Best Practices Dell EMC SC Series: Microsoft Windows Server Best Practices Abstract This document provides best practices for configuring Microsoft® Windows Server® to perform optimally with Dell EMC™ SC Series storage.
Revisions Revisions Date Description October 2016 Initial release for Windows Server 2016 November 2016 Update to include BitLocker content February 2017 Update MPIO best practices November 2017 Update guidance on support for Nano Server with Windows Server 2016 June 2019 Update for Windows Server 2019 and SCOS 7.4; template update Acknowledgements Author: Marty Glaser The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc.
Table of contents Table of contents Revisions.............................................................................................................................................................................2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................................2 Table of contents .................................................................................................
Table of contents 3.13 Offloaded data transfer .....................................................................................................................................26 3.14 Resilient file system ..........................................................................................................................................26 4 A Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations .......................................................................................28 4.
Executive summary Executive summary This document provides best practice guidance for deploying Microsoft® Windows Server® with Dell EMC™ SC Series™ storage systems. The documentation found at Dell.com/support for your specific SC Series array serves as the primary reference material for optimal configuration of SC Series for Windows Server. Available resources (which may vary by SC Series model) include owner’s manuals, administrator’s guides, installation guides, and release notes.
Introduction 1 Introduction Microsoft Windows Server and Dell EMC SC Series storage are feature-rich solutions that together present administrators with a diverse range of configuration options to solve key business objectives such as storage capacity, performance, resiliency, and security. This section provides an overview of SC Series storage, Windows Server, and general best practices. 1.
Introduction 1.2 Windows Server 2019 overview Microsoft Windows Server 2019 is the latest release of the Windows Server operating system. Windows Server 2019 is designed to be the operating system of choice for the modern data center and the cloud. If offers many improvements and enhancements to features that were introduced in previous Windows Server versions, along with many new features. To learn more about specific Windows Server features, visit the Microsoft Windows IT Pro Center.
Introduction Note: Nano Server was originally released as an additional installation option (in addition to Core and With Desktop) for Windows Server 2016. Microsoft support for Nano Server as a physical host or virtual machine (VM) OS was discontinued about a year after its initial release by Microsoft. As of the 1709 (September 2017) semi-annual channel release of Windows Server, Nano Server is supported by Microsoft as a container OS only.
Introduction It is important to remember that best practices are baselines that may not be ideal for every environment. Some notable exceptions include the following: • • A legacy system that is performing well that has not reached its life expectancy may not adhere to current best practices. Often the best course of action is to run legacy configurations until they reach their life expectancy because it is too disruptive or costly to make changes outside of a normal hardware progression or upgrade cycle.
Design best practices 2 Design best practices This section provides guidance on sizing and configuration options for SC Series storage and Windows Server. 2.1 Right-size the storage array and fabric Optimizing performance is a process of identifying and mitigating design limitations that cause bottlenecks — the point at which performance begins to be impacted under load because a capacity threshold is reached somewhere within the overall design.
Design best practices 2.2 Determine optimal transport and front-end configuration Depending on the model, the SC Series is configurable as direct-attached storage (DAS) or as part of a storage area network (SAN). DAS is supported with select SC Series models that are configured from the factory with SAS front-end ports. The most common configuration for SC Series is a SAN configuration leveraging iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC), or both types of front-end ports.
Design best practices are collocated that have different transport requirements. It is also common during a transition period if an environment is migrated from one transport to another. SC Series storage supports mixed transports Configuring any given volume (mapped to a host server as a LUN) to use multiple transports generally should be avoided because it increases design complexity unnecessarily and can introduce unpredictable serviceaffecting I/O behavior in path failure scenarios.
Design best practices 2.4.1 Limit volumes to one transport When multiple transports are available to a host, when mapping a volume to that host, limit the transport to iSCSI or FC by unchecking the Map to All Available Server Ports option under Advanced Mapping in the Create Volume wizard. Select either the FC or the iSCSI paths and complete the wizard. Limit I/O paths to one transport 2.
Design best practices 2.7 Adjust timeout settings for single path and multipath I/O The registry changes to timeout settings specified in the Dell EMC SC Series Storage and Microsoft Multipath I/O best practices guide must be applied to all Windows Servers that access storage on SC Series arrays. This includes all FC, iSCSI, and SAS front-end configurations that use single path or multipath.
Design best practices See the documentation for your FC HBA, iSCSI NIC, or CNA for direction on adjusting firmware or registry settings to modify queue depth. For example, see this QLogic support article which explains in detail the relationship between the Windows Server storport.sys driver and the vendor-specific miniport driver, and how to modify parameters that affect queue depth by editing registry keys or firmware settings.
Administration best practices 3 Administration best practices This section covers SC Series administration best practices for Windows Server. 3.1 Present SC Series storage to Windows Server There are several ways to present SC Series storage volumes as LUNs to Windows Server hosts in single path or MPIO (recommended) configurations.
Administration best practices For most Windows Server environments, when creating a new volume, the default storage profile Recommended (All Tiers) is the best choice to provide good I/O performance and protection for the volume. It is recommended to use this storage profile first and evaluate its suitability before attempting to change the storage profile. Using a different storage profile can be very beneficial in some cases.
Administration best practices available on the array. Overprovisioning is possible because only actual data consumes space on the array. This translates to much better storage utilization.
Administration best practices Cluster object on SC Series with two nodes 3.8 Optimize format-disk wait time for large volumes Formatting a large SAN volume mapped to a Windows host should complete in a few seconds. This should always be true with modern Windows Server operating systems.
Administration best practices 3.9 Placement of page files Windows Servers and VMs typically place the page file on the boot volume by default, and automatically manage page file size and memory settings without user intervention. In most cases, these settings should not be changed, unless, for example, an application vendor provides specific guidance on how to tune the page file and memory settings to optimize the performance of a specific workload.
Administration best practices representing only the data that has changed since the last snapshot. Active volumes will generally have larger snapshots because more data is changing. Choose a built-in snapshot profile or create a custom profile to suit your needs. Figure 10 shows a custom Hourly-Daily-Weekly profile with schedule rules that expire hourly snapshots more frequently than weekly snapshots so only snapshots that are needed longer term are retained longer term.
Administration best practices SC Series volume snapshots For guidance on how to configure Windows Server and Hyper-V with Live Volume, see the document Dell EMC SC Series Storage: Synchronous Replication and Live Volume. 3.10.1 Crash-consistent and application-consistent snapshots When a snapshot is created of a volume on an SC Series array according to a schedule (or on demand) without regard to the state of the server, its applications, or data, it is assumed to be crash-consistent.
Administration best practices With SC Series, Replay Manager can be used to leverage Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to automate the process of obtaining application-consistent snapshots in Microsoft environments. For more information on Replay Manager, see section 4.7. 3.10.2 Recovery with SC Series snapshots Server volumes, including boot-from-SAN volumes, can be recovered to a previous point by creating View Volumes from crash-consistent snapshots.
Administration best practices TRIM/Unmap is supported with the following types of virtual volumes and disks: • The virtual hard disk format must be VHDX (dynamic or fixed) - 3.
Administration best practices Note: As a best practice, do not run defragmentation on SC Series volumes mapped to Windows hosts because it can have a negative impact on the performance and effectiveness of Data Progression and replication. As a last step, drive optimizer will run reTRIM on the volume. Windows Server 2012 (with SCOS 6.7 and newer) will automatically reclaim freed-up space on an SC Series NTFS volume using TRIM/Unmap.
Administration best practices 3.13 Offloaded Data Transfer Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) is a feature developed by Microsoft that offloads data copy and move operations from Windows hosts and network switches directly to the storage array. Offloading data copy and move operations to the SAN reduces the demand for CPU and bandwidth resources on the host servers, NICs, and networks switches. In addition, overall copy and move performance for data can be significantly faster with ODX.
Administration best practices SC Series support for ReFS and NTFS Microsoft recommends ReFS for very large data volumes. Because of the reduced feature set available from Microsoft with ReFS as compared to NTFS, verify the required features before choosing the format type. Because SC Series is block-level storage, the type of format chosen for an SC Series volume from the perspective of the OS typically does not matter.
Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations 4 Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations This section covers best practices for specific Windows Server roles, features, and integrations as they relate to SC Series storage. For more information on other roles and features that are not related to storage, see the Microsoft Windows IT Pro Center. 4.
Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations Matching cluster object names on SC Series and Failover Cluster Manager In Figure 17 the cluster names are the same between the SC Series and Failover Cluster Manager which makes management easier. When mapping a new SC Series volume, map the volume to the cluster server object using the DSM client. This will ensure uniform mapping of the volume to all nodes in the cluster with a common LUN number.
Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations 4.2 Microsoft Hyper-V The Windows Server platform leverages the Hyper-V role for virtualization technology. Initially offered with Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V has matured with each release to include many new features and enhancements. Hyper-V Role Hyper-V requires Failover Clustering to also be installed on each node in the cluster.
Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations 4.4 SMI-S Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 and 2016 support SMI-S integration with SC Series. For more information about this integration, see the Dell EMC SC Series and SMI-S Integration with Microsoft SCVMM configuration guide. 4.5 Disaster recovery with Live Volume Windows Server and Server Clusters including Hyper-V are supported with Live Volume, Live Volume Autofailover, Federation, and Volume Advisor.
Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations Replay Manager Explorer with Hyper-V Guest backup extension 4.8 Using BitLocker with SC Series volumes Windows Server versions that support Microsoft BitLocker® have the native capability to encrypt volumes with the BitLocker drive encryption utility. With BitLocker drive encryption, users can encrypt system and data volumes to secure data residing on the volume.
Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations SC Series volume before encryption After the BitLocker encryption process is run, the active snapshot increases to the full size of the data contained on the volume, plus an additional 500MB overhead required by BitLocker. SC Series volume after encryption At this point, any pre-existing snapshots on the volume are no longer valid because the data contained in those snapshots is not encrypted.
Best practices for specific roles, features, and integrations 4.9 SC Series and PowerShell SDK The SC Series PowerShell SDK command set provides many cmdlets for running storage tasks. With the SDK, administrators can create scripts that automate processes that involve both Windows Server and SC Series storage. To learn more about the SC Series PowerShell SDK including many cmdlet examples, refer to the Dell Storage PowerShell SDK Cookbook.
Technical support and additional resources A Technical support and additional resources Dell.com/support is focused on meeting customer needs with proven services and support. Storage technical documents and videos provide expertise that helps to ensure customer success on Dell EMC storage platforms. A.1 Related resources The following SC Series publications and additional resources are available at Dell.
