Chapter 7

Chapter 7:
Configuring Server Storage,
Backup, and Performance
Options
 Learning Objectives
Chapter 7

■ Explain basic and dynamic disks

■ Partition, format, and manage basic
disks and convert them to dynamic
disks
■ Create and manage simple, spanned,
striped, RAID-5, and mirrored dynamic
disks
■ Mount a drive
Learning Objectives (continued)
Chapter 7

■ Manage removable storage and set up

media pools
■ Perform disk backups
■ Tune server performance
■ Configure Windows 2000 Server for an
uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
 Basic Disk
Chapter 7

■ Uses traditional disk management

techniques for partitions and formatting
■ Supports primary and extended
partitions, RAID 0, RAID1 and RAID5
■ Default disk structure for a new 2000
server install and when upgrading any
previous versions of NT Server
■ Offered for backward compatibility with
earlier versions of Windows and MS-
DOS
 Disk Partitioning
Chapter 7

■ Process of dividing a disk into sections

(partitions) and formatting those sections into
tracks and sectors for a file system
■ Each partition is assigned a drive letter (C:,
D:, etc.) in Windows
■ Places a master boot record and partition
table at the beginning of the disk
 Partitioning Tip
Chapter 7

■ When you partition a basic disk, leave

1 MB free for workspace which is
necessary to later convert to a
dynamic disk
Primary and Extended Partitions
Chapter 7

■ Primary partition: A partition or portion of a

hard disk that is bootable
◆ Disks must have at least one primary partition and
can have up to four
■ Extended Partition: Linked to a primary
partition in order to increase the available disk
space
◆ Disks can have only one extended partition, but
the extended partition can have many logical drive
letters (C:, D:, etc.)
◆ Used mainly to overcome the limit of 4 primary
partitions per disk
 Boot and System Partitions
Chapter 7

■ Boot partition: A partition that holds the

Windows 2000 Server system files (the
WINNT folder)
■ System partition: A partition that
contains boot files, such as Boot.ini and
Ntldr in Windows 2000 Server
Viewing the System and
Boot Partitions Chapter 7

Figure 7-3 System and boot partitions

Formatting Using the Disk
Management Tool Chapter 7

Figure 7-4 Formatting a partition

 Formatting Tips
Chapter 7

■ When you format a partition, avoid

using the quick format option, because
it does not check for bad sectors during
the format
■ After you partition and format a disk, be
sure to update the emergency repair
disk to reflect your change
 Volume and Stripe Sets
Chapter 7

■ Volume set: Two or more formatted

basic disk partitions that are combined
to look like one partition with a single
drive letter
■ Stripe set: Two or more basic disks set
up so that files are striped for RAID0 or
RAID5.
 Converting a Basic Disk to
a Dynamic Disk Chapter 7

■ To convert a disk:
◆ Right-click on the basic disk (not on a
partition) to convert
◆ Click Upgrade to Dynamic Disk
 Converting a Dynamic Disk
to a Basic Disk Chapter 7

■ To convert back to a basic disk:

◆ Back up the dynamic disk
◆ Delete the dynamic disk volume
◆ Click the disk, click the Action menu, and
click Restore Basic Disk
◆ Partition and format the disk
 Dynamic Disks
Chapter 7

■ Dynamic disk: In Windows 2000 Server,

a disk that does not use traditional
partitioning
■ There is no restriction to the number of
volumes that can be set up on one disk
■ You can extend volumes onto other
physical disks if more space is needed
■ Dynamic disks are only compatible with
Windows 2000.
 Dynamic Disks (continued)
Chapter 7

■ Dynamic disks support:

◆ Spanned volumes and volume extensions
◆ Up to 32 disks in one spanned volume
◆ RAID levels 0, 1, and 5
◆ FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS
◆ Reactivation if they go off line
 Simple Volume
Chapter 7

■ Simple volume: A portion of a single

disk or an entire single disk that is has
been converted to a dynamic disk and
formatted.
■ A simple volume is not fault tolerant.
 Spanned Volume
Chapter 7

■ Spanned volume: Two or more sections

of one or more Windows 2000 dynamic
disks that are combined to appear as
one disk.
■ A spanned volume can span any part of
2 to 32 disks
Spanned Volume (continued)
Chapter 7

