Review Questions

1. You have just installed a new disk on a Windows Server 2008 server. Which of the following do you do first to prepare the disk for use? Answer: a. partition the disk

2. The _____ partition or volume contains the operating system files, such as the files in the \Windows folder. Answer: boot

3. You have just upgraded from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008. Now you are trying to recover a set of databases that you backed up on DVDs in Windows Server 2003 before you started the upgrade, but the Windows Server Backup tool gives you an error message. What is the problem? Answer: c. The Windows Server Backup tool is not compatible with backups made from the Windows Server 2003 Backup tool.

4. Your company is considering installing an iSCSI SAN, but one of the department heads mentions that he has heard Windows Server 2008 does not have a management tool for an iSCSI SAN. What is your response? Answer: d. This is not true because you can install Storage Manager for SANs.

5. You are consulting for a company that has been performing full backups every night for its Windows Server 2008 servers. A problem they have been experiencing is that the backups are taking longer and longer. What is your recommendation for this company? Answer: b. Use a custom backup that enables you to use a combination of full and incremental backups.

6. Dynamic disks support RAID levels _____, _____, and _____. Answer: 0, 1, and 5.

7. You are consulting for an organization that has chosen to use disk striping as a way to extend the life of their four hard disks. Now one of the disks has failed and they call you for help. What do you advise them? Answer: d. Install a new disk and perform a full restore on all four disks.

8. RAID level 5 requires a minimum of _____ hard disks. Answer: 3

9. As the IT director for a large investment company, you are always looking for ways to build in better fault tolerance for your computer systems. As you consider your present hard disk storage situation, you have a large SAN connected to the main network through a high speed switch. What else can you do to assure fault tolerance for your SAN? Answer: a. Create additional paths to the SAN, such as through one or more additional switches and take advantage of Multipath I/O.

10. Which of the following can you restore from the Windows Server Backup tool? (Choose all that apply.) Answer: a. the backup catalog, b. volumes, c. folders, and d. the operating system

11. How much free space must you have on a basic disk to convert it to a dynamic disk? Answer: At least 1 MB of free space is needed.

12. You have decided to shrink a 250 GB disk to change 130 GB of that disk to unallocated space. However, the shrinking process only results in 98 GB of unallocated space. What would have caused the smaller portion of unallocated space? Answer: c. The shrinking process encountered a file that cannot be moved and had to stop early.

13. You have spent the morning archiving old files to DVDs and then deleting those files as a way to get back some disk space. Also, you’ve recovered some archived financial files to prepare for the auditor’s visit. After you finish, you notice that the server seems to run slower. What should you do Answer: b. Start the Disk Defragmenter to defrag your disks.

14. Which of the following can you accomplish with the Disk Management tool? (Choose all that apply.) Answer: c. Create a simple volume and d. Convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk.

15. Your new IT colleague is trying to determine the location of a mounted drive on the server, because he is not sure what a mounted drive is. Which of the following do you tell him? Answer: b. A mounted drive is located in a folder.

16. Which of the following must be true to boot from a disk in Windows Server 2008? (Choose all that apply.) Answer: a. It is an active partition. and d. It is a primary partition.

17. Briefly explain the concept of a spanned volume. Answer: A spanned volume contains 2 to 32 dynamic disks that are treated as one volume.

18. Which of the following is checked by the chkdsk utility? (Choose all that apply.) Answer: a. indexes, b. disk allocation units, and d. sectors

19. Explain disk duplexing. Answer: In disk duplexing the information on a main disk is shadowed or mirrored on a second disk. If the main disk fails, the mirrored disk is used. Disk duplexing is different than disk mirroring, however because it places the backup disk on a different controller or adapter than is used by the main disk – which provides better fault tolerance.

20. You have configured a RAID-5 volume using five 250 GB disks. How much disk space is actually available for storage of folders and files? Answer: c. 1000 GB

Hands-On Projects Tips and Solutions for Chapter 7

Activity 7-1

In this activity students use the Computer Management tool to view disk partitions.

In Step 3, students should determine which is the active partition and which partitions are the system and boot partitions.

Activity 7-2

Students create a customized Disk Management MMC console in this activity, because there is no Disk Management console on the Administrative Tools menu by default.

Activity 7-3

For this activity, students create a simple volume. They will need to have unallocated disk space to accomplish this. If there is no unallocated disk space on a server, consider having students shrink a volume to create the space.

