Windows Server-Installation, Storage, Compute (Exam 70-740)

Explore data deduplication, IPAM, and DHCP failover from 2012 and 2012 R2, plus work folders, dynamic access control, storage spaces with tiering, and DC virtualization.

Explore how raid creates a redundant array of independent disks to provide fault tolerance and improved performance through striping, disk mirroring, and parody parity, while backing up remains essential.

Explore how raid levels like raid 0, raid 1, raid 5, and raid 10 balance performance, redundancy, and storage capacity through striping, parity, and mirroring.

Install and configure an iSCSI target server on Windows Server 2016 to create a diskless, network-bootable iSCSI SAN with block-level storage, PXE boot, and optional NFS access.

Implement data center bridging to optimize traffic across multiple iSCSI SANs by signaling the sender to slow down, enabling continuous data flow to the fast SAN.

Create a storage pool from multiple disks, build virtual disks and volumes with automatic allocation or hot spares, and choose simple, mirror, or parity layouts with thin or fixed provisioning.

Install and configure data deduplication on Windows Server 2016 using Server Manager and PowerShell, enabling dedup on volume E as a general purpose file server with age, exclusions, and schedule.

Explore the new Hyper-V features in Server 2016, including host resource protection, nested virtualization, rolling upgrades, shielded VMs, production checkpoints, and PowerShell Direct.

Identify Hyper-V prerequisites: require a 64-bit SLAT processor with VM Monitor Mode extensions, at least 4 GB memory, a virtualization-enabled chipset (Intel VT or AMD-V), and BIOS DEP enabled.

Install Hyper-V via server manager by adding the role and RSAT tools for remote management, then configure storage locations and live migration options in Hyper-V settings.

Enable nested virtualization on server 2016 host with Hyper-V in a VM. Requires Intel and mac address spoofing via PowerShell; dynamic memory, production checkpoints, and live migration are not supported.

Explore Hyper-V storage options for virtual machines, including VHD 2 TB and VHDX 64 TB, fixed and dynamically expanding discs, pass-through, VHDS, and differencing discs for testing environments.

Ensure high availability across data centers by implementing redundant power, cooling, NICs, memory, switches, and RAID storage with replication. Use diverse ISPs to avoid single points of failure.

Use failover clustering with clustered shared storage and separate networks to keep a stateful application with always-on availability by failing the workload to another cluster node.

Install the failover cluster service on all nodes with PowerShell, validate configuration via Failover Cluster Manager, and fix Hyper-V switch issues to prepare for cluster creation.

Enable multiple cluster nodes to access the same storage via cluster shared volumes, improving failover recovery, reducing LUNs, and simplifying disk space management without extra hardware.

Configure a virtual machine network load balancing cluster for stateless apps using multiple NICs in unicast mode, with cluster and management NICs, MAC spoofing on Hyper-V, and spread across hosts.

Use Event Viewer to inspect Windows logs—application, security, and system—and tailor custom views and filters to surface critical events and errors for quick troubleshooting of services and DHCP.

Learn how Windows Server 2016 supports containers and Hyper-V containers, comparing shared kernel isolation with Hyper-V's independent kernel environments and the associated overhead.