Versions of Windows storage
Drive Extender allowed you to add extra hard drives to a pool of disks and use the pool as one big storage facility. Plus, you had the added feature of being able to select which shares you want to duplicate so that if a drive in your pool failed, then you would still have a copy of what was important to you. When adding disks to the pool you could choose Serial ATA (SATA), USB, FireWire, or IDE drives and they could all be different capacities. Imagine never running out of disk space. When you needed more space you just added another disk.
Then Microsoft released Windows Home Server 2011 and Drive Extender was removed. Needless to say, there was a lot of negative feedback heading Microsoft’s way after that, and many loyal fans of Drive Extender refused to upgrade to the latest OS just because of this wonderful missing part.
With the release of Windows 8 and Server 2012, Microsoft has added a new feature called Storage Spaces. Storage Spaces works and acts an awful lot like Drive Extender, but with many enhancements to help protect your data. Surely many of you think I’m crazy and should be pushing hardware RAID configurations like Mirroring or Striping with Parity, but I am not.
You should also know that not everyone needs to use Windows 8 Storage Spaces. Trust me, when I’m installing a new server for a customer I make sure I have the hardware level protection of RAID to help protect the data. But not every home or small business can afford a RAID Array or a SAN/NAS device.
What is Storage Spaces?
Storage Spaces allows you to create a pool of disks that can be easily expanded as your needs grow. The disks that make up the pool can be SATA, USB, or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and can be different capacities. This allows you to take the extra drives you may have left over from upgrades, and create a large storage area using the combined capacity of all of your old disks. Once disks are added to the pool they are no longer directly usable by the rest of Windows. They’ve been virtualized, or, dedicated to the pool in their entirely. We then create one or more Storage Spaces, each of which will show up to the operating system as a logical disk.
Fault tolerance or no fault tolerance?
When you think of RAID, you have fault tolerant levels of RAID and one level of RAID that is not fault tolerant. You have similar abilities with Storage Spaces. By using resiliency in Storage Spaces you will be duplicating your data across more than one drive which will cut your overall space available for storage. However, in almost all circumstances this is a sacrifice worth making to protect your photos, music and videos.
Simple Storage Spaces
A simple Storage Space is like RAID 0 where you can combine two or more drives into a logical drive. The data is distributed across the disks to increase performance but at the cost of fault tolerance or as the Three Musketeers would say “All for one, and one for all.” This means if one drive fails then all drives fail.
Two-way or three-way mirroring
RAID 1 allows you to store the same data on multiple disks, creating a mirrored image or copy of the data on two or more disks. With Storage Spaces you have two choices for mirroring your data: two or three-way mirroring. Two-way mirroring will store two copies of the data using two or more disks. If one of the disks storing your data fails you have another copy of the same data on a different drive in your pool. Three-way will store three copies of your data using five or more disks. This method will help if you have multiple drives that fail.
Parity
RAID 5 allows you to stripe your data across three or more drives and stripes a parity area across the same drive to help with a single disk failure. With Storage Spaces you can configure a parity mode to do a similar task. But using parity has higher performance overhead and Microsoft recommends that you use parity with large files that are rarely changed.
Thick or Thin?
This almost sounds like a pizza crust debate. With Storage Spaces we’re looking at provisioning or whether to divide all the space at once or as needed.
Thick provisioning
When you create a storage pool, thick provisioning will use all available space in the storage pool at the time of creation whether it is used or not. If you choose Thick Provisioning you are limited to the size of the physical disks in the pool, although you can add more disks later and expand the pool.
For example, if you create a 100 GB storage pool and use thick provisioning, you will allocate all 100 GB at the time of creation even though you may only be using 1 GB or 2 GB in the beginning.
Thin provisioning
When you create a storage pool, thin provisioning will allocate just what is needed at the time of creation and then grow as needed. You could actually consider the size you enter at the time of creation as a theoretic maximum limit which can be larger than what you have for physical capacity. For example, if you create 1 TB storage pool and use thin provisioning you will allocate 1 GB or 2 GB in the beginning and then the space will grow as needed until it hits the 1 TB limit you set. The advantage to using thin provisioning is that you don’t actually need to have 1 TB of physical disk space since you only use what you need. However, you will need to monitor disk space to make sure you do not run out of physical space or the disk will become unavailable until more space is added.
Does Storage Spaces replace backups?
As you can see Storage Spaces in Windows 8 can offer benefits over standard storage methods if you have multiple physical disks, especially if you want to maintain a running copy of your data in the event of a disk failure. However, Storage Spaces do not replace a good back up strategy. Think about what can happen when a power supply goes out, or a motherboard takes out the storage controller which corrupts the physical disks. A good Windows backup to either an external hard disk or the cloud is still something you need to strongly consider depending on how important your data is to you.
My choice was to use a two-way mirror backed up to a mirrored external drive. Remember, we’re talking about keeping the wife happy in the event of a hardware failure, but I also went two steps further just in case. I back up twice a month to a portable external drive that goes in a fire-proof box (if there is such a thing), and really import files are also stored in a cloud drive. You may call this overkill, but remember that imported photos of your kids growing up cannot be replaced if a drive failure happens.