Activity 7-4

Students convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk in this activity. Make sure they check with you before starting. If you don’t want them to go through with the conversion, have students click Cancel at Step 5.

Activity 7-5

This activity affords students the opportunity to learn how to mount a drive. As students do this activity, consider discussing ways in which you or organizations with which you have worked have used this capability.

In Step 10, the icon that students should see in My Computer or Windows Explorer after successfully mounting a drive is a disk drive with an arrow in a box, as for a shortcut.

In Step 11, after they right-click the mounted drive, students will find that its properties are similar to those displayed for a typical NTFS folder. For example, there can be five tabs: General, Sharing, Security, Previous Versions, and Customize. Also, on the General tab the Type: is Mounted Volume. .

Activity 7-6

In this activity, students use the Disk Defragmenter. In the first part of the activity, they set up a schedule on which to run the tool. Consider having a class discussion about how often to use this tool and how to schedule its use.

In Step 11, students should list the disks which the Disk Defragmenter can work on including Local Disk (C:) and any other disks on the computer.

Activity 7-7

Students practice using Disk Check in this activity. If students are working with a multiple disk system, advise them on which drive to use to cut down on the time it takes to complete this activity.

In Step 4, the tools available from the tab are:

▪ Check Now

▪ Defragment Now

▪ Backup Now

Activity 7-8

In this activity, students run chkdsk without locking the disk (for faster practice).

In Step 2, students should observe that running chkdsk without the /f option causes it to run in the read-only mode.

Activity 7-9

Students install the Windows Server Backup feature in this activity. Next, they add the Windows Server Backup snap-in to the Disk Management MMC console they created in Activity 7-2. Consider using this activity as a way to discuss the convenience of customizing MMC consoles for server management.

Activity 7-10

This project enables students to practice starting a manual backup.

In Step 6, there is one other option presented which is Custom.

Case Projects

Fresh Recipes started over 50 years ago producing different varieties of soups. Today the company is a well-recognized brand name that offers soups, chili, stews, and other canned foods. Fresh Recipes is divided into the following departments: Business, Research and Recipes, Canning, Distribution, and IT. The company has over 450 employees and is employee owned. Two employees from each department make up the Management Council, which additionally includes the company president, vice president, operations manager, and the managers of each department.

Five Windows Server 2008 servers are located in the Business Department. The Research and Recipes Department has three Windows Server 2008 servers at its location. The Canning and Distribution Departments have four Windows Server 2008 servers each, including servers that are used to control machinery. The IT Department has three servers. The company makes extensive use of databases, and each department has at least one Datacenter Edition server to house its databases.

The IT Department has been working with the Management Council on storage capacity issues because many of the company’s servers will soon need more disk storage. The IT Department has retained you through Aspen Consulting to help with storage setup and planning issues

Case Project 7-1: Planning for Basic or Dynamic Disks

Because the company started with Windows NT 4.0 Servers, they have continued to use basic disks in the form of stripe sets even as the servers have been upgraded through the years to Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, and now Windows Server 2008. They like the speed of the stripe sets, but now want to investigate if there are advantages to using dynamic disks. The IT Department asks you to create a report or slide presentation that addresses the following:

▪ Advantages of dynamic disks

▪ Example steps for converting from basic to dynamic disks

Answer:

Dynamic disks offer more features than basic disks. The main reason for using basic disks has been to have backward compatibility with earlier Windows Server systems starting with Windows NT. Basic disks use traditional storage management techniques such as partitioning and have limitations in Windows Server 2008 for new configurations that use fault tolerance techniques, such as mirroring and RAID-5. Since Fresh Recipes is starting a new system and not converting from Windows NT to Windows Server 2008, there is no reason to use basic disks. Dynamic disks have the following advantages: ▪ No partitioning which means it is possible to set up a large number of volumes on one disk ▪ Spanned volumes are easy to add and configure for an upward limit of 32 disks that can be incorporated into one spanned volume ▪ Dynamic disks support RAID levels 0, 1, and 5 ▪ Dynamic disks can be reactivated, should they go offline

Students might note that there are five types of dynamic disk configurations: ▪ Simple volumes ▪ Spanned volumes ▪ Mirrored volumes ▪ Striped volumes ▪ RAID-5 volumes

The steps for converting basic to dynamic disks are as follows:

1. Log onto an account that has Administrator privileges.

2. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and click Computer Management.

