1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Right- click the local disk (C:) and choose Properties.
3. Click the Quotas tab.
4. Select the Enable Quota Management and the Deny Disk Space To Users Exceeding Quota Limit options.
5. Select the Limit Disk Space To option and enter 1000MB in the box.
6. Enter 750MB in the Set Warning Level To boxes.
7. Click the Apply button. If a warning box appears, click OK. This warning is just informing you that the disk may need to be rescanned for the quota.
8. Now that you have set up an umbrella quota to cover everyone, you’ll set up a quota that exceeds the umbrella. Click the Quota Entries button.
9. The Quotas Entries For (C:) window appears. You will see some users already listed. These are users who are already using space on the volume. From the Quota menu at the top, choose New Quota Entry.

Notice the N/A entry in the Percent Used column. This belongs to the administrator account, which by default has no limit.

10. On the Select User page, choose a user that you want to allow to exceed the quota (for this example, I used the wpanek account). Click OK.

11. In the Add New Quota Entry dialog box, select the Do Not Limit Disk Usage option and click OK.

12. You will notice that the new user has no limit. Close the disk quota tool.

Understanding Data Duplication

Data deduplication involves finding and removing duplicate data within the company network without compromising its integrity. The object is to store more data in less space by segmenting files into small chunks, identifying duplicate chunks, and maintaining a single copy of each chunk.

Data duplication allows redundant copies of data chunks and then it references those multiple copies into a single copy. The data is first compressed and then the data is configured into a filesystem container in the System Volume Information folder.

After the data duplication is completed, the data files will no longer be stored as independent files. The data files are replaced with markers that direct the computer system to the data blocks within the data store. Because the duplicate files are now migrated into a single data point, the data is only stored once and thus saves space on the servers.

When the files are then accessed, the data blocks are transparently reassembled to fulfill the data request. This is all done without the users or applications having any knowledge that the data has been transformed into a single spot. This is a nice advantage to administrators because they do not have to worry that the data will be impacted in any negative way by using data duplication.

Understanding Data Duplication

To enable data duplication, you enable a volume for duplication and then the data is automatically optimized. After this happens, the volume will contain the following;

Optimized Files The volume will contain files that are optimized and that means that these files will have pointers to map the data to its respective areas of the chunk store.

Unoptimized Files Some files will not meet the standards for data duplication. These files will remain as Unoptimized files. For example, encrypted files are not eligible to be optimized. So these encrypted files will remain Unoptimized on the volume.

Chunk Store This is the location where the data duplicated files will be stored and optimized.

Free Space Because data files are optimized and require less space, your volumes will have additional free space that you can use for users or applications.

Backup and Restoring Deduplicated Volumes

One issue that every administrator has faced in their career has to do with how we are going to protect our data by using backups. Backups are a million- dollar industry because every backup company knows the importance of protecting your data. Well, the issue that we, as IT administrators, deal with is backup space.

This is where data duplication can help us out. Because the files are optimized, the files will require less space used on backups. This doesn’t matter if it’s cloud-b ased or tape- based backups. The backups will use less space and this in turn will allow us to retain the data longer without requiring more space. Also, because the data is optimized (thus being smaller), the backups will be quicker and if any restores are needed, they will also be faster.

Any backup system that uses block- based backup applications should work without any modifications to the backup systems. File-b ased backups may be an issue because they normally copy the files in their original data form. If you are using file-b ased backups, you must have enough backup space available to handle the files in their original form.

If your organization is using the Windows Server 2022 backup software, your backups will have the ability to back up the files as optimized files and no other changes will be needed. Since many of us don’t use Windows Backup, make sure your backup can handle data duplication if you are planning on using it.

If you decide to use Windows backup, the following steps will help you backup and restore data duplicated files.

1. You will need to install Windows Server Backup on the machines running data duplication. This can be done through Server Manager or by running the following PowerShell command:

Add- WindowsFeature – name Windows- Server- Backup

2. You can then run a backup by using the following PowerShell command (this command is backing up the E: volume to the F: drive):

wbadmin start backup –include:E: -b ackuptarget:F:

3. You will then want to get the version ID of the backup you just created. You can do this by running the following command:

wbadmin get versions

4. After you run the wbadmin get versions command, you will be given the date and time of the backup. This will be needed if you are going to do a restore. The following is an example of the output: 04/24/2017- 14:30. To restore the volume you would run the following command:

Wbadmin start recovery –version:04/24/2017-1 4:30 – itemtype:Volume  – items:E: – recoveryTarget:E:

To restore just a part of a volume or folder, you would run the following command (for example, the E:\wPanek folder):

Wbadmin start recovery –version:04/24/2017-1 4:30 – itemtype:File  – items:E:\wPanek  – recursive

The NFS role service and feature set gives IT administrators the ability to integrate a Windows Server–based environment with Unix- based operating systems. Most corporate environments today consist of a mixed operating system infrastructure to some extent. Using a Windows NFS file server, you can configure file shares for use by multiple operating systems throughout the environment.

Windows Server 2022 takes those capabilities even further by enabling you to integrate with platforms such as ESXi. ESXi is vMware’s exclusive operating system–independent hypervisor. ESXi is referred to as a bare- metal operating system because once it is installed on server virtualization hardware, guest virtual machines can be installed without requiring the use of any other underlying operating system. With Windows Server 2022, you can use an NFS share efficiently as an ESXi data store to house all of your guest virtual machines.

Let’s take a look at configuring an NFS data store in Exercise 11.10.

