Administering volume sets and raid arrays using volumes,windows nt

1. Administering Volume sets and RAID
arrays using volumes and volume sets
(Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Data Administration)
Purushottam Dahal
8TH Semester ,BIM
(ITC 301:System Administration-Win NT)
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2. When you work with Microsoft Windows Server 2003, you'll often need to perform advanced disk setup
procedures, such as creating a volume set or setting up a redundant array of independent disks (RAID)
array.
 With a volume set , you can create a single volume that spans multiple drives. Users can access this
volume as if it were a single drive, regardless of how many drives the actual volume is spread over. A
volume that's on a single drive is referred to as a simple volume . A volume that spans multiple drives is
referred to as a spanned volume .
 With RAID arrays , you can protect important business data and, sometimes, improve the
performance of drives. A RAID is a redundant array of independent disks. Windows Server 2003
supports three different levels of RAID: 0, 1, and 5. RAID arrays are implemented as mirrored, striped,
and striped with parity volumes .
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3.  Volumes sets and RAID arrays are created on dynamic drives and are only accessible to
Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. Because of this, if you dual boot a computer to
a different or previous version of Windows, the dynamic drives are unavailable. However,
computers running previous versions of Windows can access the drives over the network ”just
like any other network drive.
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4. Using Volumes and Volume Sets
 You create and manage volumes in much the same way as partitions. A volume is a drive
section that you can use to store data directly.
 Note
 With spanned and striped volumes on basic disks, you can delete the volume but you can't
create or extend volumes. With mirrored volumes on basic disks, you can delete, repair, and
resync the mirror. You can also break the mirror. With striped with parity volumes (RAID 5) on
basic disks, you can delete or repair the volume but you can't create new volumes.
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5. Volume Basics
Disk Management color -codes volumes by type, much like partitions. volumes also have a specific
 Layout :Volume layouts include simple, spanned, mirrored, striped, and striped with parity.
 Type :Volumes always have the type dynamic.
 File System :As with partitions, each volume can have a different file system type, such as FAT,
FAT32, or NTFS file system.
 Status : The state of the drive. In Graphical View, the state is shown as Healthy, Failed
Redundancy, and so on. The next section discusses volume sets and the various states you
might see.
 Capacity :Total storage size of the drive.
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6. Creating Volumes and Volume Sets
You create volumes and volume sets by completing the following steps:
 1.In the Disk Management Graphical View, right-click an area marked Unallocated on a dynamic disk
and then choose New Volume. This starts the New Volume Wizard. Read the welcome page and then
click Next.
 2.Select Simple to create a volume on a single disk or Spanned to create a volume set on multiple
disks. You can format simple volumes as FAT, FAT32, or NTFS. To make management easier, you should
format volumes that span multiple disks as NTFS. NTFS formatting allows you to expand the volume set
if necessary.
Tip
If you find that you need more space on a volume, you can extend simple and spanned volumes. You
do this by selecting an area of free space and adding it to the volume. You can extend a simple volume
within the same disk. You can also extend a simple volume onto other disks. When you do this, you create
a spanned volume, which you must format as NTFS.
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7.  3. You should see the Select Disks page . Use this page to select dynamic disks that are a part of
the volume and to size the volume segments on those disks.
 4. Available dynamic disks are shown in the Available list box. Select a disk in this list box, and
then click Add to add the disk to the Selected list box. If you make a mistake, you can remove
disks from the Selected list box by selecting the disk and then clicking Remove.
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8.  5.Select a disk in the Selected list box and then use the Select The Amount Of Space In MB
combo box to specify the size of the volume on the selected disk. The Maximum field shows
you the largest area of free space available on the selected disk. The Total Volume Size field
shows you the total disk space selected for use with the volume. Click Next.
Tip
Although you can size the volume set any way you want, you might want to take a moment to
consider how you'll use volume sets on the system. Simple and spanned volumes aren't fault
tolerant, and rather than creating one monstrous volume with all the available free space, you
might want to create several smaller volumes.
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9.  6.Specify whether you want to assign a drive letter or path . You use these options as follows :
 Assign The Following Drive Letter To assign a drive letter, choose this option, and then select an
available drive letter in the selection list provided.
 Mount In The Following Empty NTFS Folder To assign a drive path, choose this option, and then
type the path to an existing folder on an NTFS drive or click Browse to search for or create a
folder.
 Don't Assign A Drive Letter Or Drive Path To create the volume without assigning a drive letter or
path, choose this option. You can assign a drive letter or path later if necessary.
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10.  7. Determine whether the volume should be formatted. If you elect to format the volume, use the following fields to
set the formatting options:
 File System Specifies the file system type. The NTFS file system is the only option.
 Allocation Unit Size Specifies the cluster size for the file system. This is the basic unit in which disk space is allocated.
The default allocation unit size is based on the volume's size and is set dynamically prior to formatting. To override
this feature, you can set the allocation unit size to a specific value. If you use lots of small files, you might want to
use a smaller cluster size, such as 512 or 1024 bytes. With these settings, small files use less disk space.
 Volume Label Specifies a text label for the partition. This label is the partition's volume name .
 Perform A Quick Format Tells Windows to format without checking the partition for errors. With large partitions, this
option can save you a few minutes. However, it's more prudent to check for errors, which allows Disk Management
to mark bad sectors on the disk and lock them out.
 Enable File And Folder Compression Turns on compression for the disk. Compression is transparent to users and
compressed files can be accessed just like regular files. If you select this option, files and directories on this drive are
compressed automatically. For more information on compressing drives, files, and directories, see the section of
Chapter 11 entitled "Compressing Drives and Data."
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11.  8.Click Next and then click Finish. If you add volumes to a physical drive that contains the
Windows Server 2003 operating system, you might inadvertently change the boot volume's
number. Read the warning prompts and then make any necessary changes to the Boot.ini file
as described in Chapter 11 under "Updating the Boot Disk."
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12. Deleting Volumes and Volume Sets
 You delete all volumes using the same technique, whether they're simple, spanned, mirrored,
striped, or RAID 5 (striped with parity). Deleting a volume set removes the associated file system
and all associated data is lost. So before you delete a volume set you should back up any files
and directories that the volume set contains.
 You can't delete a volume that contains the system boot, or active paging files for Windows
Server 2003.
To delete volumes, follow these steps:
 1. In Disk Management, right-click any volume in the set and then choose Delete Volume. You
can't delete a portion of a spanned volume without deleting the entire volume.
 2. Confirm that you want to delete the volume by clicking Yes.
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13. Extending a Simple or Spanned Volume
 Windows Server 2003 provides several ways to extend NTFS volumes that aren't part of a mirror
set or striped set. You can extend a simple volume and you can extend existing volume sets.
When you extend volumes, you add free space to them.
 Caution
 When extending volume sets, there are many things you can't do. You can't extend boot or
system volumes. You can't extend volumes that use mirroring or striping. You can't extend a
volume onto more than 32 disks, either. Additionally, you can't extend FAT or FAT32 volumes
”you must first convert them to NTFS. You can't extend simple or spanned volumes that were
upgraded from basic disks, either. As you work with volume sets, please keep these exceptions
in mind.
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14. To extend an NTFS volume
 1.In Disk Management, right-click the simple or spanned volume that you want to extend, and then
select Extend Volume. This starts the Extend Volume Wizard. Read the welcome page, and then click
Next.
 2.You can now select dynamic disks that are a part of the volume and size the volume segments on
those disks as described in Steps 3 “5 of the section of this chapter entitled "Creating Volumes and
Volume Sets." The size you set for Select The Amount of Space In MB is the amount of space that you
want to add to the volume, which is reflected in the Total Volume Size In Megabytes field. For
example, if you created a 200-MB volume and then set the Select The Amount Of Space In MB field
to 800, the total volume size would be 1000 MB.
Note
A volume set that spans multiple drives can't be mirrored or striped. Only simple volumes can be
mirrored or striped.
 Click Next and then click Finish.
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15. Managing Volumes
 You manage volumes much like you manage partitions.
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•Disk striping
•Two or more volumes , each on a separate drive, are configured as a striped set. Data is broken into
blocks, called stripes , and then written sequentially to all drives in the striped set.
•Speed/performance.
1
•Disk mirroring
•Two volumes on two drives are configured identically. Data is written to both drives. If one drive fails,
there's no data loss because the other drive contains the data. (Doesn't include disk striping.)
•Redundancy. Better write performance than disk striping with parity.
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•Disk striping with parity
•Uses three or more volumes, each on a separate drive, to create a striped set with parity error checking.
In the case of failure, data can be recovered.
•Fault tolerance with less overhead than mirroring. Better read performance than disk mirroring.
Raid
level

17. References
 http://flylib.com/books/en/3.201.1.81/1/ 2015-06-14
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18. THANK YOU
………..
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