The Windows Server 2012 Community Roadshow Presentation

Posted by Paul Braren on Jun 27 2012 (updated on Aug 17 2013) in
  • HowTo
  • Hyper-V
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    DiskIOandFileSystem

    Announcing the Windows Server 2012 Community Roadshow,
    Dan Stolts ITProGuru

    Presentation by Tome Tanasovski, Microsoft Waltham MA, Wednesday June 27th, 2012
    blogs.technet.com/b/danstolts/archive/2012/06/21/announcing-the-windows-server-2012-community-roadshow.aspx

    You can view the slide deck here:
    skydrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=8955E71170A22B6!733&app=PowerPoint

    I took some rough/paraphrased notes during the talk, here's some terminology/highlights:

    RDM:
    Remote Direct Memory access, new tech at hardware level, leveraging on NIC and on network, faster access to storage with less overhead

    SMI-S:
    for storage vendor compatibility

    NFS:
    supposedly will be faster on Windows Server 2012 than on any other platform

    Storage Spaces:
    good, bad, weird, all about abstraction
    renamed things like RAID, much like NetApp abstracts RAID from user

    Reslient File System (ReFS)
    limitations:
    can't use for C: drive
    deduplication doesn't work
    for Hyper-V back end storage

    Offloaded File Transfer (ODX)
    need a storage array that is compliant with this, so transfer happens on storage array, rather than copy in and out of hosts
    [to me, sounds like VAAI for VMware]

    SMB Direct (RDMA)
    specific NICs in client and server, less CPU needed on both sides, and transfer happens with mere nanosecond latencies

    Thin Provisioning and Trim
    can use VHDs and allocate only amount actually used up
    TRIM let's you bring it back down if it bloats up

    Data Deduplication
    VHD library can see 90% savings, it's a post process (not inline)


    Related references:

    Data Deduplication
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831602.aspx
    Migration, Cluster, and BranchCache Considerations for Data Deduplication
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831454.aspx
    Data Deduplication Technical Preview
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831354.aspx

    Windows Server 2012 Direct Access – Part 1 What’s New
    Direct Access feature relies on IPv6 network infrastructure:
    http://blogs.technet.com/b/meamcs/archive/2012/05/03/windows-server-2012-direct-access-part-1-what-s-new.aspx