going back to this screen, it is important to again be able to describe what DFS is. That’s it? It’s just a set of services that allow you to combine shares into a distributed file system. That’s it. Microsoft will not ask you to set it up. It’s pretty advanced. It is used in many companies to manage shared drives and folders. We’ve got a lot of switches here for the MTA. They want you to know about a fibre channel switch. You can see a picture of a fibre channel switch. It is compatible with a fibre channel protocol.

There are just things that you have to memorize. There is, for example, nothing to configure. Even in the real world, nobody is going to ask, “Can you pop into the communications room and replace 25 SATA drives or set up a new DFS system tomorrow?” Go and buy a fibre channel switch or whatever. It’s not going to happen. Relax. These are pretty advanced solutions. You will have time to learn a little more about them when you go to more advanced topics and certificates. I am connected to one of my servers. Here we go. to the server manager. We have disc management and storage. It is a place that you have to know very well. It is, of course, available for Windows, as well as versions seven and eight. When you go to your device manager, if you go to manage your PC, you will see a place where you can manage your hard drives, DVD drives, USB drives, and so on. I want to show you a few things. We will have a dedicated video drive. So I don’t want to repeat anything. Here’s a great way to get to this screen. And please note that I’ve got a C drive. And here’s one more drive. Thank you very much.

3. RAID – it is everywhere!

Right? a redundant array of independent disks a solution that is everywhere. It’s almost impossible to deploy a new server without this piece of technology. The idea is to have some redundancy. In most cases, the configuration solutions that you will see in the reward are designed to be redundant. That’s what we want to have. What you want to do is have, say, two hard drives, and make sure that if one fails, the other can take over.

That is, of course, one of the solutions that you can go for. We’re going to talk about rate levels in a moment. That’s what you want to achieve. Going back to our Nas discussion, I’m not sure if you remember, but if you want to buy a device like that for a home network, you should go for a Nas server with at least two hard drives. I know there are devices with only one hard drive only.It’s not a good idea. You should have at least two drives because that is your backup, okay? If one hard drive fails, the second will be okay and will work without any problems. It’s just a mirror, a copy. It’s not a problem. If one hard drive fails and it’s your backup server, you want to make sure that it’s okay. It’s not a good idea to buy another server with only one hard drive only.

There are some devices like that, for instance, from Seagate. It’s not a good idea. They are much cheaper. However, it’s not a good solution. If you want to create a backup server, you have to be able to identify rate levels. There are three main types of rates I want to discuss. Of course, there are several solutions available. It’s rate zero plus one, one plus zero, and so on. You can read a little more online. It’s. Just Google for it. Because MTA and Windows Server are fundamentals, you will find thousands of websites here. We want to make sure that you have a very good idea of how it works and what’s available. Rate zero; you have two or more disks, and they’re striped. It means that, while ratezero is an exact copy and mirror of rateone, if one hard drive fails, you’re screwed.

It’s not a good idea to go for rate zero, because if one hard drive fails, well, you can go home. That’s all I have to say about that. Rate One is a well-liked solution. A lot of servers are deployed using rate 1. It is good for redundancy. It is secure. Because if one hard drive fails, you have your second hard drive. That is absolutely fine. It will simply note “a one, a one, a two, a two” the way it works. Yeah. It will save a block file just to keep it simple on both hard drives, and of course, it will synchronise both hard drives. That’s why it’s very important to check that your hard drives are synced and there are no issues with your rate configuration. I’ll show you a tool like that that arrived with my Microsoft. The last one I want to discuss is Rate Five. You have both solutions, rated zero and one, in one place. You need at least three hard drives. If one hard drive fails, you’re okay, and you can recover. Now it is time to go to my server. I am going to show you an application. Because in most cases, you can use an application on a server to manage your rate settings.

