Windows Server 2012 Disk Management simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes

To configure failover clustering for customers today, on Windows Server R2 systems, after Dell storage on the iSCSI connection, you can find new simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, RAID-5 volumes, and so on in Disk Management:

Have never touched these before, so I learned a few online, the following are their introduction

Simple volume

A simple volume is a volume in a separate dynamic disk that is similar to the partition of a basic disk. But it does not have the space limit and the quantity limit. When there is not enough space for a simple volume, you can expand the volume to extend its space without affecting the data.

How to create a simple volume:

1. Right-click My Computer and select manage to open the Computer Management console. In Computer Management, click Disk Management.
2. In Disk Management, right-click unallocated space and select Create volume.
3. The Create Volume wizard appears, click Next, select Simple volume and follow the onscreen prompts to enter relevant information.

Ways to extend a simple volume:

1. Open Disk Management, right-click the simple volume you want to extend, and select extend volume.
2. Follow the instructions in the Extended Volume wizard to enter the relevant information and complete it.

Cross-Region volumes

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. By creating spanned volumes, we can allocate free space on multiple physical disks to the same volume, leveraging resources. However, cross-region volumes do not improve performance or fault tolerance.

How to create a spanned volume:

1. Right-click My Computer and select manage to open the Computer Management console. In Computer Management, click Disk Management.
2. In Disk Management, right-click unallocated space and select Create volume.
3. The Create Volume wizard appears, click Next, select spanned volumes, and click Next.
4. Select the disk you want to use and enter the space you want to allocate to the volume on each disk, and click Next. Then follow the onscreen instructions to complete the wizard.

Striped Volume

A striped volume is a volume (up to 32 disks) of free space in 2 or more disks, and when data is written to a striped volume, the data is split into 64KB chunks, and a different block of data is written to each disk in the array at the same time. This process significantly improves disk efficiency and performance, but the striped volume does not provide fault tolerance.

How to create a striped volume:

1. Right-click My Computer and select manage to open the Computer Management console. In Computer Management, click Disk Management.
2. In Disk Management, right-click unallocated space and select Create volume.
3. The Create Volume wizard appears, click Next, select striped volumes, and click Next.
4. Select the disk you want to use and enter the space you want to allocate to the volume on each disk, and click Next. Then follow the onscreen instructions to complete the wizard.

Mirrored volumes

We can simply explain that the mirrored volume is a simple volume with exactly the same copy, it requires two disks, a piece of data stored in operation, a piece of the exact same copy, and when one disk fails, another disk can be used immediately to avoid data loss. Mirrored volumes provide fault tolerance, but they do not provide performance optimizations.

How to create a mirrored volume:

1. First make sure that the computer contains two disks, and one is a copy of the other.
2. Right-click My Computer and select manage to open the Computer Management console. In Computer Management, click Disk Management.
3. In Disk Management, right-click unallocated space and select Create volume.
4. The Create Volume wizard appears, click Next, select Mirrored volume, and click Next.
5. Select the two disks you want to use and enter the space assigned to the volume, and click Next. Then follow the onscreen instructions to complete the wizard.

RAID-5 Roll

The so-called RAID5 volume is a striped volume that contains parity values, and Windows Server 2012 adds a parity value for each disk in the volume set, which provides fault tolerance while ensuring superior performance of the striped volume. The RAID5 volume contains at least 3 disks, up to 32 blocks, and any disk in the array fails with the information in another two disks and restores the data on the failed disk.

How to create a RAID5 volume:

1. Make sure the computer contains 3 or more disks.
2. Right-click My Computer and select manage to open the Computer Management console. In Computer Management, click Disk Management.
3. In Disk Management, right-click unallocated space and select Create volume.
4. The Create Volume wizard appears, click Next, select RAID5 volume, and click Next.
5. Select the three disks you want to use and enter the amount of space allocated to the volume, click Next and follow the onscreen instructions to complete the wizard.

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Simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes

Windows Server 2012 Disk Management simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes