The next version of Microsoft Windows Server includes integrated data deduplication technology. Microsoft is positioning this as a boon for server virtualization and claims it has very little performance impact. But how exactly does Microsoft’s de-duplication technology work?
NTFS
DroboPro — Hyper-V’s Best Friend!
The lack of VMware VMFS support in the Drobo is disappointing, but using DroboPro with Hyper-V is much more rewarding. Thin Provisioning is back on the agenda; Hyper-V uses NTFS to store hypervisor guests, making it perfect for use with DroboPro.
Enterprise Computing: Thin Provisioning and The Cookie Monster!
The Gestalt IT Field Day was a great success in bringing together a mixture of delegates from varying discplines. Following the presentations from 3Par and Symantec, there was heated debate about the implementation of Thin Provisioning and the ability to reclaim released storage resources. This post covers the basic concepts of Thin Provisioning and more […]
Windows Storage Server-Based Systems Step Into 2008
Windows Storage Server is one of the most interesting products from Redmond, a specialized version of Windows Server with integrated storage target capabilities, including iSCSI, NFS, SMB, and single-instance storage (file-level deduplication). Although Windows Server 2008, with its many storage feature updates, was released last year, the updated version of Windows Storage Server was still under construction until last month. But Windows Storage Server 2008 is available to manufacturers today.
P2V strategy for a Physical Server with an iSCSI Partition
Most physical to virtual migrations (P2V) of servers end up as virtual machines with the partitions encapsulated in virtual disk (.vmdk or .vhd) files. But what if the physical server already has a partition that’s configured through an iSCSI connection to the SAN, and what if that’s the same SAN that the new VM will […]