For this exercise, you will need the following:

■             A Windows Server 2022 server

■             A vMware ESXi 6.7 server

EXERCISE 11.10

Configuring the NFS Data Store

1. Open Server Manager on your Windows Server 2022 machine.
2. Launch the Add Roles And Features Wizard from the dashboard.
3. Install the Server For NFS role on the server. A reboot is not required.
4. Create a new folder on your server named NFS_Datastore, right- click and select  Properties, and then navigate to the NFS Sharing tab.
5. Click the Manage NFS Sharing button to open the NFS Advanced Sharing page and then select Share This Folder. Notice how enabling the share also enables the share’s default settings. The share settings let you configure share authentication and user access further if the need arises. The default settings will work just fine for this exercise.
6. Click the Permissions tab to open the NFS Share Permissions page. This is where you will configure the type of access that will be allowed by machines accessing this NFS data store. By default, the NFS share permissions are set to Read- Only and do not include root access. For this exercise, you will need to change the type of access to Read- Write and select the option to allow root access.
7. Click OK to close the NFS Share Permissions page and then click Apply and OK on the NFS Advanced Sharing page. Your new NFS share is now built, ready to be presented as an NFS data store to a vMware ESXi host. Be sure to record the network path displayed on the NFS Sharing tab of the share’s Properties page. You will need that information to perform a proper mount on the ESXi host.
8. Switch to your ESXi host and launch the Add Storage Wizard from the Configuration tab.
9. On the Select Storage Type page of the wizard, select the Network File System storage type; click Next to continue to the Locate Network File System page.
10. On this page of the wizard, you will fill in the server and folder information for the NFS share that you will be using as a vSphere data store. Using the information recorded from step 7, properly fill out the server and folder fields and then name your new data store.
11. Click Next to continue to the Ready To Complete page of the wizard. Review the information and click Finish. Once the Create NAS data store task completes on the ESXi host, you are ready to use your Windows Server 2022 shared folder as a vSphere ESXi data store.

The previous exercise shows how versatile Windows Server 2022 shares can be. The same principles can be applied to making Windows Server shares available to other Unix- based operating systems such as ESXi.

I will show you how to use Windows PowerShell for configuring NFS shares in the section “Windows PowerShell.” If you would like to see a more complete list of NFS PowerShell commands, please visit Microsoft’s website at https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ jj603081(v=wps.630).aspx.

Configuring Disk Quotas

In this chapter so far, you have seen how to set up a share and publish it to Active Directory. You’ve also learned how to set up permissions and security and how NTFS and shared permissions work with each other. It’s time to learn how to limit users’ hard drive space on the servers.

Configuring Disk Quotas

Disk quotas give administrators the ability to limit how much storage space a user can have on a hard drive. Disk quotas are an advantage of using NTFS over FAT32. If you decide to use FAT32 on a volume or partition, quotas will not be available.

You have a few options available to you when you set up disk quotas. You can set up disk quotas based on volume or on users:

A good rule of thumb is to set up an umbrella quota policy that covers the entire volume and then let individual users exceed the umbrella as needed.

Setting Quotas by Volume One way to set up disk quotas is by setting the quota by volume, on a per- volume basis. This means that if you have a hard drive with C:, D:, and E: volumes, you would have to set up three individual quotas— one for each volume. This is your umbrella. This is where you set up an entire disk quota based on the volume for all users.

Setting Quotas by User You have the ability to set up quotas on volumes by user. Here is where you would individually let users have independent quotas that exceed your umbrella quota.

Specifying Quota Entries You use quota entries to configure the volume and user quotas. You do this on the Quotas tab of the volume’s Properties dialog box. (See Exercise 11.10.)

Creating Quota Templates Quota templates are predefined ways to set up quotas. Templates allow you to set up disk quotas without needing to create a disk quota from scratch. One advantage of using a template is that when you want to set up disk quotas on multiple volumes (C:, D:, and E:) on the same hard drive, you do not need to re-c reate the quota on each volume.

Exercise 11.11 will show you how to set up an umbrella quota for all users and then have an individual account in your Active Directory exceed this quota.

When you set up a shared folder, you need to set up shared permissions on that folder. If you’re using NTFS, you will also need to set up NTFS security on the folder. Since both shared permissions and NTFS security are in effect when the user is remote, what happens when the two conflict?

These are the two basic rules of thumb:

■      The local permission is the NTFS permission.

■        The remote permission is the more restrictive set of permissions between NTFS and shared.

This is easy to do as long as you do it in steps. Let’s look at Figure 11.14 and walk through the process of figuring out what wpanek has for rights.

FIGURE 11.14 NTFS security and shared permissions example

                 Shared permissions      StromWind Documents NTFS security

Marketing R

Sales R

R&D R

Local = ? Remote = ? wpanek Marketing Sales R&D

Marketing RX

Sales R

R&D FC

As you can see, wpanek belongs to three groups (Marketing, Sales, and R&D), and all three groups have settings for the StormWind Documents folder. In the figure, you will notice that there are two questions: Remote = ? and Local = ? That’s what you need to figure out— what are wpanek’s effective permissions when he is sitting at the computer that shares the folder, and what are his effective permissions when he connects to the folder from another computer (remotely)? To figure this out, follow these steps:

1. Add up the permissions on each side separately.

Remember, permissions and security are additive. You get the highest permission. So, if you look at each side, the highest shared permission is the Read permission. The NTFS security side should add up to equal Full Control. Thus, now you have Read permission on shared and Full Control on NTFS.

2. Determine the local permissions.

Shared permissions do not apply when you are local to the data. Only NTFS would apply. Thus, the local permission would be Full Control.

3. Determine the remote permissions.

Remember, the remote permission is the most restrictive set of permissions between NTFS and shared. Since Read is more restrictive than Full Control, the remote permission would be Read.

Let’s try another. Look at Figure 11.15, and see whether you can come up with wpanek’s local and remote permissions.

FIGURE 11.15 NTFS security and shared permissions

                    Shared permissions      StromWind Documents NTFS security

Marketing R

Sales R

R&D FC

Local = ? Remote = ? wpanek Marketing Sales R&D

Marketing R

Sales R

R&D R

Your answer should match the following:

Local = Read

Remote = Read

Remember, first you add up each side to get the highest level of rights. NTFS would be Read, and shared would be Full Control. The local permission is always just NTFS (shared does not apply to local permissions), and remote permission is whichever permission (NTFS or shared) is the most restrictive (which would be Read on the NTFS side).

Exercise 11.9 walks you through the process of setting both NTFS and shared permissions. This exercise assumes that you have Active Directory installed on the server and you have some groups created. If you do not, go to Computer Management (right-c lick Start ➪ Computer Management) and under Local Users and Groups, create a new group that can be used in this exercise.

EXERCISE 11.9

Configuring Shared and NTFS Settings

1. Create a new folder in the root directory of your C: partition and name it Test Share.
2. Right- click the Test Share folder you created and choose Properties.
3. Click the Sharing tab and then click the Advanced Sharing button. Select Share This Folder. Make sure the share name is Test Share (see Figure 11.16).

FIGURE 11.16 Advanced Sharing

4. Click the Permissions button. Click Add. When the Select User page appears, choose a group from Active Directory or from the local group you created. (I used the Sales group.) Once you find your group, click OK.

