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Is accessing files via a loopback share the same as using a local path?
Question from a user (paraphrased): When we access a local file via loopback UNC path, is this the same as accessing via the local path? I mean, is "C:\myfolder\a.txt" equal to...
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How much traffic needs to pass between the SMB Client and Server before...
One smart MVP was doing some testing and noticed that SMB Multichannel did not trigger immediately after an SMB session was established. So, he asked: How much traffic needs to pass between the SMB...
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Minimum version of Mellanox firmware required for running SMB Direct in...
There are two blog posts explaining in great detail what you need to do to use Mellanox ConnectX-2 or ConnectX-3 cards to implement RDMA networking for SMB 3.0 (using SMB Direct). You can find them...
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Sample PowerShell Scripts for Storage Spaces, standalone Hyper-V over SMB and...
These are some PowerShell snippets to configure a specific set of systems for Hyper-V over SMB testing.Posting it here mainly for my own reference, but maybe someone else out there is configuring a...
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Hyper-V over SMB – Sample Configurations
This post describes a few different Hyper-V over SMB sample configurations with increasing levels of availability. Not all configurations are recommended for production deployment, since some do not...
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Hyper-V over SMB – Performance considerations
1. Introduction If you follow this blog, you probably already had a chance to review the “Hyper-V over SMB” overview talk that I delivered at TechEd 2012 and other conferences. I am now working on a...
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Demo: Hyper-V over SMB at high throughput with SMB Direct and SMB Multichannel
Overview I delivered a new demo of Hyper-V over SMB this week that’s an evolution of a demo I did back in the Windows Server 2012 launch and also via a TechNet Radio session.Back then I showed a two...
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Hardware options for highly available Windows Server 2012 systems using...
Highly available Windows Server 2012 systems using shared, directly-attached storage can be built using either Storage Spaces or a validated clustered RAID controller. Option 1 – Storage SpacesYou can...
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Increasing Availability – The REAP Principles (Redundancy, Entanglement,...
Introduction Increasing availability is a key concern with computer systems. With all the consolidation and virtualization efforts under way, you need to make sure your services are always up and...
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SQLIO, PowerShell and storage performance: measuring IOPs, throughput and...
1. Introduction I have been doing storage-related demos and publishing blogs with some storage performance numbers for a while, and I commonly get questions such as “How do you run these tests?” or...
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Q and A: Is it possible to run SMB Direct from within a VM?
Question received via blog mail:Jose-I picked up a couple ConnectX-2 adapters and a cable off of ebay for cheap (about $300 for everything) to test out SMB Direct. I followed your blog "Deploying...
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Q and A: Can I use SMB3 storage without RDMA?
Question received via e-mail:Is it practical use SMB3 storage without RDMA or do we have a use case for production rather than development or test?I thought RDMA would be essential for production...
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Q and A: I only have two NICs on my Hyper-V host. Should I team them or not?
Question via e-mail:I am using blade servers for my Hyper-V cluster and I can only have two NICs per blade in this configuration.I am considering two options on how to configure the NICs:1) Use...
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File Server Tip: How to rebalance a Scale-Out File Server using a little...
A Scale-Out File Server is a cluster role that offers the same SMB file share (or set of shares) on every node of the cluster. As clients come in, they are spread across the nodes using a round-robin...
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Slides for the Instructor-Led Lab on Windows Server 2012 Storage from MMS 2013
I delivered an instructor-led lab on Windows Server 2012 Storage at MMS 2013 yesterday (4/8), with a repeat scheduled for tomorrow (4/10) at 2:45 PM. You can find the details on this lab at...
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Iron Networks shows a complete private cloud pod at MMS 2013 with Windows...
I was visiting the expo area at MMS 2013 earlier today and saw that Iron Networks was showing a private cloud pod there, complete with a set of well-matched layers of compute, storage and...
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Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Run the File Services Best Practices...
Windows Server 2012 includes a built-in mechanism called Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) to check your configuration and make sure everything is set to the proper values. These set of rules, which come...
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Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: Use PowerShell to find the free space on...
A while back, I showed how to use PowerShell V2 and our old SMB WMIv1 object to explain how to find the free space behind a file share (essentially the free space for the volume that contains the file...
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Windows Server 2012 File Server Tip: New per-share SMB client performance...
Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 include a new set of performance counters that can greatly help understand the performance of the SMB file protocol. These include new counters on both the server side...
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New ESG Lab Validation Report shows Performance of Windows Server 2012...
There is a new ESG report out that shows the Storage and Networking performance of Windows Server 2012. It highlights the findings around a few key new features, including:Storage SpacesSMB 3.0 File...
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