2 G B 2 G B 3 G B 4 G B

1 1 G B s p a n n e d v o lu m e

One drive letter

Figure 7-5 Spanned volume

 Design Tip
Chapter 7

■ In a spanned volume if one disk fails,

the entire volume is inaccessible.
■ If a portion of a volume is deleted, such
as one disk, the entire disk set is
deleted.
■ For these reasons, avoid placing
mission-critical data and applications on
a spanned volume.
 Striped Volume
Chapter 7

■ Striped volume: Two or more dynamic disks

(or equal portions of those disks) that use
striping so that files are spread in blocks
across the disks
■ Also known as RAID level 0
■ Striping requires at least 2 disks (or equal
portions of disks) and can include as many as
32.
■ Striping equalizes the disk load, extends the
life of disks, and increases disk performance
 Striped Volume Layout
Chapter 7

D is k 1 D is k 2 D is k 3 D is k 4 D is k 5

R ow 1 1 -6 4 K B 6 5 -1 2 8 K B 1 2 9 -1 9 2 K B 1 9 3 -2 5 6 K B 2 5 7 -3 2 0 K B

R ow 2 3 2 1 -3 8 4 K B 3 8 5 -4 4 8 K B 4 4 9 -5 1 2 K B 5 1 3 -5 7 6 K B 5 7 7 -6 4 0 K B

R ow 3 6 4 1 -7 0 4 K B 7 0 4 -7 2 0 K B

Writing a 720KB file to a Striped Volume that spans 5 disks

Figure 7-6 Disks in a striped volume

 Striped Volumes
Chapter 7

■ If one or more disks in a striped volume

fail, the data will be inaccessible.
■ Frequently back up a striped volume so
you do not lose data if a disk failure
occurs.
 RAID-5 Volume
Chapter 7

■ RAID-5 volume: Three or more dynamic disks

(or equal portions of those disks) that use
provide fault tolerance through disk striping
and creating parity blocks for data recovery
■ A RAID-5 volume is not as fast at writing
because it must calculate and write the parity
block for each row
■ RAID-5 is fault tolerant. If a single drive in the
volume fails, the parity information can be
used to regenerate the lost data.
 RAID-5 Layout
Chapter 7

Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4 Disk 5

Row 1 Parity block 1-64 KB 65-128 KB 129-192 KB 193-256 KB

Row 2 257-320 KB Parity block 321-384 KB 385-448 KB 449-512 KB

Row 3 513-576 KB 577-640 KB Parity block 641-704 KB 704-720 KB

Figure 7-7 Disks in a RAID-5 volume

 Disk Spaced Used for Parity
Chapter 7

■ The amount of disk space used for

parity is 1/n where n equals the number
of physical disks
■ When you plan disk capacity, take into
account the amount of space (for parity)
that cannot be used for production data
 Mirrored Volume
Chapter 7

■ Mirrored volume: Two dynamic disks that

are set up so that data on one disk is
stored (mirrored) on a redundant disk
■ Disk read performance is the same as
reading from a simple volume, but the
disk write time is increased in order to
write on both disks
 Design Caution
Chapter 7

■ The system and boot partitions can be on

a simple, spanned, or mirrored volume,
but not on a striped or RAID-5 volume
(unless hardware RAID is used)
 Disk Performance and Repair
Chapter 7

■ You can extend the life of disks by using

striped or RAID-5 volumes because
read/write requests are spread across all
disks.
■ Regularly defragment disks to extend
disk life and increase performance
Using the Disk Defragmenter
Chapter 7

Figure 7-8 Analyzing a disk’s fragmentation

 Troubleshooting Tip
Chapter 7

■ Ensure disk integrity and repair disk

problems by using the “checkdisk” utility,
called chkdsk
■ Chkdsk can check FAT16, FAT32, and
NTFS formatted volumes
 Chkdsk
Chapter 7

■ In NTFS, chkdsk can check:

◆ Files
◆ Folders
◆ Indexes
◆ Security descriptors
◆ User files
◆ Disk allocation units
■ If there is physical damage on a disk, use
chkdsk with the /r switch to identify bad
sectors
 Mounted Drive
Chapter 7

