Windows 7 / Networking

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Creating Fault-Tolerant Volumes Using Disk Management

Windows Server 2008 R2 supports fault-tolerant disk arrays configured and managed on a RAID disk controller or configured within the operating system using dynamic disks. To create arrays using a RAID controller, refer to the manufacturer's documentation and use the appropriate disk utilities. To create a fault-tolerant volume within the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system using the Disk Management snap-in, perform the following steps:

1. Log on to the Windows Server 2008 R2 system with an account with administrator privileges.
2. Click Start, click All Programs, click Administrative Tools, and select Server Manager.
3. In the tree pane, double-click the Storage node, and select Disk Management.
4. In the tasks pane, verify that each of the disks that will be part of the fault-tolerant volume is listed as online. If the disks are not online or initialized, perform the steps in the previous section, "Adding a New Disk to Windows," before proceeding.
   NOTE: If the disks that will be members of the fault-tolerant array are not dynamic, when the fault-tolerant volume is created, the wizard can convert the disks as part of the process.
5. After all of the necessary disks are online and initialized, they should be converted to dynamic disk using the steps in the preceding section, "Converting Basic Disks to Dynamic Disks." Once all of the disks are ready, right-click any of the disks and select either New Mirrored Volume or New RAID-5 Volume to create a fault-tolerant volume. For this example, we will be creating a RAID-5 volume, but the steps would be the same for a spanned or striped volume.
   NOTE: To create a striped or RAID-5 volume, a minimum of three disks are required.
6. After selecting New RAID-5 Volume, a New RAID-5 Volume window opens; click Next on the Welcome page.
7. The disk that was right-clicked will already be selected. For each remaining disk that will be part of the RAID-5 volume, select the disk in the Available section, and click the Add button to move it to the Selected section. For this example, we will create a RAID-5 volume using disks two through seven.
8. After all the necessary disks are listed in the Selected section, unless only a section of the disk will be used in the volume, the entire disk space will be used. Click Next to continue.
9. On the Assign Drive Letter or Path page, select the drive letter to assign or browse to a folder location to mount the volume into an empty folder, and then click Next.
10. On the Format Volume page, accept the defaults to format the volume as NTFS, accept the default allocation size, and type in the volume label as required to easily identify the drive in Disk Manager, diskpart.exe, and Explorer. Uncheck the Perform a Quick Format check box, and click Next.
    TIP: When you're formatting RAID-5 volumes, perform a complete format to avoid loss of disk performance later when data is first copied to the volume.
11. On the Completing the New RAID-5 Volume Wizard page, review the settings and click Finish to create and format the volume.
12. If any of the disks were not previously converted to dynamic disks before the start of the volume creation, a window opens to confirm that all disks will be converted; click the Yes button to accept the conversion of the necessary disks.

Because a quick format was not selected, the time it takes to format the volume might be extensive, so please plan accordingly.

Creating a Fault-Tolerant Volume Using Diskpart.exe

This section provides step-by-step instructions for creating the same RAID-5 volume as in the preceding section using diskpart.exe. For reference, these steps will be used to converts disks 2 through 7 to dynamic disks, create a RAID-5 volume using the entire disk, add a volume label, format the drive as NTFS, and assign a drive letter to the volume. As a prerequisite, each of the disks needs to already be initialized using Disk Manager. To create a fault-tolerant RAID-5 volume using diskpart.exe, perform the following steps:

1. Log on to the Windows Server 2008 R2 system with an account with administrator privileges.
2. Click Start, click All Programs, click Administrative Tools, and select Server Manager.
3. In the tree pane, double-click the Storage node, and select Disk Management.
4. In the tasks pane, verify that each of the disks that will be part of the fault-tolerant volume is initialized and listed as dynamic.
5. Any disk that is listed as unknown and offline, right-click the disk, and select Online. Repeat for each disk that will be part of the volume.
6. Any disk that is listed as not initialized, right-click the disk, and select Initialize Disk. Repeat for each disk that will be part of the volume.
7. Close Disk Manager.
8. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, and double-click the Command Prompt shortcut. Each of the remaining steps will be typed in the command prompt window.
9. Type diskpart.exe and press Enter.
10. Type List Disk and press Enter. Note which disks are listed as online and dynamic.
11. Based on the disk configuration detailed, disk 6 and disk 7 need to be converted to dynamic disks.
12. In the Command Prompt window, type select disk 6 and press Enter.
13. In the Command Prompt window, type convert dynamic and press Enter.
14. In the Command Prompt window, type select disk 7 and press Enter.
15. In the Command Prompt window, type convert dynamic and press Enter. Leave diskpart.exe running in the Command Prompt window.
16. Now that all of the disks are initialized, online, and dynamic, we can create the RAID-5 volume.
17. In the Command Prompt window, type Select disk 2 and press Enter.
18. In the Command Prompt window, type Create volume RAID disk 2,3,4,5,6,7 and press Enter.
19. Now that the RAID-5 volume is created, we will format it, but the volume will need to be identified. In the Command Prompt window, type List volume and press Enter.
20. The new volume should be listed as a RAID-5 volume. The new volume is listed as volume 2.
21. In the Command Prompt window, type Select volume 2 and press Enter.
22. In the Command Prompt window, type Format FS=NTFS label=New_RAID5_Volume, and press Enter to format the volume. This will perform a full format of the volume.
23. When the format completes, the window details if the format completed successfully. If the format completed successfully, once the volume is formatted, type Assign Letter=F and press Enter to assign the new volume the letter F.
24. When the drive letter is assigned, in the Command Prompt window, type Exit, and press Enter to close diskpart.exe.
25. In the Command Prompt window, type Exit, and press Enter to close the Command Prompt window.

The new RAID-5 volume should now be accessible from the operating system.

Working with Virtual Hard Disks

Virtual hard disks have been around since virtual machines appeared on the scene in the late 1990s. Windows Server 2008 R2 can create and directly attach Microsoft virtual hard disks or VHD files. VHD files are used in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V guest machines, as well as Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Microsoft Virtual PC, although not all VHD versions are 100% interchangeable. Starting with Windows Server 2008 R2, VHD files can be easily created and attached to the host operating system using Disk Manager. To create and attach a new VHD file, perform the following steps:

1. Log on to the Windows Server 2008 R2 system with an account with administrator privileges.
2. Click Start, click All Programs, click Administrative Tools, and select Server Manager.
3. In the tree pane, double-click the Storage node, and select Disk Management.
4. Right-click Disk Management and select Create VHD.
5. In the Create and Attach Virtual Hard Disk window, click Browse to select the volume and folder to place the new VHD file.
6. In the Browse Virtual Disk Files window, locate the correct volume and folder, type in the name of the new VHD file, and click Save.
7. Back in the Create and Attach Virtual Hard Disk window, enter the size of the new virtual hard disk and pull down the menu to select MB, GB, or TB. For our example, we will create a 10GB file on the E: drive called NEW-Virtual-Disk.vhd.
8. In the Create and Attach Virtual Hard Disk window, after the location, name, and size of the new virtual disk are defined, select the Fixed Size option button to create the file and allocate all the space to file and click OK to create the new virtual hard disk.
9. Once the process completes, scroll down in the Disk Management tasks pane to locate the new virtual hard disk, which should be listed as the last disk and should be listed as Unknown and Not Initialized. Right-click the disk in the left section of the tasks pane and select Initialize Disk.
10. In the Initialize Disk window, choose to create an MBR partition style for the disk, ensure that the correct disk is checked in the window, and click OK to initialize the disk.
11. Once initialized, the disk will be listed as basic and online. Right-click the unallocated space in the tasks pane and select New Simple Volume.
12. Follow the steps to format the disk as NTFS and assign a drive letter.
13. Once the process has completed, the virtual hard disk will be available in My Computer and Windows Explorer just as any other local drive.
14. Once the usage of the disk is complete, from within Disk Manager, right-click the attached virtual hard disk and select Detach VHD.
15. In the Detach Virtual Hard Disk window, the disk that was selected will be listed; if the virtual hard disk file will be used again, do not check the box to delete the virtual disk as part of detaching it. Click OK to detach the disk.

Once the virtual hard disk is detached, if the disk was not deleted, it can be copied to any other Windows Server 2008 R2 system and mounted or attached to the host operating system or a Hyper-V guest virtual machine. One use of this new feature is to easily preload software and files on virtual disks that will be used for Hyper-V guest machines or to mount up virtual disk for disk repair, data copies, backup, or a number of different functions.

To attach an existing virtual disk to a Windows Server 2008 R2 system, the server administrator can open Server Manager, right-click the Disk Management node, and select Attach VHD, and then the administrator can choose to attach the VHD in read-only mode to avoid changing or modifying any data stored within the disk.