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      13. Close the iSNS server.

      Fibre Channel

      Fibre Channel storage devices are similar to iSCSI storage devices in that they both allow block-level access to their data sets and can provide MPIO policies with the proper hardware configurations. However, Fibre Channel requires a Fibre Channel HBA, fiber-optic cables, and Fibre Channel switches to connect to a storage device.

      A World Wide Name (WWN) from the Fibre Channel HBA is used from the host and device so that they can communicate directly with each other, similar to using a NIC’s MAC address. In other words, a logical unit number (LUN) is presented from a Fibre Channel storage device to the WWN of the host’s HBA. Fibre Channel has been the preferred method of storage because of the available connection bandwidth between the storage and the host.

      Fibre Channel devices support 1Gb/s, 2Gb/s, and 4Gb/s connections, and they soon will support 8Gb/s connections, but now that 10Gb/s Ethernet networks are becoming more prevalent in many datacenters, iSCSI can be a suitable alternative. It is important to consider that 10Gb/s network switches can be more expensive than comparable Fibre Channel switches.

      N-Port Identification Virtualization (NPIV) is a Fibre Channel facility allowing multiple n-port IDs to share a single physical N-Port. This allows multiple Fibre Channel initiators to occupy a single physical port. By using a single port, this eases hardware requirements in storage area network (SAN) design.

      Network Attached Storage

      The concept of a network attached storage (NAS) solution is that it is a low-cost device for storing data and serving files through the use of an Ethernet LAN connection. A NAS device accesses data at the file level via a communication protocol such as NFS, CIFS, or even HTTP, which is different from iSCSI or FC Fibre Channel storage devices that access the data at the block level. NAS devices are best used in file-storing applications, and they do not require a storage expert to install and maintain the device. In most cases, the only setup that is required is an IP address and an Ethernet connection.

      Virtual Disk Service

      Virtual Disk Service (VDS) was created to ease the administrative efforts involved in managing all of the various types of storage devices. Many storage hardware providers used their own applications for installation and management, and this made administering all of these various devices very cumbersome.

      VDS is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that provides a centralized interface for managing all of the various storage devices. The native VDS API enables the management of disks and volumes at an OS level, and hardware vendor-supplied APIs manage the storage devices at a RAID level. These are known as software and hardware providers.

      A software provider is host based, and it interacts with Plug and Play Manager because each disk is discovered and operates on volumes, disks, and disk partitions. VDS includes two software providers: basic and dynamic. The basic software provider manages basic disks with no fault tolerance, whereas the dynamic software providers manage dynamic disks with fault management. A hardware provider translates the VDS APIs into instructions specific to the storage hardware. This is how storage management applications are able to communicate with the storage hardware to create LUNs or Fibre Channel HBAs to view the WWN. The following are Windows Server 2012 R2 storage management applications that use VDS:

      ■ The Disk Management snap-in is an application that allows you to configure and manage the disk drives on the host computer. You have already seen this application in use when you initialized disks and created volume sets.

■ DiskPart is a command-line utility that configures and manages disks, volumes, and partitions on the host computer. It can also be used to script many of the storage management commands. DiskPart is a robust tool that you should study on your own because it is beyond the scope of this book. Figure 1.8 shows the various commands and their function in the DiskPart utility.

FIGURE 1.8 DiskPart commands

      ■ DiskRAID is also a scriptable command-line utility that configures and manages hardware RAID storage systems. However, at least one VDS hardware provider must be installed for DiskRAID to be functional. DiskRAID is another useful utility that you should study on your own because it’s beyond the scope of this book.

      Booting from a VHD

      Once you have installed each operating system, you can choose the operating system that you will boot to during the boot process. You will see a boot selection screen that asks you to choose which operating system you want to boot.

      The Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store contains boot information parameters that were previously found in boot.ini in older versions of Windows. To edit the boot options in the BCD store, use the bcdedit utility, which can be launched only from a command prompt. To open a command prompt window, do the following:

      1. Launch \Windows\system32\cmd.exe.

      2. Open the Run command by pressing the Windows key plus the R key and then entering cmd.

      3. Type cmd.exe in the Search Programs And Files box and press Enter.

      After the command prompt window is open, type bcdedit to launch the bcdedit utility. You can also type bcdedit /? to see all of the different bcdedit commands.

       Virtualization is covered in greater detail in Chapter 9: “Use Virtualization in Windows Server 2012.”

      Summary

      In this chapter, you studied the latest advantages of using Windows Server 2012 R2. You also learned about the different roles and features you can install on a Windows Server 2012 R2 machine. You also explored how to migrate those roles and features from a Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2012 machine to a Windows Server 2012 R2 machine.

      I discussed the different upgrade paths that are available and which upgrades are best for your current network setup. You learned that another important issue to decide when installing Windows Server 2012 R2 is whether to use Server Core or the GUI installation.

      You learned how to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter with GUI, and you installed the Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Core. Remember, Server Core is a slimmed-down version of Windows Server. With no GUI desktop available, it’s a safer alternative to a normal Windows install. As discussed, a nice advantage of Windows Server 2012 R2 is that you can change from Server Core to the GUI version and back again.

      I discussed a feature called Features On Demand. This feature allows you to remove roles and features from the operating system and remove the associated files completely

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