1. Install and Configure Servers 1.3 Configure Local Storage

Server manager is the only GUI tool that can manage storage pools and create virtual disks. It can also perform some of the other disk and volume management, but not all of them. Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc or expand from Computer Management) can still be used, as well as the command line diskpart.exe.

Reference for Powershell 3 Storage cmdlets :http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848649.aspx

1.3.1 Design Storage Spaces

Storage Spaces are MS's new San-like virtual storage pool technology, available in 2012 and windows 8. You create a pool of disks, and then create spaces on those disk, which are presented as volumes to the system.

Storage Spaces facts:
1. you can use internal or external SATA or SAS drives
2. storage spaces can be thin provisioned(meaning the max space can be larger than available space. Used
    space is provisioned as it's used)
3. storage spaces are stored as vhd files.
4. offers two types of redundancy: parity and mirrored.
5. storage can be dynamically added to the pool
6. storage pools can be shared among nodes in a cluster
7. can be used with ReFS
8. Microsoft recommends using Storage Spaces instead of dynamic disks
9. data is stored in allocated unit size of storage, called "slabs" by MS, across drives.

Storage Spaces can be configured in Server Manager or Powershell.


Extra notes: Storage space management is enabled by the Storage Services role service, which is part of the File and Storage Services role. This includes extensions for Server Manager, Powershell API and WMI, SMP interfaces for Storage Spaces, and a Pass-through API for extensibility.

1.3.2 Configure Basic and Dynamic Disks

About basic disks

basic disks can only be used to create simple volumes - space from a single disk.

the first three volumes on a basic disk setup in MBR partition style will be created as "Primary Partitions". The fourth volume created will create an "Extended Partition", which will span the rest of the space on the drive(even if the 4th volume does not fill all of the space). Any other volumes created will be created inside this extended partition.

In GPT partition style, a basic disk can have up to 128 volumes that are created as primary partitions. It does not use extended partitions.

About dynamic disks

dynamic disks create one partition that spans the entire disk, but allows for the creation of unlimited volumes within this partition. for this reason, you cannot mark a dynamic disk as "active".


dynamic disks also support several other types of volumes other than simple:

Spanned: consists of space from 2-32 physical dynamic disks. Windows will fill each drive one at a time, so this does not improve performance

Striped: Consists of space from 2-32 physical dynamic disks. Data is stripped across all of the drives, which improves performance.

Mirrored: This will mirror data between two dynamic disks. The system will read/write from both disks at the same time.

Raid-5: requires 3 or more dynamic disks, data is striped across but the last stripe is used for "parity" data. This allows for fault tolerance in that one drive can fail and the data will be ok. Write performance suffers in comparison to "Striped" due to parity.

Notes before configuration:

If you initialize a disk, Server Manager will default to a Basic disk and GPT partition style. There is no ability to convert from basic to dynamic here. In addition, dynamic disks will not show up in server manager or using the "get-disk" command in PS 3! This makes sense, considering MS really wants you to use storage spaces instead of dynamic disks There's also no way to create/convert to MBR partition style in server manager(although you can in PS 3!). Note that any volumes created on a dynamic disk will show up in Server Manager, even if the disk doesn't.

Configure a Basic Disk in Server Manager:

Click on File and Storage Services. Click the Disks tab. on the Disks tile, right click the drive and select "Bring Online" if it is offline. Then right-click and "initialize disk". This will initialize the disk as a basic disk with GPT partition style. If you need to convert, you can use disk management.

Configure a Basic Disk in Disk Management

Right click the Disk tab and click "Online" if it is currently Offline. Right-click and select "Initialize Disk". Put a checkmark next to this disk, and choose MBR or GPT as your partition style. You now have a basic disk.

Configure a Basic Disk in Powershell 3

First retrieve a listing of disks and take note of the disk's "number"
get-disk

If the disk is offline, bring it online:
set-disk -number # -isoffline $false

Now initialize:
initialize-disk -number # -partitionstyle GPT 
or
initialize-disk -number # -partitionstyle MBR

Configure a Dynamic Disk in Disk Management

Right click the disk and choose "Convert to dynamic disk". Checkmark the specific disk to convert. Click OK.

 Converting between Dynamic Disk and Basic Disk in Disk Management
You can convert between the two by right clicking the disk and selecting "Convert to dynamic disk" or "Convert to basic disk". You cannot convert from dynamic to basic if there are volumes existing on the disk. You can convert from basic disk to dynamic with existing volumes, but none of the partitions can be marked as active.

Extra notes: You can reset a disk to it's uninitialized state with no partition style by right clicking the drive in the "disks" tile in server manager and selecting  "Reset Disk". Or you can use clear-disk command in PS 3. Remember, this is a destructive process! But it's good to know if you are running through these commands in a lab.

1.3.3 Configure MBR and GPT disks

You cannot create or convert MBR partition style in Server Manager. (Although you can view, in the Disks tile, which partition style a disk is by clicking Add Criteria and checking Partition). You can't convert from MBR to GPT in Server Manager either.

Remember that because converting from MBR to GPT is a destructive process, you have to delete any partitions/volumes on the drive first. 

In Disk Management, you simply right click the disk and select "Convert to GPT" or "Convert to MBR".
In powershell 3, if the disk is uninitialized, you can create either partition-style when you use the initialize-disk command. If you don't specify a partitionstyle, it defaults to GPT.

If you need to convert an initialized disk, you use the set-disk command. You cannot use set-disk to change the partition style on an uninitialized disk.
set-disk -number # -partitionstyle GPT or MBR

1.3.4 Manage Volumes
See 1.3.2 for types of basic and dynamic volumes. You should be familiar with creating these in disk management.

Creating a volume in Server Manager
Go to either the volume or disks tile, click Tasks dropdown(or in disk tile, right click a disk), select "new volume". On "server and disk" select the disk to create the volume on. Set the size. Set the drive letter. Format as NTFS or ReFS. You can also enable data deduplication.

 Creating a volume in Powershell 3
Use get-disk to return the correct drive number.

use new-partition to create a new partition. examples:
new-partition -disknumber 1 -assigndriveletter -usemaximumsize
This will create an NTFS partition on disk number 1 using max available space. Use the -size parameter to specify a size in bytes, KB, MB, GB, or TB
new-partition -disknumber 5 -assigndrivenumber -size  50GB
you can specify a drive letter with the -driveletter parameter.

Now we format:
format-volume -driveletter F
this will default to NTFS. You can specify filesystem with -filesystem parameter

Other volume options in Server Manager:
If you right click on a volume, you get a number of options:
New Share, New iSCSI virtual disk, scan file system for errors, Manage drive letter and access paths, Format, extend volume, Delete volume. Configure Data Dedup, and Properties.

Removing a volume in Powershell
remove-partition -driveletter

Extra notes:
To return the free space available on a disk(largestfreeextent in bytes), you can use:
get-disk | format-table number, operationalstatus, numberofpartitions, largestfreeextent -autosize

You can always pipe your new partition into the format command to get it all done on one line:
 new-partition -disknumber 5 -assigndrivenumber -usemaximumsize | format-volume

1.3.5 Create and Mount Virtual Hard Disks (VHD)

VHD: Supported up to 2048 GB in size
VHDX: Supported up to 64 TB in size. Resilient to power failure. Not supported pre-2012

Using disk management
Go to Action on menu, select "Create VHD". Browse to location for the new VHD and give it a name. Choose the size of the VHD. Choose whether you want VHD or VHDX. Choose Fixed size or Dynamic size. Click OK. The VHD will be created and attached as a new disk.
To attach a VHD, go to Action on menu and select "Attach VHD".
To detach a vhd, right click the VHD disk and select "Detach VHD".

1.3.6 Configure Storage Pools and Disk Pools

Creating a storage pool in server manager
 In Server Manager, go to File and Storage icon, click Storage Pools. In The storage pool tile, The primordial space is available disks that are qualified to be pooled. Right click(or Tasks) and "New Storage Pool". Under Storage Pool Name, give your new pool a name. Select the disks to be used in this pool. Confirm and create.

Managing pool in Server Manager:
Under Physical Disks tile, you can Tasks/Add Physical disk or you can right click a disk and remove it from the pool. Removing a disk can cause warnings/errors as the system will attempt to be rebuild the pool and you may not have enough space.

Create a new pool in Powershell:
This is a little tricky.

First get your storage subsystem friendly name out of 
get-storagesubsystem
For our example, the friendlyname is "Storage Spaces on SERVER"

now, figure out which disks you want to pool using
get-physicaldisks
For our example, we want to pool physicaldisk1, physicaldisk2, and physicaldisk3.

new-storagepool -friendlyname NewPool -storagesubsystemfriendlyname "Storage Spaces on SERVER" -physicaldisks (get-physicaldisk physicaldisk1, physicaldisk2, physicaldisk3)

this is tricky because you can't just use the friendlynames of the disks in the -physicaldisks parameter. You have to actually pass it the diskobjects from get-physicaldisk.

 Manage a Storage pool in Powershell
get-storagepool
 add-physicaldisk
remove-physicaldisk

Creating a new virtual disk in Server Manager
Click on the virtual disk tile, go to tasks, and "New Virtual Disk". Select the storage pool. Give the disk a name. Select your storage layout: simple, mirror, parity. Choose thin or fixed provisioning. Specify a size. Now you have a new disk you can create volumes in.

Creating a new virtual disk in Powershell
get the friendly storage pool name:
get-storagepool

new-virtualdisk -friendlyname NewDisk -storagepoolfriendlyname NewPool -size 20GB
This will create a 20 gig mirrored disk named NewDisk
To switch to simple or parity, use the -resiliencysettingname parameter

other commands: get-virtualdisk, remove-virtualdisk

Extra notes:

Here's another example that would create a pool using all available drives that can be pooled. This may not be ideal for your situation:
new-storagepool -friendlyname NewPool -storagesubsystemfriendlyname "Storage Spaces on Server" -physicaldisks (get-physicaldisk -canpool $true)