5. The Permissions dialog box appears. With your group highlighted, click the Allow check box next to Full Control and click OK. (All of the other Allow check boxes will automatically become checked.)

6. On the Advanced Sharing page, click OK. Now click the Security tab. (This allows you to set the NTFS security settings.)

7. Click the Edit button. That takes you to the Permissions page. Now click Add. When the Select User page appears, choose a group from Active Directory. (I used the Everyone group.) Once you find your group, click OK.

8. The Permissions dialog box appears. With your group highlighted, click the Allow check box next to Modify, and click OK. (All of the check boxes below Modify will automatically become checked.)

9. Click Close.

If you would like to install and use DCB through PowerShell, you need to complete the  following Steps;

1. Click the Start button, then right-c lick the Windows PowerShell ➢ More ➢ Run as Administrator.
2. In the Windows PowerShell console, enter the following command followed by the Enter Key:

Install- WindowsFeature “data- center- bridging”.

Installing DCB using Server Manager

If you would like to install and use DCB through Server Manager, you need to complete the following Steps:

1. On the Windows Server 2022 system, open Server Manager.
2. Click the Add Roles and Features link.
3. At the Before You Begin screen, click Next.
4. At the Select installation type screen, choose Role- based or feature- based installation and then click Next.
5. The Select destination server screen will be next. Make sure the server that you want to install DCB on is selected and then click Next.
6. On the Select server roles screen, just click Next.
7. On the Select features screen, check the box for Data Center Bridging. If a dialog box appears asking to install additional features, click the Add Feature button. Then click Next.
8. At the Confirmation screen, verify that everything is OK and then click the Install button.

Configuring Permissions

Before I dive into how permissions work, let’s first talk about how clients and servers talk to each other. In the Microsoft Windows world, clients and servers talk to each other using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. So we’ll start our discussion there.

Understanding SMB

The Server Message Block (SMB) is a network sharing protocol that allows Windows machines (either client- or server- based operating systems) that are running applications to read and write data to files. SMB also allows systems to request services or resources that are running on remote servers. The one advantage to SMB is that it doesn’t matter what network protocol you are using (TCP/IP, etc.); SMB runs on top of the network protocol that is being used on your corporate infrastructure.

It’s important to understand what protocols work with client- and server-b ased systems because it can affect your network’s performance. For example, when Microsoft released Windows Server 2012, it released SMB 3.0. The issue that many users had was that SMB 3.0 was not compatible with Apple-b ased systems. So if you were running macOS on your network and upgraded to Windows Server 2012, your Apple-b ased systems would not communicate properly. This issue was eventually resolved, but this is why it’s important to understand that SMB file sharing is used between Windows client and server systems.

I will show you how to use PowerShell for configuring SMB shares in the section “Windows PowerShell.” For a complete list of SMB PowerShell commands, visit Microsoft’s website at https://technet.microsoft .com/en- us/library/jj635726(v=wps.630).aspx.

Now that you understand how Windows clients and servers communicate with each other, let’s now look at how we can protect the files and folders that clients access. You can add security to a folder in two ways: NTFS Security or Shared Permissions. But when it comes to securing files, you can secure files in only one way: NTFS Security. So let’s investigate these methods and see how they work independently and then together.

Understanding NTFS

NTFS is an option that you have when you are formatting a hard drive. You can format a hard drive for a Microsoft operating system in three ways:

■        File Allocation Table (FAT) is supported in older operating systems only (Server 2003, Server 2000, XP, and so on).

■         FAT32 is supported in Windows Server 2022.

■         NTFS is supported in Windows Server 2022.

NTFS has many advantages over FAT and FAT32. They include the following:

Compression Compression helps compact files or folders to allow for more efficient use of hard drive space. For example, a file that usually takes up 20 MB of space might use only 13 MB after compression. To enable compression, just open the Advanced Attributes dialog box for a folder and select Compress Contents To Save Disk Space  (see Figure 11.9).

FIGURE 11.9 Setting up compression on a folder

Quotas Quotas allow you to limit how much hard drive space users can have on a server. Quotas are discussed in greater detail in the section “Configuring Disk Quotas.”

Encryption Encrypting File System (EFS) allows a user or administrator to secure files or folders by using encryption. Encryption employs the user’s security identification (SID) number to secure the file or folder. To implement encryption, open the Advanced Attributes dialog box for a folder and check Encrypt Contents To Secure Data (see Figure 11.10).

If files are encrypted using EFS and you have to unencrypt the files, there are two ways to do this. First, you can log in using the user’s account (the account that encrypted the files) and unencrypt the files. Second, you can become a recovery agent and manually unencrypt the files.

If you use EFS, it’s best not to delete users immediately when they leave a company. Administrators have the ability to recover encrypted files, but it is much easier to gain access to the user’s encrypted files by logging in as the user who left the company and deselecting the encryption option.

FIGURE 11.10 Setting up encryption on a folder

Security One of the biggest advantages of NTFS is security. Security is one of the most important aspects of an IT administrator’s job. An advantage of NTFS security is that the security can be placed on individual files and folders. It does not matter whether you are local to the share (in front of the machine where the data is stored) or remote to the share (coming across the network to access the data); the security is always in place with NTFS.

The default security permission is Users = Read on new folders or shares.

NTFS security is additive. In other words, if you are a member of three groups

(Marketing, Sales, and R&D) and these three groups have different security settings, you get the highest level of permissions. For example, let’s say you have a user by the name of wpanek who belongs to all three groups (Marketing, Sales, and R&D). Figure 11.11 shows this user’s permissions. The Marketing group has Read and Execute permissions to the StormWind Documents folder. The Sales group has Read and Write, and the R&D group has Full Control. Since wpanek is a member of all three groups, wpanek would get Full Control (the highest level).

FIGURE 11.11 Security settings on the StormWind Documents folder

The only time this does not apply is with the Deny permission. Deny overrides any other group setting. Taking the same example, if Sales has Deny permission for the StormWind Documents folder, the user wpanek would be denied access to that folder. The only way around this Deny is if you added wpanek directly to the folder and gave him individual permissions (see Figure 11.12). Individual permissions override a group Deny. In this example, the individual right of wpanek would override the Sales group’s Deny. The user’s security permission for the StormWind Documents folder would be Full Control.

FIGURE 11.12 Individual permissions

Understanding Shared Permissions

When you set up a folder to be shared, you have the ability to assign that folder’s permissions. Shared permissions can be placed only on the folder and not on individual files. Files have the ability to inherit their permissions from the parent folder.

Shared folder permissions are in effect only when users are remote to the shared data. In other words, if computer A shares a folder called Test Share and assigns that folder shared permissions, those permissions would apply only if you connected to that share from a machine other than computer A. If you were sitting in front of computer A, the shared permissions would not apply.

Like NTFS permissions (discussed in the previous section), shared permissions are additive, so users receive the highest level of permissions granted by the groups of which they are members.

Also, as with NTFS permissions, the Deny permission (see Figure 11.13) overrides any group permission, and an individual permission overrides a group Deny.

The default shared permission is Administrators = Full Control. The shared permissions going from lowest to highest are Read, Change, Full Control, and Deny. Table 11.2 compares the two different types of permissions and security.

FIGURE 11.13 Setting up permissions on a shared folder

TABLE 11.2 NTFS security vs. shared permissions

Description	NTFS	Shared
Folder- level security.	Yes	Yes
File- level security.	Yes	No
In effect when local to the data.	Yes	No
In effect when remote to the data.	Yes	Yes
Permissions are additive.	Yes	Yes
Group Deny overrides all other group settings.	Yes	Yes
Individual settings override group settings.	Yes	Yes

The concept of a network attached storage (NAS) solution is that it is a low-c ost device for storing data and serving files through the use of an Ethernet LAN connection. A NAS device accesses data at the file level via a communication protocol such as NFS, CIFS, or even HTTP, which is different from iSCSI or FC Fibre Channel storage devices that access the data at the block level. NAS devices are best used in file- storing applications, and they do not require a storage expert to install and maintain the device. In most cases, the only setup that is required is an IP address and an Ethernet connection.

Virtual Disk Service

Virtual Disk Service (VDS) was created to ease the administrative efforts involved in managing all of the various types of storage devices. Many storage hardware providers used their own applications for installation and management, and this made administering all of these various devices very cumbersome.

VDS is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that provides a centralized interface for managing all of the various storage devices. The native VDS API enables the management of disks and volumes at an OS level, and hardware vendor- supplied APIs manage the storage devices at a RAID level. These are known as software and hardware providers.

A software provider is host based, and it interacts with Plug and Play Manager because each disk is discovered and operates on volumes, disks, and disk partitions. VDS includes two software providers: basic and dynamic. The basic software provider manages basic disks with no fault tolerance, whereas the dynamic software providers manage dynamic disks with fault management. A hardware provider translates the VDS APIs into instructions specific to the storage hardware. This is how storage management applications are able to communicate with the storage hardware to create LUNs or Fibre Channel HBAs to view the WWN. The following are Windows Server 2022 storage management applications that use VDS:

■        The Disk Management snap- in is an application that allows you to configure and manage the disk drives on the host computer. You have already seen this application in use when you initialized disks and created volume sets.

■ DiskPart is a command- line utility that configures and manages disks, volumes, and partitions on the host computer. It can also be used to script many of the storage management commands. DiskPart is a robust tool that you should study on your own because it is beyond the scope of this book. Figure 11.8 shows the various commands and their function in the DiskPart utility.

■ DiskRAID is also a scriptable command- line utility that configures and manages hardware RAID storage systems. However, at least one VDS hardware provider must be installed for DiskRAID to be functional. DiskRAID is another useful utility that you should study on your own because it’s beyond the scope of this book.

Understanding Data Center Bridging

I think the easiest way to understanding Data Center Bridging (DCB) is to understand NIC bridging. Many of us who have used laptops have used both the Wireless and Wired networks at the same time. This is bridging network adapter cards to work as one. Well, Data Center Bridging is the same thing but just done on a larger scale.

FIGURE 11.8 DiskPart commands

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) created a suite of standards called Data Center Bridging. DCB allows the same ethernet infrastructure to work throughout the data center. This means that all of the network servers, clusters, and data center will share the same ethernet infrastructure. DCB works through the use of hardware based bandwidth allocation. This means that the hardware controls the flow of data through DCB.

DCB is nice because when you setup the hardware based flow control, you can determine which type of traffic gets a higher priority to the allocated bandwidth. This can be very useful for data that bypasses the operating system and accesses the network adapters directly (like virtualization can). DCB can work with different types of network adapters including Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet, Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI), or Fiber Channel over Ethernet (fCoE).

The reason that the IEEE has developed the DCB standard is because many third party and hardware manufacturers do not work together well. By having an industry standard of hardware based flow control protocol, many IT data centers can use DCB to make different vendors work together. Also, Windows Server 2022 makes it very easy to deploy and manage DCB. There are a couple of requirements that are needed when deploying DCB through Windows Server 2022;

■        The Ethernet adapters installed into the Windows Server 2022 systems must be DCB compatible.

■        The Hardware switches that are deployed to your infrastructure must also be DCB compatible.

DCB can be installed onto a Windows Server two ways; through Server Manager or through PowerShell. Here are the steps for both ways.

1. Right- click the Start button ➢ Control Panel ➢ Administrative Tools ➢ iSCSI Initiator.
2. If a dialog box appears, click Yes to start the service.
3. Click the Discovery tab.
4. In the Target Portals portion of the page, click Discover Portal.
5. Enter the IP address of the target portal and click OK.
6. The IP address of the target portal appears in the Target Portals box.
7. Click OK.

Internet Storage Name Service

Internet Storage Name Service (iSNS) allows for central registration of an iSCSI environment because it automatically discovers available targets on the network. The purpose of iSNS is to help find available targets on a large iSCSI network.

The Microsoft iSCSI initiator includes an iSNS client that is used to register with the iSNS. The iSNS feature maintains a database of clients that it has registered either through DCHP discovery or through manual registration. iSNS DHCP is available after the installation of the service, and it is used to allow iSNS clients to discover the location of the iSNS. However, if iSNS DHCP is not configured, iSNS clients must be registered manually with the iscsicli command.

To execute the command, launch a command prompt on a computer hosting the Microsoft iSCSI and type iscsicli addisnsserver server_name, where server_name is the name of the computer hosting iSNS. Exercise 11.8 walks you through the steps required to install the iSNS feature on Windows Server 2022, and then it explains the different tabs in iSNS.

EXERCISE 11.8

Installing the iSNS Feature

1. Choose Server Manager by clicking the Server Manager icon on the Taskbar.
2. Click number 2 ➢ Add Roles And Features.
3. Choose role- based or featured- based installation and click Next.
4. Choose your server and click Next.
5. Click Next on the Roles screen.
6. On the Select Features screen, choose the iSNS Server Service check box. Click Next.
7. On the Confirmation screen, click the Install button.
8. Click the Close button. Close Server Manager and reboot.
9. Log in and open the iSNS server under Administrative Tools.
10. Click the General tab. This tab displays the list of registered initiators and targets. In addition to their iSCSI qualified name, it lists storage node type (Target or Initiator), alias string, and entity identifier (the Fully Qualified Domain Name [FQDN] of the machine hosting the iSNS client).
11. Click the Discovery Domains tab. The purpose of Discovery Domains is to provide a way to separate and group nodes. This is similar to zoning in Fibre Channel. The following options are available on the Discovery Domains tab:

^■                 Create is used to create a new discovery domain.

^■                Refresh is used to repopulate the Discovery Domain drop- down list.

^■               Delete is used to delete the currently selected discovery domain.

^■        Add is used to add nodes that are already registered in iSNS to the currently selected discovery domain.

^■         Add New is used to add nodes by entering the iSCSI Qualified Name (iQN) of the node. These nodes do not have to be currently registered.

^■           Remove Used is used to remove selected nodes from the discovery domain.

12. Click the Discovery Domain Sets tab (see Figure 11.7). The purpose of discovery domain sets is to separate further discovery domains. Discovery domains can be enabled or disabled, giving administrators the ability to restrict further the visibility of all initiators and targets. The options on the Discovery Domain Sets tab are as follows:

^■        The Enable check box is used to indicate the status of the discovery domain sets and to turn them off and on.

^■        Create is used to create new discovery domain sets.

EXERCISE 11.8 (continued)

^■       Refresh is used to repopulate the Discovery Domain Sets drop- down list.

^■      Delete is used to delete the currently selected discovery domain set.

^■        Add is used to add discovery domains to the currently selected discovery domain set.

^■      Remove is used to remove selected nodes from the discovery domain sets.

FIGURE 11.7 Discovery Domain Tab

13. Close the iSNS server.

Implement Thin Provisioning and Trim

Thin provisioning and trim can be useful features that allow organizations to get the most out of their storage arrays. These solutions apply directly to a virtualized environment using virtual disks that are thin provisioned.

Thin provisioning is a way of providing what is known as just- in- time allocations. Blocks of data are written to disk only as they are used instead of zeroing out all of the blocks of data that have been allocated to the virtual disk configuration. Thin provisioning is tricky to manage properly because you could easily find yourself in a position where you have an over- provisioned environment because of over- allocation.

For example, you have 100 VMs that are all provisioned with 40 GB thin- provisioned virtual disks. Each VM is currently utilizing only 20 GB of the total 40 GB that has been allocated. The problem is that you have only 2 TB worth of storage. Without realizing it, you’ve over- provisioned your environment by 200 percent because of thin provisioning.

This is where trim comes in to help us manage thin provisioning. Trim automatically reclaims free space that is not being used. In addition to trim, Windows Server 2022 provides standardized notifications that will alert administrators when certain storage thresholds are crossed.

Fibre Channel

Fibre Channel storage devices are similar to iSCSI storage devices in that they both allow block- level access to their data sets and can provide MPIO policies with the proper hardware configurations. However, Fibre Channel requires a Fibre Channel HBA, fiber- optic cables, and Fibre Channel switches to connect to a storage device.

A World Wide Name (WWN) from the Fibre Channel HBA is used from the host and device so that they can communicate directly with each other, similar to using a NIC’s MAC address. In other words, a logical unit number (LUN) is presented from a Fibre Channel storage device to the WWN of the host’s HBA. Fibre Channel has been the preferred method of storage because of the available connection bandwidth between the storage and the host.

Fibre Channel devices support 1Gb/s, 2Gb/s, and 4Gb/s connections, and they soon will support 8Gb/s connections, but now that 10Gb/s Ethernet networks are becoming more prevalent in many datacenters, iSCSI can be a suitable alternative. It is important to consider that 10Gb/s network switches can be more expensive than comparable Fibre Channel switches.

N- Port Identification Virtualization (NPIV) is a Fibre Channel facility allowing multiple n- port IDs to share a single physical N- Port. This allows multiple Fibre Channel initiators to occupy a single physical port. By using a single port, this eases hardware requirements in storage area network (SAN) design.

Multipath I/O (MPIO) is associated with high availability because a computer will be able to use a solution with redundant physical paths connected to a storage device. Thus, if one path fails, an application will continue to run because it can access the data across the other path.

The MPIO software provides the functionality needed for the computer to take advantage of the redundant storage paths. MPIO solutions can also load- balance data traffic across both paths to the storage device, virtually eliminating bandwidth bottlenecks to the computer. What allows MPIO to provide this functionality is the new native Microsoft Device Specific Module (Microsoft DSM). The Microsoft DSM is a driver that communicates with storage devices— iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or SAS— and it provides the chosen load- balancing policies. Windows Server 2022 supports the following load- balancing policies:

Failover In a failover configuration, there is no load balancing. There is a primary path that is established for all requests and subsequent standby paths. If the primary path fails, one of the standby paths will be used.

Failback This is similar to failover in that it has primary and standby paths. However, with failback you designate a preferred path that will handle all process requests until it fails, after which the standby path will become active until the primary reestablishes a connection and automatically regains control.

Round Robin In a round- robin configuration, all available paths will be active and will be used to distribute I/O in a balanced round- robin fashion.

Round Robin with a Subset of Paths In this configuration, a specific set of paths will be designated as a primary set and another as standby paths. All I/O will use the primary set of paths in a round- robin fashion until all of the sets fail. Only at this time will the standby paths become active.

Dynamic Least Queue Depth In a dynamic least queue depth configuration, I/O will route to the path with the least number of outstanding requests.

Weighted Path In a weighted path configuration, paths are assigned a numbered weight. I/O requests will use the path with the least weight— the higher the number, the lower the priority.

Exercise 11.6 demonstrates the process of installing the Microsoft MPIO feature for  Windows Server 2022.

