MD-100 Windows Client

Learning Path 5: Configure

storage on Windows clients

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

 Manage storage on Windows clients

Learning
Path Maintain disks and volumes
Agenda
Implement Storage Spaces

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Module 1: Manage storage on Windows
clients

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Module 1: Manage storage on Windows clients
• Understand storage options
• Examine network and cloud storage options
• Describe MBR and GPT paritions
• Describe dynamic disks
• Explore disk management tools
• Describe simple volumes
• Compare mirrored, spanned and striped volumes
• Manage existing volumes

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Understand storage options
Local hard disk:
• SSD
• Hard disk drive

Virtual hard disk:

• .vhd (up to 2 TB)
• .vhdx (up to 64 TB)

Server-based storage:
• File server
• NAS
• SAN

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Examine network and cloud storage options

NAS
SAN

NAS device Servers

Local
Area
Network Switches
(Ethernet)

File-level access
(CIFS, NFS)
File server
Network Storage devices

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Describe MBR and GPT paritions

MBR disk: GPT disk:

• Contains the partition table for the disk and • Contains an array of partition entries
a small amount of executable code called describing the start and end LBA of each
the master boot code partition on a disk
• Is on the first sector of the hard disk and is • Supports up to 128 partitions and a
created when a disk is partitioned theoretical 18 exabyte size
• Maximum four partitions of 2 TB each • Enhances reliability
• Supports boot disks on 64-bit Windows
operating systems and UEFI systems

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Describe dynamic disks
Consists of multidisk volumes:
• Spanned
• Striped
• Mirrored

Can contain up to 1024 volumes

Can convert from basic disk without data loss

Requires all volumes to be deleted when converting to basic disk

Can be managed by using DiskPart or Disk Management:

• There are no Windows PowerShell cmdlets for managing dynamic disks

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Explore disk management tools
Disk Management snap-in:
• GUI
• Manage disks and volumes, both basic and
dynamic,locally or on remote computers
• Simple partition creation

DiskPart:
• Scriptable command-line tool
• Create scripts to automate disk-related tasks
• Always runs locally

Windows PowerShell:
• Has native disk management commands
• Can be used to script disk-related tasks

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Describe simple volumes

Simple volume that encompasses

available free space from a single,
basic, or dynamic hard disk drive

Can be extended if contiguous

space is free on the same disk

If extending into noncontiguous

space, the disk will be converted
to dynamic if it is a basic disk

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Compare mirrored, spanned and striped volumes

• Join areas of unallocated space on

disks into a single logical disk
• Mirrored:
‒ Disk space is allocated once and used
simultaneously
• Spanned:
‒ Disk space is added and used
sequentially
• Striped:
‒ Disk space is allocated once and used
equally across every physical disk in the
striped set

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Manage existing volumes
• Resize a volume to create additional, unallocated space to use for
data or apps on a new volume.
• Shrink simple and spanned dynamic disks to:
• Extend a simple volume on the same disk
• Extend a simple volume to include unallocated space on other disks on the
same computer
• Before shrinking:
• Defragment the disk
• Ensure that the volume you want to shrink does not contain any page files

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Knowledge
Check

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Module 2: Maintain disks and volumes

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Module 2: Maintain disks and volumes
• Monitor storage usage
• Understand disk optimization
• Explore file and folder compression
• What are disk quotas?

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Monitor storage usage
• Presents an overview of storage usage by:
‒ Drive (internal, external, and OneDrive)
‒ 13 categories including System, Apps, Music, and
Pictures
• Enables you to choose the drive to which you
want to save new files, such as:
‒ Apps
‒ Music
‒ Documents
‒ Videos
‒ Pictures
• Storage Sense can automatically free up space

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Understand disk optimization

• Defragmentation not needed on SSDs.

‒ Windows Auto-Detects Disk Type
‒ Optimize will run TRIM on SSDs
• Disk fragmentation on HDDs can:
‒ Consist of both fragmented files and
fragmented free space
‒ Lead to poor performance of a disk
subsystem
• Default settings are usually sufficient.

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Explore file and folder compression
The NTFS file system uses NTFS file
compression to compress files, folders, and
volumes:
• Uses compression to save disk space
• Does not use compression for system files and folders
• Compression is configured as an NTFS attribute
• NTFS calculates disk space based on uncompressed file
size
• Applications that open a compressed file only see the
uncompressed data

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Knowledge
Check

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Module 3: Implement Storage Spaces

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Module 3: Implement Storage Spaces
• Explore Storage Spaces
• Examine features of Storage Spaces
• Examine scenarios for Storage Spaces

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Explore Storage Spaces

• Use Storage Spaces to add physical disks of

any type and size to a storage pool, and then
create highly available virtual disks from the
storage pool
• To create a storage space, you need the
following:
• One or more physical disks
• Storage pool that includes the disks
• Storage space that is created with disks from
the storage pool
• Disk drives that are based on storage spaces

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Examine features of Storage Spaces

Feature Options
Storage layout • Simple
• Two-way or three-way mirror
• Parity

Provisioning schemes • Thin vs. fixed provisioning

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Examine scenarios for Storage Spaces
• Thin provisioning scenario:
‒ Easier storage growth
‒ Add disks when the need arises

• Reliable storage scenario:

‒ Fault tolerance
‒ No data loss

• High-performance scenario:
‒ Parity resilience gives better performance with SSDs
‒ Usable for video editing and other high disk I/O
scenarios

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Knowledge
Check

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Practice Labs

Managing Storage Creating a Storage Space

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Learning Path Review

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.