Windows Dynamic Disk Volumes: simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, RAID5 volume-related configuration actions

Windows Server 2003 provides new ways to manage disk and improve disk performance and fault tolerance. Upgrading basic disks to dynamic disks gives you more flexibility in allocating and managing disk space and enabling you to configure various disk arrays to improve disk capacity.

Dynamic disks with the Basic Disk Compare :

A basic disk can contain only 4 partitions, which are up to three primary partitions and one extended partition, and the extended partition can contain several logical disks. Dynamic disks do not have a limit on the number of volumes, and can be arbitrarily set up on dynamic disks as long as disk space allows.

On a basic disk, a partition is not spanned by a disk, and a partition is a logical disk. Dynamic disks can expand the capacity of a volume by expanding the amount of free disk space in the disk to the same volume.

Basic disks are non-fault-tolerant and may not be recoverable if the disk corruption data. Dynamic disks provide disk fault tolerance to prevent data loss due to single partition corruption.

Basic disk reads and writes are relatively stable and small. Dynamic disks provide striped volumes to improve disk read and write performance.

Dynamic disks can create 5 types of volumes: simple volumes, spanned volumes , striped volumes , mirrored volumes , RAID5 Volume

Simple Volume: A simple volume is made up of space on a single dynamic disk. If you have enough free space on your disk, create a simple volume. You can extend a simple volume by increasing the amount of space available from the same disk or another disk.

spanned volumes: spanned volumes are made up of disk space on more than one dynamic disk. If the required volume is too large for a simple disk, you can create a spanned volume. You can expand the spanned volume by loving you by adding free space from another disk.

striped volumes:(RAID-0) striped volumes on two or more disks, storing data in striped form. Bands get data faster than simple or spanned volumes.

Mirrored Volume:(RAID-1) A mirrored volume copies your data on two dynamic disks. To prevent data loss, you can create a mirrored volume that stores all of your information in multiple copies.

RAID5 Volume: RAID-5 volumes store data in three or more dynamic disks with a region-like shape. If part of the data is lost, the RAID-5 volume provides a way to recover the data.

The following tests are understood in the virtual machine:

First add 3 disks to the virtual machine:

Open Disk Management and convert the new 3 disks to a dynamic disk:

You can create 5 types of volumes by right-clicking one of the dynamic disks and creating the volume. In addition to the following two diagrams, the wizards are different, as are other basic disk creation.

Simple Volume :

As you can see, striped volumes can only be partitioned on one disk, and no additional spanned disks are added. However, you can choose the size of the allocated space (the current test divides the 2GB size). There is also an unallocated space on the disk that can be added to the partitioned logical volume (D-Drive) as an extended volume, or a new volume can be created. Delete any simple volumes of the same partition combination and the entire volume will be deleted.

If you add an extended volume that is not on the same partition, the simple volume becomes a spanned volume after you add additional partitions. (A simple volume can also add a mirror, and it will become a mirrored volume; If you delete the image, it will change back to a simple volume)

Cross-Region volumes :

Striped volumes can span multiple partitions, or you can specify the size of each partition. The available capacity of the logical disk is the sum of spanned volume sizes (6.97GB) for each partition. A spanned volume is a volume (up to 32 blocks) that contains space on multiple disks, and the order in which data is stored in the spanned volume is filled with the first disk and then gradually stored on the subsequent disk.

Simulate partition corruption or detachment, removing Disk 2 from the virtual machine. This affects the entire logical partition (D-Disk), and the entire related partition is not available. If you delete any partition volume, the entire logical volume will be deleted. Cross-region volumes do not improve performance or fault tolerance.

Striped Volume :

The partition size of the striped volume is the same, the usable capacity of the logical disk is the sum of the striped volume size of each partition (6GB), and if the striped volume on a partition is deleted, the entire stripe will be deleted. If one of the partitions is damaged, the result is similar to the spanned volume above. When you write data to a striped volume, the data is split into 64KB chunks, and each disk in the array is written to a different block of data at the same time. This process significantly improves disk efficiency and performance, but the striped volume does not provide fault tolerance.

mirrored volumes :

Striped volumes as long as two hard disks, the size of each partition as a mirrored volume is the same, the usable capacity of the logical disk is only one mirror size, the other mirrored volume is a replica, and the maximum utilization of the disk is only 50%. Mirrored volumes improve read performance because the driver reads data from both disk members at the same time. Of course, because it also writes data to two members at the same time, its write performance will be slightly reduced.

Two volumes mirrored to each other, can interrupt mirrored volumes and remove mirrors

Break the mirrored volume and turn it into a simple two-like volume.

Deleting the mirror, the selected mirrored volume is deleted, and the mirrored volume that is not selected for deletion becomes a simple volume.

When a disk is damaged or lost, the logical disk (D-disk) can still be accessed. The missing mirror disk right-deletes the mirror.

Mirrored volumes provide fault tolerance, but they do not provide performance optimizations.

RAID-5 Volume :

RAID-5 requires at least three hard drives, up to 32 blocks, and the same space on each partition of the RAID5 volume.

Now delete one of the hard drives:

The current logical disk (D-disk) can still be fully stored with data and operational, but how to remove or repair the damaged disk?

Then divide the virtual machine into a hard disk. Right-RAID-5 the partition and select "Repair Volume".

Select the available partitions:

Wait for the data to resynchronize, at which point the logical disk is still operational. , delete the original lost disk when you are done.

RAID5 volumes are striped volumes that contain parity values, and each disk has a parity value. When any disk in the array fails, it can be performed by the information on the other disks and the data in the failed disk is restored. RAID 5 can be understood as a compromise between RAID 0 and RAID 1. RAID 5 can provide data security for the system, but with a lower level of protection than mirror and higher disk space utilization than mirror. RAID 5 has a similar data read speed as RAID 0, with only one parity information, which is slower than writing to a single disk. At the same time, because of multiple data corresponding to a parity information, RAID 5 disk space utilization is higher than RAID 1, the storage cost is relatively low, is the use of more than a solution.

Reference:

Create a full manual for soft raid under Windows 2003

Windows Dynamic Disk Volumes: simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, RAID5 volume-related configuration actions