EXERCISE 11.6

Installing Microsoft MPIO

1. Choose Server Manager by clicking the Server Manager icon on the Taskbar.
2. Click number 2, Add Roles And Features.
3. Choose role- based or feature- based installation and click Next.
4. Choose your server and click Next.
5. Click Next on the Roles screen.
6. On the Select Features screen, choose the Multipath I/O check box (see Figure 11.6). Click Next.

7. On the Confirm Installation Selections page, verify that Multipath I/O is the feature that will be installed. Click Install.

8. After the installation completes, the Installation Results page appears stating that the server must be rebooted to finish the installation process.

9. Click Close.

10. Restart the system.

Typically, most storage arrays work with the Microsoft DSM. However, some hardware vendors require DSM software that is specific to their products. Third- party DSM software is installed through the MPIO utility as follows:

1. Open Administrative Tools ➪ MPIO.
2. Select the DSM Install tab.
3. Add the path of the INF file and click Install.

Configuring iSCSI Target

Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) is an interconnect protocol used to establish and manage a connection between a computer (initiator) and a storage device (target). It does this by using a connection through TCP port 3260, which allows it to be used over a LAN, a WAN, or the Internet. Each initiator is identified by its iSCSI Qualified Name (iqn), and it is used to establish its connection to an iSCSI target. iSCSI was developed to allow block-l evel access to a storage device over a network. This

is different from using a network attached storage (NAS) device that connects through the use of Common Internet File System (CIFS) or Network File System (NFS).

Block- level access is important to many applications that require direct access to storage. Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL are examples of applications that require direct access to storage.

By being able to leverage the existing network infrastructure, iSCSI was also developed as an alternative to Fibre Channel storage by alleviating the additional hardware costs associated with a Fibre Channel storage solution.

iSCSI also has another advantage over Fibre Channel in that it can provide security for

the storage devices. iSCSI can use Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP or MS- CHAP) for authentication and Internet Protocol Security (Ipsec) for encryption. Windows Server 2022 is able to connect an iSCSI storage device out of the box with no additional software needing to be installed. This is because the Microsoft iSCSI initiator is built into the operating system.

Windows Server 2022 supports two different ways to initiate an iSCSI session.

■        Through the native Microsoft iSCSI software initiator that resides on Windows Server 2022

■        Using a hardware iSCSI host bus adapter (HBA) that is installed in the computer

Both the Microsoft iSCSI software initiator and iSCSI HBA present an iSCSI qualified name that identifies the host initiator. When the Microsoft iSCSI software initiator is used, the CPU utilization may be as much as 30 percent higher than on a computer with a hardware iSCSI HBA. This is because all of the iSCSI process requests are handled within the operating system. Using a hardware iSCSI HBA, process requests can be offloaded to the adapter, thus freeing the CPU overhead associated with the Microsoft iSCSI software initiator. However, iSCSI HBAs can be expensive, whereas the Microsoft iSCSI software initiator is free.

It is worthwhile to install the Microsoft iSCSI software initiator and perform load testing to see how much overhead the computer will have prior to purchasing an iSCSI HBA or HBAs, depending on the redundancy level. Exercise 11.7 explains how to install and configure an iSCSI connection.

The ability to support drive sets and arrays using Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) technology is built into Windows Server 2022. RAID can be used to enhance data performance, or it can be used to provide fault tolerance to maintain data integrity in case of a hard disk failure. Windows Server 2022 supports three types of RAID technologies: RAID- 0, RAID- 1, and RAID- 5.

RAID- 0 (Disk Striping) Disk striping is using two or more volumes on independent disks created as a single striped set. There can be a maximum of 32 disks. In a striped set, data is divided into blocks that are distributed sequentially across all of the drives in the set. With RAID-0  disk striping, you get very fast read and write performance because multiple blocks of data can be accessed from multiple drives simultaneously. However, RAID- 0 does not offer the ability to maintain data integrity during a single disk failure. In other words, RAID- 0 is not fault tolerant; a single disk event will cause the entire striped set to be lost, and it will have to be re- created through some type of recovery process, such as a tape backup.

RAID- 1 (Disk Mirroring) Disk mirroring is two logical volumes on two separate identical disks created as a duplicate disk set. Data is written on two disks at the same time; that way, in the event of a disk failure, data integrity is maintained and available. Although this fault tolerance gives administrators data redundancy, it comes with a price because it diminishes the amount of available storage space by half. For example, if an administrator wants to create a 300 GB mirrored set, they would have to install two 300 GB hard drives into the server, thus doubling the cost for the same available space.

RAID- 5 Volume (Disk Striping with Parity) With a RAID- 5 volume, you have the ability to use a minimum of three disks and a maximum of 32 disks. RAID- 5 volumes allow data to be striped across all of the disks with an additional block of error-  correction called parity. Parity is used to reconstruct the data in the event of a disk failure. RAID- 5 has slower write performance than the other RAID types because the OS must calculate the parity information for each stripe that is written, but the read

performance is equivalent to a stripe set, RAID- 0, because the parity information is not read. Like RAID- 1, RAID- 5 comes with additional cost considerations. For every RAID- 5 set, roughly an entire hard disk is consumed for storing the parity information.

For example, a minimum RAID- 5 set requires three hard disks, and if those disks are 300 GB each, approximately 600 GB of disk space is available to the OS and 300 GB is consumed by parity information, which equates to 33.3 percent of the available space. Similarly, in a five- disk RAID- 5 set of 300 GB disks, approximately 1,200 GB of disk space is available to the OS, which means that 20 percent of the total available space is consumed by the parity information. The words roughly and approximately are used when calculating disk space because a 300 GB disk will really be only about 279 GB of space. This is because vendors define a gigabyte as 1 billion bytes, but the OS defines it as 2³⁰ (1,073,741,824) bytes. Also, remember that file systems and volume managers have overhead as well.

Software RAID is a nice option for a small company, but hardware RAID is definitely a better option if the money is available.

Table 11.1 breaks down the various aspects of the supported RAID types in Window Server 2022.

TABLE 11.1 Supported RAID- level properties in Windows Server 2022

RAID Level	RAID Type	Fault Tolerant	Minimum Number of Advantages                                        Disks	Maximum Number of Disks
0	Disk striping	No	Fast reads and writes                      2	32
1	Disk mirroring	Yes	Data redundancy and faster 2 writes than RAID- 5	2
5	Disk striping with parity	Yes	Data redundancy with less      3 overhead and faster reads than RAID- 1	32

Creating RAID Sets

Now that you understand the concepts of RAID and how to use it, you can look at the creation of RAID sets in Windows Server 2022. The process of creating a RAID set is the same as the process for creating a simple or spanned volume set, except for the minimum disk requirements associated with each RAID type.

