Inside Windows Storage: Server Storage Technologies for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Beyond
Dilip T. Naik · 2003
From the Book: Gordon Moore, Intel's co-founder once observed that the density of transistors per square inch was doubling every year. Subsequently, the pace dropped a little and the doubling was perceived to be once every 18 months instead of once every 12 months. According to industry analysts, the enterprise storage industry is still beating Moore's law in its growth. One estimate is that in the next few years, more data will be generated than what was ever created from the entire dawn of known history! Regardless of the exact role, one must concede that servers have an important role to play in the enterprise storage industry. Knowledge of the storage aspects of the operating system will prove to be invaluable in this situation. This book is a humble attempt to meet this perceived need. A word or two about the conventions used in this book would be helpful. The book uses the phrases Windows and Windows Server family interchangeably. Both are used when some feature that is common across all of NT 4.0, 2000 and Server 2003 are being discussed. When needed, a particular version of the operating system is mentioned e.g. 2000 or Server 2003 and these refer to particular versions of the operating system rather than the operating system in a generic sense. This book has been written for the person somewhat conversant with computers systems and the IT industry that is looking to further his/her knowledge about the storage industry in general and NT architecture details as they apply to storage devices. To be clear, this book is about enterprise storage, and consumer storage details are described cursorily, if at all. The bookattempts to strike a balance between catering to the software professional who knows nothing about storage and the professional somewhat conversant with storage, but looking for some good insights of NT storage architecture. If the reader comes away with just one idea after reading this book, that idea is intended to be a deep appreciation of the steady acceleration of enterprise storage related features that each succeeding release of the NT operating system has and will bring to market. This book attempts to strike a balance between the following aspects: Making information available on a timely basis. Providing detailed information and respecting intellectual property rights. The book covers a number of Software Development Kits (SDKs) that are only available under a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) basis. Hence the coverage of these has been necessarily limited to what is already publicly available information. The author has erred on the side of caution and preferred to provide only that information the author is certain is publicly available, but has added value to this often cryptic and difficult to locate information by providing the necessary explanations. Provide information on upcoming NT releases and not just stale information about the past NT releases. Such forward looking information is necessary in order to appreciate the clear focus Microsoft has devoted to enterprise storage in the NT operating system. The obvious risk is that plans are subject to change. The book clearly mentions when some particular aspect is related to forthcoming NT releases. A word of caution is in order book makes some forwarding looking statements in the form of expected features in forthcoming releases of the NT operating systems. Microsoft has repeatedly made it clear that the only guaranteed way of identifying features in an operating system release is after the actual release. No matter what is said at trade shows, seminars, etc. there is no guarantee that some features tentatively discussed will ever ship, let alone ship with a particular version of the operating system. Hence the forward looking statements in this book are a best guess and should be treated as such. No material plans of any kind should be based upon these guesses. Any reader who does not appreciate the Safe Harbor Statement nature of the previous two paragraphs is highly encouraged to study (and not just read) them again. About This Book The book begins with an overview of NT architecture including the NT I/O sub system and storage driver architectures. This chapter is an attempt to condense the vast amount of information purveyed in the excellent books Inside (Microsoft Press) and is intended for the reader that does not have the time available to peruse the book in its entirety. Chapter 2 describes Direct Attached Storage which was historically the first choice for storage. Chapter 3 describes Network Attached Storage which was the next major mile stone in enterprise storage. The NT network stack is explained in detail, from the point of view of the storage professional. Chapter 4 describes Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks, a technology that is perceived to be now rapidly maturing and still holding its own in the face of upcoming new technology in the form of IP SCSI and Infiniband Chapter 5 covers the basics of backup/restore and the new Volume Shadow Copy Service (also popularly referred to as snapshots) in Server 2003. Chapter 6 covers file systems and disk virtualization with particular reference to NT. The chapter also discusses cluster file systems. Chapter 7 discusses storage management in general and the various storage management solutions as they apply to NT. Chapter 8 covers new technologies in storage particularly IP Storage (which attempts to meld storage and IP networks) as well as Infiniband. Chapter 9 discusses Server 2003 and 2000 natively supported solutions to provide high availability services (including fail over, fail back, as well as load balancing) using multi ported dual HBAs in a NT server. The chapter also discusses more mundane high availability and performance solutions such as RAID. While the rest of this book is organized into chapters based upon technologies, Chapter 10 is organized by NT releases. Irrespective of what storage technology is being discussed, Chapter 10 traces the storage features as they appeared in NT 4.0, 2000 and expected features in Server 2003 server and beyond. So read on, and I hope, enjoy.