I’ve discussed the efforts Microsoft is putting into enhancing the storage offerings (Storage Spaces, SOFS, SMB) in its OS since Windows Server 2012 (R2) before in previous articles. In my last blog post on this subject Microsoft Keeps Investing In Storage Big Time I talked about their latest announcements around storage replica in the Windows Server Technical Preview.
In this post I’d like to show case how to set up server to server storage replication and demonstrate how to recover from certain events. We are doing this asynchronously as the scenario is one were we replicate a backup target off site to another city. Not an uncommon scenario and one that gives copies off site without introducing the cost & operational overhead of portable media.
The easiest way to show this without writing elaborate white papers is a video. I’ll wait with more elaborate writings or demo videos as things are bound to change a lot prior to RTM. After all we still only have the more then 3 month old Technical Preview bits. It’s important to realize what we are now getting in box with Windows Server aka the Cloud OS that used to require 3rd party solutions.
I hope to be doing some talks & presentations on this subject and in good tradition make those presentations demo heavy as I like to really show how technology in action.
Hi, how about the performance on replication traffic?
I had setup similar but only runs over 1gbps. The replication traffic ceased the usable traffic.
Sadly to say, this isn’t that viable when perform a stretched cluster over wan. It would require high bandwidth.
1Gbps is not usable for synchronous preplication, you need 10Gbps and less than 5ms latency. Practically that means 10Gbps & less then 60KM. That’s true for all stretched clusters with SAN replicas etc as well unless you have other (network) technologisch to deal with the distance & latency such as MetroX. Running sync replica for stretched cluster over plain a 1Gbps MPLS or similar is silly and not a limitation of the feature but due to the laws of fysics.
Very nice demo. Thankyou. Unfortunately none of the commands were visible in the video resolution and I would like to try this myself. I teach an IT class. Is it possible to have a copy of your scripts? Thanks in advance,
Martin
Bit outdated (early preview) but today all you need is right there: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/storage/storage-replica/server-to-server-storage-replication.
Resolution isn’t great but readable at 720HD or when downloaded.