Creating a mirrored volume set is basically the same as creating a volume set except that you will select New Mirrored Volume. It is after the disk select wizard appears that you’ll begin to see the difference. Since a new mirrored volume is being created, the volume requires two disks.

During the disk select process, if only one disk is selected, the Next button will be unavailable because the disk minimum has not been met. Refer to Figure 11.4 to view the Select Disks page of the New Mirrored Volume Wizard during the creation of a new mirrored volume, and notice that the Next button is not available.

FIGURE 11.4 Select Disks page of the New Mirrored Volume Wizard

To complete the process, you must select a second disk by highlighting the appropriate disk and adding it to the volume set. Once the second disk has been added, the Next button is available to complete the mirrored volume set creation.

A drive letter will have to be assigned, and the volume will need to be formatted. The new mirrored volume set will appear in Disk Management. In Figure 11.5, notice that the capacity of the volume equals one disk even though two disks have been selected.

To create a RAID-5  volume set, you use the same process that you use to create a mirrored volume set. The only difference is that a RAID- 5 volume set requires that a minimum of three disks be selected to complete the volume creation. The process is simple: Select New RAID- 5 Volume, select the three disks that will be used in the volume set, assign a drive letter, and format the volume.

FIGURE 11.5 Newly created mirrored volume set

With the ever-i ncreasing demands of storage, mount points are used to surpass the limitation of 26 drive letters and to join two volumes into a folder on a separate physical disk drive. A mount point allows you to configure a volume to be accessed from a folder on another existing disk.

Through Disk Management, a mount point folder can be assigned to a drive instead of using a drive letter, and it can be used on basic or dynamic volumes that are formatted with NTFS. However, mount point folders can be created only on empty folders within a volume. Additionally, mount point folder paths cannot be modified; they can be removed only once they have been created. Exercise 11.5 shows the steps to create a mount point.

EXERCISE 11.5

Creating Mount Points

1. Right-click the Start button and select Disk Management.
2. Right- click the volume where the mount point folder will be assigned, and select Change Drive Letter And Paths.
3. Click Add.
4. Either type the path to an empty folder on an NTFS volume or click Browse to select or make a new folder for the mount point.

When you explore the drive, you’ll see the new folder created. Notice that the icon indicates that it is a mount point.

A volume set is created from volumes that span multiple drives by using the free space from those drives to construct what will appear to be a single drive. The following list includes the various types of volume sets and their definitions:

■           Simple volume uses only one disk or a portion of a disk.

■        Spanned volume is a simple volume that spans multiple disks, with a maximum of 32. Use a spanned volume if the volume needs are too great for a single disk.

■        Striped volume stores data in stripes across two or more disks. A striped volume gives you fast access to data but is not fault tolerant, nor can it be extended or mirrored. If one disk in the striped set fails, the entire volume fails.

■        Mirrored volume duplicates data across two disks. This type of volume is fault tolerant because if one drive fails, the data on the other disk is unaffected.

■        RAID- 5 volume stores data in stripes across three or more disks. This type of volume is fault tolerant because if a drive fails, the data can be re- created from the parity off of the remaining disk drives. Operating system files and boot files cannot reside on the RAID- 5 disks.

Exercise 11.4 illustrates the procedure for creating a volume set.

EXERCISE 11.4

Creating a Volume Set

1. Open Computer Management under Administrative Tools.
2. Select Disk Management.
3. Select and right- click a disk that has unallocated space. If there are no disk drives available for a particular volume set, that volume set will be grayed out as a selectable option. In this exercise, you’ll choose a spanned volume set, but the process after the volume set selection is the same regardless of which kind you choose. The only thing that differs is the number of disk drives chosen.
4. The Welcome page of the New Spanned Volume Wizard appears and explains the type of volume set chosen. Click Next.
5. The Select Disks page appears. Select the disk that will be included with the volume set and click Add. Repeat this process until all of the desired disks have been added. Click Next.
6. The Assign Drive Letter Or Path page appears. From here you can select the desired drive letter for the volume, mount the volume in an empty NTFS folder, or choose not to assign a drive letter. The new volume is labeled as E. Click Next.
7. The Format Volume page appears. Choose to format the new volume. Click Next.

EXERCISE 11.4 (continued)

• Click Finish.
• If the disks have not been converted to dynamic, you will be asked to convert the disks. Click Yes.

The new volume will appear as a healthy spanned dynamic volume with the new available disk space of the new volume set.

Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2022

Windows Server 2022 includes a technology called Storage Spaces. Windows Server 2022 allows an administrator to virtualize storage by grouping disks into storage pools. These storage pools can then be turned into virtual disks called storage spaces.

The Storage Spaces technology allows an administrator to have a highly available, scalable, low- cost, and flexible solution for both physical and virtual installations. Storage Spaces allow you to set up this advantage on either a single server or in scalable ultimode mode. So, before going any further, let’s look at these two terms that you must understand.

Storage Pools Storage pools are a group of physical disks that allows an administrator to delegate administration, expand disk sizes, and group disks together.

Storage Spaces Storage spaces allow an administrator to take free space from storage pools and create virtual disks called storage spaces. Storage spaces give administrators the ability to have precise control, resiliency, and storage tiers.

Storage spaces and storage pools can be managed by an administrator through the use of the Windows Storage Management API, Server Manager, or Windows PowerShell.

One of the advantages of using the Storage Spaces technology is the ability to set up resiliency. There are three types of Storage Space resiliency: mirror, parity, and simple (no resiliency).

Fault tolerance (RAID) is discussed in detail in the “Redundant Array of Independent Disks” section.

Now that you understand what storage spaces and storage pools do, let’s take a look at some of the other advantages of using these features in Windows Server 2022.

Availability One advantage to the Storage Spaces technology is the ability to fully integrate the storage space with failover clustering. This advantage allows administrators to achieve service deployments that are continuously available. Administrators have the ability to set up storage pools to be clustered across multiple nodes within a single cluster.

Tiered Storage The Storage Spaces technology allows virtual disks to be created with a two- tier storage setup. For data that is used often, you have an SSD tier; for data that is not used often, you use an HDD tier. The Storage Spaces technology will automatically transfer data at a subfile level between the two different tiers based on how often the data is used. Because of tiered storage, performance is greatly increased for data that is used most often, and data that is not used often still gets the advantage of being stored on a low- cost storage option.

Delegation One advantage of using storage pools is that administrators have the ability to control access by using access control lists (ACLs). What is nice about this advantage is that each storage pool can have its own unique access control lists. Storage pools are fully integrated with Active Directory Domain Services.

Although the features mentioned in the previous section likely compel most system administrators to use NTFS, additional reasons make using it mandatory. The most important reason is that the Active Directory data store must reside on an NTFS partition. Therefore, before you begin installing Active Directory, make sure you have at least one NTFS partition available. Also, be sure you have a reasonable amount of disk space available (at least 4GB). Because the size of the Active Directory data store will grow as you add objects to it, also be sure that you have adequate space for the future.

Exercise 11.1 shows you how to use the administrative tools to view and modify disk configuration.

Before you make any disk configuration changes, be sure you completely understand their potential effects; then perform the test in a lab environment and make sure you have good, verifiable backups handy. Changing partition sizes and adding and removing partitions can result in a total loss of all information on one or more partitions.

If you want to convert an existing partition from FAT or FAT32 to NTFS, you need to use the CONVERT command- line utility. For example, the following command converts the C: partition from FAT to NTFS: CONVERT c: /fs:ntfs

EXERCISE 11.1

Viewing Disk Configurations

1. Right click the Start button and then choose Disk Management (shown in Figure 11.2).

FIGURE 11.2 Computer Management

The Disk Management program shows you the logical and physical disks that are currently configured on your system. Note that information about the size of each partition is also displayed (in the Capacity column).

2. To see the available options for modifying partition settings, right- click any of the disks or partitions and choose Properties. This step is optional.

3. Close Computer Management.

Storage in Windows Server 2022

As an IT administrator, you’ll need to ask many questions before you start setting up a server. What type of disks should be used? What type of RAID sets should be made? What type of hardware platform should be purchased? These are all questions you must ask when planning for storage in a Windows Server 2022 server. In the following sections, I will answer these questions so that you can make the best decisions for storage in your network’s environment.

Initializing Disks

To begin, I must discuss how to add disk drives to a server. Once a disk drive has been physically installed, it must be initialized by selecting the type of partition. Different types of partition styles are used to initialize disks: Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT).

MBR has a partition table that indicates where the partitions are located on the disk drive, and with this particular partition style, only volumes up to 2 TB (2,048 GB) are supported. An MBR drive can have up to four primary partitions or can have three primary partitions and one extended partition that can be divided into unlimited logical drives.

Windows Server 2022 can only boot off an MBR disk unless it is based on the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI); then it can boot from GPT. An Itanium server is an example of an EFI- based system. GPT is not constrained by the same limitations as MBR. In fact, a GPT disk drive can support volumes of up to 18EB (18,874,368 million terabytes) and 128 partitions. As a result, GPT is recommended for disks larger than 2TB or disks used on Itanium- based computers. Exercise 11.2 demonstrates the process of initializing additional disk drives to an active computer running Windows Server 2022. If you’re not adding a new drive, then stop after step 4. I am completing this exercise using Computer Management, but you also can do this exercise using Server Manager.

EXERCISE 11.2

Initializing Disk Drives

1. Open Computer Management under Administrative Tools.
2. Select Disk Management.
3. After disk drives have been installed, right- click Disk Management and select  Rescan Disks.
4. A pop- up box appears indicating that the server is scanning for new disks. If you did not add a new disk, go to step 9.
5. After the server has completed the scan, the new disk appears as Unknown.
6. Right- click the Unknown disk, and select Initialize Disk.
7. A pop- up box appears asking for the partition style. For this exercise, choose MBR.
8. Click OK.
9. Close Computer Management.

The disk will now appear online as a basic disk with unallocated space.

Configuring Basic and Dynamic Disks

Windows Server 2022 supports two types of disk configurations: basic and dynamic. Basic disks are divided into partitions and can be used with previous versions of Windows. Dynamic disks are divided into volumes and can be used with Windows 2000 Server and newer releases.

When a disk is initialized, it is automatically created as a basic disk, but when a new fault- tolerant (RAID) volume set is created, the disks in the set are converted to dynamic disks. Fault- tolerance features and the ability to modify disks without having to reboot the server are what distinguish dynamic disks from basic disks.

Fault tolerance (RAID) is discussed in detail later in this chapter in the “Redundant Array of Independent Disks” section.

A basic disk can simply be converted to a dynamic disk without loss of data. When a basic disk is converted, the partitions are automatically changed to the appropriate volumes. However, converting a dynamic disk back to a basic disk is not as simple. First, all the data on the dynamic disk must be backed up or moved. Then, all the volumes on the dynamic disk have to be deleted. The dynamic disk can then be converted to a basic disk. Partitions and logical drives can be created, and the data can be restored.

The following are actions that can be performed on basic disks:

■         Formatting partitions

■          Marking partitions as active

■           Creating and deleting primary and extended partitions

■          Creating and deleting logical drives

■           Converting from a basic disk to a dynamic disk

The following are actions that can be performed on dynamic disks:

■           Creating and deleting simple, striped, spanned, mirrored, or RAID- 5 volumes

■           Removing or breaking a mirrored volume

■          Extending simple or spanned volumes

■          Repairing mirrored or RAID- 5 volumes

■    Converting from a dynamic disk to a basic disk after deleting all volumes In Exercise 11.3, you’ll convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk.

EXERCISE 11.3

Converting a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk

1. Open Computer Management under Administrative Tools.
2. Select Disk Management.
3. Right- click a basic disk that you want to convert and select Convert To Dynamic Disk, as shown in Figure 11.3.

EXERCISE 11.3 (continued)

4. The Convert To Dynamic Disk dialog box appears. From here, select all of the disks that you want to convert to dynamic disks. In this exercise, only one disk will be converted.

5. Click OK.

6. The Convert To Dynamic Disk dialog box changes to the Disks To Convert dialog box and shows the disk/disks that will be converted to dynamic disks.

7. Click Convert.

8. Disk Management will warn that if you convert the disk to dynamic, you will not be able to start the installed operating system from any volume on the disk (except the current boot volume). Click Yes.

9. Close Computer Management.

The converted disk will now show as Dynamic in Disk Management.