■ Windows 2000 offers the ability to

access a physical disk, CD-ROM, or Zip
drive through a folder that appears on
another drive letter.
■ Using mounted drives enables you to
add new drives without allocating drive
letters.
 Disk Security Through Backup
Chapter 7

■ Try to backup a server to a tape drive

attached to the server. This provides
several advantages:
◆ No load on the network while backing up
◆ If each server has its own tape drive, you
can backup other servers if one tape drive
fails
◆ The registry can only be backed up locally
(without 3rd party backup tools)
 Windows 2000 Backup Options
Chapter 7
■ Windows 2000 Server backup options:
◆ Normal – a full backup – backs up everything
selected in the backup job (whether changed or
not) and removes the archive attribute.
◆ Incremental – a partial backup – only backs up
files that have changed since the last full backup
or incremental backup and removes the archive
attribute.
◆ Differential – a partial backup – backs up all files
that have changed since the last full backup (even
if they have not changed since the last differential
backup) and does not remove the archive
attribute.
 Windows 2000 Backup Options
Chapter 7

■ Copy – backs up only the files or

directories selected and leaves the
archive attribute unchanged
■ Daily – backs up only the files that have
changed on the day the backup is
performed and leaves the archive
attribute unchanged
 Starting a Backup
Chapter 7

Figure 7-10 Manually starting a backup

 Scheduling Backups
Chapter 7

■ For regularly performed backups, use

the scheduling capability in the Backup
tool – which actually employs the
Scheduled Tasks tool
Configuring a Scheduled Backup
Chapter 7

Figure 7-11 Scheduling a backup job

 Performing a Restore
Chapter 7

■ Perform a restore by using the Backup

tool and clicking the Restore tab
■ You can restore all files and folders
from a backup job or only those you
select specifically
 Configuring Application
Performance Chapter 7

■ Windows 2000 can be optimized for

applications or background services
■ Use Applications performance when a system
will be used by someone logged into the
console
■ Use background services when a system will
fulfill requests for services on the network (file
and print)
■ Application performance is tuned by opening
the Control Panel System icon, accessing the
Advanced tab, and clicking the Performance
Options button
 Configuring Virtual Memory
Chapter 7

■ Virtual memory is a file (called the page file) stored

on the hard disk and is used to store programs and
data when there is little available RAM.
■ The general formula for configuring a page file is to
size it to match the amount of RAM times 1.5
■ For performance, you should tune a server by
configuring the page file to be stored on a hard disk
separate from the disk which contains the operating
system.
■ Virtual memory settings can be found under Control
Panel, System, Advanced, Performance Options.
Page File Configuration
Chapter 7

Figure 7-12 Configuring virtual memory

 Configuring Server RAM
Chapter 7

Optimizing Memory Settings Purpose

Minimize memory used Optimizes the memory used on servers with

10 or fewer simultaneous network users

Balance Optimizes memory use for a small LAN with

64 or fewer users

Maximize data throughput for file Used for a large network with 64 users or

sharing more where file serving resources need more

memory allocation to make the server efficient

 Configuring Server
RAM (continued) Chapter 7

Optimizing Memory Settings Purpose

Maximize data throughput for
network applications
Make browser broadcasts to LAN
manager 2.x clients
Used in servers that share applications
such as Microsoft Office. Used to
reduce paging activity when this affects
server performance
Used for networks that have both
Windows 2000 Server and Microsoft’s
early server operating system, LAN
Manager

These options are found in the properties of

File and Printer Sharing.
Configuring RAM Allocation
Chapter 7

Figure 7-13 Adjusting memory allocation

 Chapter Summary
Chapter 7

■ Windows 2000 Server supports two

kinds of disks, basic and dynamic
■ Basic disks are for backward
compatibility and dynamic disks offer
comprehensive disk management
■ Windows 2000 Server supports many
kinds of removable storage such as
tapes, CD-ROMs, CD-RWs, Zip, and
Jaz drives
 Chapter Summary
Chapter 7

■ Removable storage is managed through

libraries and media pools
■ Server backups are handled through
the Backup tool which offers several
backup alternatives
■ Tune your server right away for running
applications, virtual memory, and
memory used for network connectivity