So what do you think of Storage Pools and Storage Spaces? What backup methods do you use to protect your import data? Let us know.
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Will Windows 8 Excite or Frustrate Users?
A Quick Rundown on Windows 8
Unveiled on September 13, 2011 during the BUILD Developer Conference in Anaheim, California, Windows 8 is packaged as the grand overhaul and the radical makeover of Microsoft’s landmark OS since its flagship Windows 95.
Windows 8 has a five-menu option called Charms, consisting of Start, Devices, Share, Settings and Search functionalities for improved and easier interface navigation. More importantly, an essentially enhanced performance awaits Windows 8 users. The newly introduced OS is rich with fresh features designed to address customer feedback, including:
- “Metro” interface optimized for touch-browsing user experience, but works just as well with keyboard and a mouse
- Faster start-up mode or booting at 8 seconds
- Improved file synchronization and storage via Windows Live SkyDrive
- Overhauled Windows Task Manager for better diagnosing of app issues
- Augmented wireless connectivity for seamless switching between broadband networks and Wi-Fi
Windows 8 for Tablets
Making a mark in the tech world with its next generation hardware support, Windows 8 embraces ARM chipsets, x86 devices, sensors and touch that enable it to work across all platforms – from 10-inch laptops or tablets to 27-inch HD PC screens.
While a prevailing computer platform, Windows 8 aims to compete mainly with Apple iOS and Google Android, targeting a foothold in the tablet sector. True, Apple goes on to reign as the best in the sector, with the revolutionary iPad still waiting for a worthy competitor to dethrone it. When it comes to operating systems for larger devices, however, Microsoft leads with its Windows OS – unlike Apple and Google that are currently the top OS platforms for smaller, mobile phone devices.
Research authority Gartner, Inc. is projecting that tablets will be gaining massive support in the next 5 years, selling more than 300 million units in 2015. With an inclination toward the highly promising world of tablets, Microsoft is poised to capture a portion of the tablet market – more so that the hunt is on for alternatives to the Apple iPad and Apple iOS. To this end, Windows 8 is poised to potentially gain a large share in the tablets market.
With the imminent release of the cutting edge Windows 8, Microsoft is finding shelter in Dell, HP and Nokia, which are showing signs that they may be looking into selling tablets that run on Windows 8. Presumably, the top manufacturers are set to introduce their tablets after Windows 8 is officially launched.
Windows 8 Initial Reception
Microsoft is set to help software and hardware partners prepare new and existing applications, systems, and devices for this upcoming product.
On the night that the Windows 8 preview was made available, Microsoft recorded no less than 500,000 copies of the pre-beta version downloaded. Building up the excitement, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the initial reaction was as they had hoped it to be.
The Microsoft Server and Platform Team also shared customer reactions – proof positive that the soon-to-be-launched OS may just be delighting users, at least for now.
According to the Team, Windows 8 preview experiences were generally positive, noting how the forthcoming OS clearly offers an improved scope and scalability, readying data centers for support and agile provisioning. Others are sharing inputs about how its customer-centered designs are defining Windows 8, as it is Microsoft’s combined portable laptop, desktop and tablet OS for personal, gaming and business purposes.
Windows 8 is considered by preview testers as an “everywhere OS” that offers access to services practically across computer and next-generation computing devices. In this respect, Windows 8’s versatility may be worth the attention.
Pointing out the bad in Windows 8, developers at the BUILD conference bring up the “sandboxing between Desktop and Metro”, as reportedly no cross-over may be expected, except that the old Windows and the new UI will be supporting apps separately. In the enterprise arena, business users may also find getting used to the Metro UI somewhat of a chore.
A Quick Peek at Predecessors’ Performances: Windows 7 and Vista
Windows 7, the latest release of Microsoft Windows, enjoyed a generally warm reception from users, earning mostly positive reviews. Launched on July 22, 2009, Windows 7 became the top grossing pre-ordered product at Amazon.co.uk, surpassing its less-liked predecessor Windows Vista.
During the Windows 8 preview, Microsoft touted a Windows 7 milestone: the Windows 7 sales had reached 450 million since its official release in 2009 – or some 650,000 licenses sold per day – with business deployments continuing to accelerate. With its recent sales figures, Windows 7 is trumping the 10-year-old Windows XP as the most widely used Microsoft OS.
Microsoft called the Windows 7 release significant in gaining back the credibility that has been marred by the missteps that surrounded the earlier OS, Windows Vista, which – just two years after its official release in 2006 – was a spot shy to being an all-time technology flop in a list compiled by InfoTech. Restrictive licensing, user account, control technology, cluttered drivers and complex hardware requirements became targets of criticism and frustrated business users and customers.
Windows 8, on the other hand, is “the best of Windows 7, only better,” touting improved performance, privacy, security and reliability – all while reducing required memory.
The Not-so-final Verdict
Microsoft’s latest attempt to diversify the user experience may stir controversy among traditional Windows users. On the flip side, Windows 8 – in catering to laptops, desktops, tablets and similar mobile devices all at the same time – may be steering modern computing and digital living toward a new dimension. With Windows 8 yet to be fully tried and tested, however, questions are hounding the reinvention. Rightfully so, actual user experience may prove to unearth a completely different story.
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