Enterprise Storage Solutions with Linux and Windows Server

Explore choosing MBR vs GPT partition tables on Windows Server disks, covering MBR limits (4 primary partitions, 2 TB) and GPT advantages, with Windows Admin Center and Server Manager.

Explore how to select a disk type and initialize disks with MBR or GPT in disk management, differentiate basic and dynamic disks, and understand system and boot volumes.

In enterprise storage, choose the appropriate file system for Windows Server volumes, comparing FAT, FAT32, NTFS, and ReFS, and optimize allocation unit and sector sizes for performance and reliability.

Discover how ReFS enhances data integrity and reliability over NTFS for large volumes, storage pools, and Hyper-V workloads, with PowerShell as the preferred volume configuration method.

Learn to manage disks with PowerShell by initializing disks to GPT, converting to ReFS, creating partitions, and formatting volumes with 64k allocation units using drive letters D, E, F.

Learn to manage virtual hard disks on Windows Server by creating and attaching .vhd and .vhdx files, using disk management and Hyper-V, and deploying standard images with PowerShell.

Discover how to create, mount, and configure .vhd and .vhdx disks in Windows using Hyper-V and PowerShell, including dynamic and fixed VHD sizes, GPT/MBR initialization, and pass-through mounting.

Explore how to manage dynamic volumes in Windows Server, including simple, spanned, striped, mirrored, and raid 5 configurations, and practice creating and managing them via Server Manager and PowerShell.

Learn to use diskpart and PowerShell to manage disks, dynamic volumes, and partitions, including cleaning, listing, selecting, creating, assigning letters, and extending volumes.

Learn to configure local storage on a Windows Server by creating and resizing volumes, configuring mirrored volumes, and managing virtual hard disks with DiskPart, Windows PowerShell, and the Hyper-V module.

Configure local storage on Windows servers using disk management and PowerShell to create and resize volumes, build a mirrored ReFS volume, and set up a VHD for Hyper-V.

Explore common disk types for server and client storage, from IDE and SATA to SCSI/SAS and SSDs, comparing speeds, reliability, and storage goals such as large capacity versus performance.

Explore raid technologies that fuse disks into a single logical unit for fault tolerance and performance on Windows Server. Cover mirroring, parity, striping, hardware versus software raid, with backup considerations.

Explore raid levels from zero to six, including raid 0, 1, 2, 5, 6, raid 0+1, raid 10, and raid 50, focusing on performance and fault tolerance.

Explore how directly attached storage, NAS, and SANs provide server storage access. Compare DES advantages, limitations, and the differences between block-level and file-level storage.

Explore nas as a networked storage solution that provides file-level access via cifs/smb and nfs, with a dedicated operating system, centralized sharing, raid, and plug-and-play deployment.

Explore SAN concepts, including block-level access, LUNs, HBAs, switches, and storage arrays, with Fibre Channel over Ethernet or iSCSI enabling centralized, scalable storage with redundancy.

Compare DES, NES, and SAN storage topologies and explore scenarios for Hyper-V failover clusters, NAS services, and virtual machine storage on Windows Server, highlighting cost, scalability, and management.

Compare block-level and file-level storage, and learn how enterprises use SAN and NAS together, with LUNs, CIFS/NFS, SMB, and virtualization on Hyper-V and Windows Server.

Compare fiber channel and iSCSI SANs, outlining their performance, complexity, and cost. Describe SAN components, including the target, initiator, hba, and switches, and explain layouts: arbitrated loop, point-to-point, switched fabric.

Assess fiber channel viability by evaluating infrastructure needs, dedicated switches, HBAs, cabling, and storage controllers, and compare bandwidth, reliability, security, and cost implications of a dedicated versus converged network.

Explain iSCSI as a protocol that carries SCSI commands over IP networks to enable remote storage and a SAN, using targets, initiators, IQNs, and dedicated networks for performance.

Explore the two main iSCSI components—the target server and the initiator—and learn to create iSCSI targets and virtual disks, configure authentication, and manage with Server Manager or PowerShell.

Explore storage components and their roles in a storage infrastructure, including network adapters, HBAs, converged network adapters, InfiniBand host channel adapters, and disk controllers, plus performance and redundancy considerations.

Configure an iSCSI target and create a 1 GB iSCSI virtual disk using Server Manager, then connect an initiator to the target and verify the disk in Disk Management.

Explore iSNS as a central directory for iSCSI and Fibre Channel storage, learn DCB with QoS, and configure MPIO for multipath redundancy and performance.

Discover how DCB enables congestion notification, priority-based flow control, enhanced transmission selection, and DCBX to support iSCSI in converged data center networks, with Windows Server installation via PowerShell.

Explore how multipath provides multiple physical paths from a computer to storage to enable redundancy and high availability, with failover for component failures and parallel paths to boost throughput.

Configure MPIO on Windows Server by installing the MPIO feature via Server Manager, restarting if required, and enabling iSCSI device support to discover and manage multi-path entries.

Explain the SMB file sharing protocol and its versions from 1.x to 3.1.1, and how Windows and Linux hosts configure and audit SMB and NFS shares.

Learn to configure SMB shares across server manager, PowerShell, and Windows Admin Center, selecting QUIC, advanced, or applications profiles, and manage share permissions, NTFS permissions, quotas, and bandwidth.

Demonstrates configuring SMB shares with server manager and Windows PowerShell, creating a z: volume, and setting access based enumeration for demo share and demo share two.

Learn how Windows moved from sua to client for nfs and server for nfs as features, with Kerberos v5 and nfs v4.1, enabling VMware storage and cross-platform access.

Configure NFS shares using quick or advanced profiles, with the advanced profile offering full customization after installing NFS and the File Server Resource Manager.

Configure an NFS share using server manager, install the server for NFS role, enable Kerberos version five authentication, and set read/write permissions for all machines to create demo NFS share.

design and implement enterprise storage solutions for a mixed windows and unix environment, planning centralized management and provisioning block- and file-level storage for sql databases, vmware esx, and hyper-v.

Plan and implement enterprise storage solutions using iSCSI, SMB, and NFS across Windows and Unix-like environments, configure iSCSI targets, multipath, and shares for SQL databases and VMware/Hyper-V workloads.

Discover Storage Spaces and data deduplication in Windows Server 2016 to virtualize and provision storage via pools and virtual disks for enterprise needs.

Learn how Storage Spaces in Windows Server provide storage virtualization through Storage Pools and virtual disks. Create resilient, scalable storage with fixed or thin provisioning, mirroring, and parity.

Explore storage spaces components and features, including simple, mirroring, and parity layouts, and how striping, provisioning, stripe parameters, failover clustering, and hot spares affect performance, redundancy, and capacity.

Demonstrates how to create a storage pool, create a virtual disk and a volume, configure automatic allocation, and apply thin provisioning with storage spaces in Windows Server.

Examine changes to file and storage services in Windows Server, including SMB enhancements, encryption and security hardening, and improvements to storage migration, storage spaces direct, and ReFS snapshots.

Explore storage spaces usage scenarios, including storage pools, resiliency options, hot spares, and management with MMC or PowerShell for Hyper-V, SQL, and Azure deployments.

compare storage spaces with san and nas, emphasizing inexpensive, server-based storage management, easy expansion, and built-in redundancy, while noting san and nas may offer higher performance with dedicated hardware.

Manage storage spaces to mitigate disk failure, expand storage pools, and monitor performance with event logs and performance counters while planning storage tiering across SSD and HDD.

Plan fault-tolerant storage spaces to tolerate disk and enclosure failures with minimal service impact, using two-way mirrors or parity, clustered pools, and enclosure-aware jbods.

discover how to expand a storage pool in storage spaces by adding disks, and why block distribution and layout options like mirroring and parity may limit expansion.

Demonstrate using Windows PowerShell to view storage pool properties, add physical disks, and create a simple virtual disk in storage pool one, with provisioning details.

Monitor storage health with event logs and performance counters, identify storage pool issues (event IDs 100 and 102), and troubleshoot using the Event Log, Server Manager, and PowerShell.

Explore event logs and performance counters to diagnose storage pool capacity thresholds, drive health issues, and storage space failures, including metadata and configuration read errors.

Explore how storage configuration impacts performance and monitor with Windows PowerShell using the storage spaces performance analysis module and Performance Monitor.

Learn to create a storage pool from six disks, build a three-way mirrored virtual disk with thin provisioning, copy files, simulate drive failure, and enable storage tiering.

Implement storage tiering by creating a tiered storage pool from disks, configuring solid-state and hard disk drives as media types, and provisioning a disk with tiered storage using Windows PowerShell.

Explore implementing storage spaces by creating a storage pool, configuring a mirrored virtual disk with thin provisioning, testing with file copies, and managing disk health and recovery in Windows Server.

Attach additional drives and create a tiered storage pool for storage spaces. Configure unique friendly names, adjust media types, and build tiered storage with a virtual disk and NTFS volume.

Learn how data deduplication in Windows Server identifies and removes duplicate data to store more data in less space without compromising integrity, using chunking, compression, and scalable, multithreaded processing.