Of course, what you can do when you reboot a server is use a shortcut, a key that you have to press to access settings like that. You have to watch the screen, and unfortunately, I cannot tell you. It all depends. It could be F6 or control, whatever you want. So it changes. It all depends on the rate solution that is implemented. Most companies will give you a piece of software that you can put on your server. because you don’t want to reboot a server. Every time you want to check if everything is okay, You do that. For instance, if you want to add a hard drive, however, sometimes you can do it from here as well. Please note that we have two main sections here. Physical drive view and logical drive view The physical one is designed to show you hard drives and disks. Please note that I’ve got two of them. That’s a good sign. It means we are up and running. And then we go to the logical view. The logical one is my rate. I can see. I created a rating name. I gave it a name as well. That’s okay. I am using Rate One. It means “a mirror.” I am okay. And either that or it’s a good sign. It means it is not synchronising at the moment. Of course, I get only 250 GB, even though I have two hard drives.

But every time I save a file, it will go to both hard drives. That’s why, unfortunately, even though you bought two hard drives, you are going to get only 250 GB only. It is a disadvantage. However, it is a secure solution. If one hard drive fails, the second will take over. will not take over. The second will work without any problems. And all you have to do is buy a new hard drive and replace your rate control, and everything will be fine. recognise a new hard drive. You have to sometimes re-add it to this group. Thanks to that, it will synchronise with the new hard drive. One thing I must tell you and warn you about Be very careful. Do not delete anything. It’s really sensitive. If you’re not sure, ask somebody. Because if you make a mistake, you can delete everything. And then it will take a lot of time to recover. If you’re not sure you’ve never done it before, ask somebody else. Can you show me how to do that? because it’s pretty easy to make a mistake. And if you add a disc in the wrong place or in the wrong way, then, in theory, you can break things. By the way, I found a picture of a Nast server with two hard drives. It’s just from the top of the queue. It is also available from other companies such as Seagate Technology. Now, the last thing that we have to discuss is basic and dynamic disks. I’ll show you on the server. You can go and play with these options. Basic disks. They are the most commonly used discs in Windows. Dynamic discs give you more features and let you create volumes. Again, you go to storage using your server manager. You have disc administration. And in here, you can see the type is basic. Thank you very much.

4. Let’s check a real server

I’ve got a rack at home. And you can say, “Well, you’re crazy, mate.” Well, yes, in a way, I am crazy. I’ve got a rack at home. Here we go. I removed everything from the screen. Yes, I’ve got two HP microservices and one big. Here is a micro server. It’s a really nice server. I always like to show it and recommend it. If you want to have a server at home, play with it. Replace a hard drive. Install ESX (Virtual Machine), Windows Server, or even Windows 7 or Windows 8. It is a great solution. Not expensive. There are nice deals from HP. I remember that they offered a really good deal. Cash back, £100, or something like that It all depends. Google around. You will see a lot of deals online for a server like that. Just a few words to make sure you know what to expect. You get a server with four slots, and in most cases, one hard drive is already installed.

You can add three more hard drives. You have a slot for a DVD drive. I decided to add a DVD drive because it’s really cheap, and you never know—maybe one day you will need that. It is a good idea to have a DVD drive anyway, even if you’re not going to use it. Some USB ports It is a very small server. You will see that in a moment. I will show it to you. It is a really small server. It’s really fun to open it. You can slide out the system board, and you have to disconnect these cables. This one and that one You have to disconnect them. It’s really fun to do that. You can remove the system board. It’s not easy to upgrade it. I remember when I wanted to add some ram. It is not a five-minute job. It’s not difficult. However, you must remember to reconnect all cables because there are cables for a fan, CPU, fan power supply, hard drives, and so on. It’s not difficult. It’s well documented. There are a lot of videos online as well.

if you’re not sure, and it’s pretty easy to do that. Here we go. As you can see on the screen, I have two microservers. Yes. At home, I have a rack. Yes. and my two micro servers, which you can see now. The second server that I’ve got is a super micro. That is a pretty powerful server with several hard drives. I use that as an ESX VMware server. I host five or six virtual machines. The idea was to have a powerful server for some network solutions and exchange service because I wanted to go back to email servers and play with the latest Microsoft solutions. I don’t like to host anything on my home PC because I like to have a real network and a real server at home. That’s the easiest way you can learn. That was our last lecture in this section. We are going to talk about server performance and other things. You can check and make sure that your server is okay. Stay with me. Thank you very much.