Explore the data deduplication components in Windows Server, including the filter driver, deduplication service, optimization, garbage collection, scrubbing, and chunk store mechanisms.

Explore planning, deploying, and optimizing data deduplication on Windows Server and Hyper-V storage, identifying candidate volumes, setting schedules and exclusions, and evaluating savings with the deduplication evaluation tool.

Explore data deduplication use cases, highlighting typical savings by content type, from user documents to virtualization libraries and software deployment shares, and using the deduplication evaluation tool.

Learn to monitor and maintain data deduplication on Windows Server. Estimate deduplicated volume size based on data churn and throughput, and use PowerShell cmdlets to optimize and troubleshoot.

Learn how data deduplication speeds backups and restores on Windows Server by reducing volume data and delivering smaller optimized backups and chunk store files.

Learn to install and enable data deduplication on file servers, verify status, and assess virtual machine performance using server manager and PowerShell commands.

Configure data deduplication on a targeted volume, run optimization, verify results and deduplication savings, and assess VM performance to prepare for the next lab.

Install data deduplication in Server Manager, configure it for a general purpose file server, run optimization on drive D, and verify status with get dedup volume and get dedup status.

Discover Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 features like application streams, image builder, UBI variants, and kernel live patching in a hands-on GUI install demo.

Register Red Hat Enterprise Linux from the command line to access updates, support, and repositories via Red Hat Subscription Management; attach, verify, and manage subscriptions with command line tools.

Explore the Linux command line through the Bash shell, learn how prompts show user or root, and master commands, options, and arguments for scripting and automation with sudo when needed.

Create a Red Hat Linux nine lab environment with vagrant and VirtualBox, deploying two virtual machines with static IPs, then test connectivity via ping and ssh.

Set up a Red Hat Linux nine lab with Vagrant and VirtualBox, deploy two virtual machines, configure static IPs, and learn Vagrant file configurations for networking.

Enable nested virtualization on a Hyper-V host by configuring a Red Hat 9 VM, install and configure KVM via Libvirt and QEMU, and use cockpit for web-based VM management.

Install Vagrant on RHEL 9 by enabling the CodeReady Linux Builder repository and installing Libvirt tools and Vagrant. Create two Vagrant boxes and access them with Vagrant SSH for testing.

Master the Linux command line with bash, including prompts, su privileges, and navigation. Learn command structure, editing options, basic file operations, editors, packages, and simple scripting to automate tasks.

Learn to log in locally via a graphical interface, terminal, and multiple virtual consoles, and to log in remotely using SSH with public/private keys and host-key verification.

Learn to create and manage storage devices, partitions, file systems, and swap spaces using parted; understand MBR and GPT partitioning, and set up persistent mounts with fstab.

Execute a guided exercise to add a 1 gigabyte zfs partition on /dev/sdb, format it, and configure a persistent mount at /archive via /etc/fstab.

Learn how to create and manage swap space to supplement RAM and understand virtual memory. Size swap space by memory workload, following RAM threshold rules and hibernation considerations.

Create a 2 GB GPT backup partition on a new disk, format with ZFS, and mount at /backup; create two 512 MB swap partitions to activate at boot with priority.

Discover how to create and manage logical volumes with LVM: prepare physical devices, build volume groups, create logical volumes, format with a file system, and perform non-destructive resizing and migration.

Extend a volume group by adding new physical volumes with vg extend, then extend logical volumes and file systems with lv extend and xfs grow fs.

Extend the volume group with a physical partition and resize the logical volume while the file system is mounted, using vg display, pv create, vg extend, lvextend, and zfs growfs.

resize the existing logical volume to 768 mebibytes and persistently mount it at /storage/data1, then create a new 128 mebibyte logical volume with a ZFS file system mounted at /storage/data2.

Explore how Stratis manages layered storage by creating pools and thin provisioned file systems, with data and cache tiers, snapshots, and seamless integration with LVM, DM, and ZFS.

Learn to manage layered storage with Stratis by creating pools, expanding data devices, and provisioning thin file systems that grow with real-time data, and use snapshots for data protection.

Discover how Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8's Virtual Data Optimizer compresses and deduplicates data on block devices, uses zero block elimination, and enables thin provisioning for improved throughput.

Explore straight storage management to create thinly provisioned file systems, dynamic growth volumes, and snapshots, and evaluate virtual data optimizer volumes with deduplication and compression.

Identify and mount nfs shares with mount and fstab, create mount points, and configure nfs version four using the nfs conf tool for a linux client.

Configure and test an NFS network-attached storage setup by exporting shares on server three, mounting from server two, persisting the mount at boot, and enforcing NFS v4 via TCP.