3. Double-click Storage under the tree in the left pane.

4. Click Disk Management in the tree.

5. Right-click the disk you want to convert, such as Disk 0.

6. Click Convert to Dynamic Disk.

7. Make sure that the correct disk is selected, such as Disk 0, in the Convert to Dynamic Disk dialog box and click OK.

8. Verify the disk or disks to convert in the Disks to Convert dialog box and click Convert.

9. Click Yes in the Disk Management information box.

10. Click Yes to acknowledge that the file systems on the disk will be dismounted.

11. Close the Disk Management tool .

Case Project 7-2: Fault Tolerance for the Canning Department

The Canning Department uses one server to run the canning conveyor machinery, which operates 24 hours a day. The server has some built-in fault tolerance, such as two network interface cards and battery backup for its power supply. However, no fault tolerance is provided for the single hard drive in the server, which is configured as a basic disk. Fault tolerance is important for this server because the company loses over $15,000 an hour when the conveyor machinery is down. Create a short report with your recommendations for fault tolerance including general guidelines for setting it up.

Answer:

Disk duplexing is a good choice for this server. With disk duplexing, the advantage is that there are two disk adapters, two disk cables, and two disk drives. This provides fault tolerance in the event of an adapter, cable, or disk drive failure. It would be the fastest way to be back online after a disk-related failure.

To set up disk duplexing they would need to: 1. Schedule downtime to back up the system and install the new adapter, cable, and disk drive. 2. Convert the existing basic disk to a dynamic disk. 3. Use the Disk Management tool to create a mirrored volume (RAID-1), i.e., right-click the unallocated space on the new disk and click New Mirrored Volume. 4. Test the system to ensure it is working properly. 5. Bring the system back online.

Case Project 7-3: Planning Disk Storage for the Databases

The databases used by the Datacenter Edition servers are experiencing rapid growth in terms of use and size. Many of the databases are now used across departments. These databases are considered by the Management Council to be one of the company’s best strategic assets. The Management Council wants to consolidate physical management of the databases and the Datacenter Edition servers in the IT department’s computer room as a way to secure them in one place. Also, they want to consolidate the disk storage used for these databases and provide for fault tolerance. Create a report or slide show for the Management Council with your recommendations, including the advantages of what you recommend.

Answer:

Students may come up with different answers, but a viable approach is to: ▪ Use dynamic disks. ▪ Implement RAID-5 ▪ Implement an iSCSI SAN ▪ Implement Multipath I/O

Using dynamic disks with RAID-5 is an advantage because it offers strong fault tolerance for multiple disks in an array. The number and size of disks in the array would be determined by the current sizes of the databases, and then calculating the expected growth for a period of time, such as five years. Also, using more disks in RAID-5, such as 8 instead of 4 enables more use of the disk space as a general rule (less total space used for parity).

Finally, an iSCSI SAN would be a viable architecture for consolidating the disk storage into a SAN that can be accessed by all of the Datacenter servers. The advantages of iSCSI over Fibre Channel include the following:

▪ More options for configuring topologies

▪ Less cost

▪ Fewer distance limitations

▪ Compatible with existing IPv4 and IPv6 networks over Ethernet

▪ Enables dynamic expansion

▪ Easier to configure

▪ More scalable

▪ More storage capacity

▪ Supports IPSec for security

▪ Easier to expand using equipment from different vendors

Finally, the iSCSI SAN could be set up through two or more switches for Multipath I/O. This creates additional fault tolerance in case one path goes down. Windows Server 2008 supports Multipath I/O. Also, Windows Server 2008 has the Storage Manager for SANs tool to support management of such SANs.

Case Project 7-4: Changing the Backups to Accommodate Growth

Because they have used basic disk stripe sets, the server administrators at Fresh Recipes have been performing nightly full backups for years. They have also chosen to manually start the backups. Now that the company has grown and the amount of data to back up has increased, the backups are taking much longer, which is causing the server administrators to put in extra hours. Create a short report with some suggestions for changing how they do backups to correspond with the company’s growth.

Answer:

As companies grow they often have to evaluate how they perform backups. Many companies begin by doing full backups. After they grow, they discover that the backups take longer and longer. Students can suggest that Fresh Recipes use the Windows Server Backup tool to do custom backups, for example. This might include doing one full backup on the weekend and incremental backups all other days. Another option is to do all incremental backups. However, the most assured approach is to do a combination of full and incremental backups. To accomplish this, students might also note that it is important to configure the backup performance options to Custom, for example.

Further, there is no reason why server administrators have to manually start the backups when they could be using the Backup Schedule option in the Windows Server Backup tool. Using this tool they can schedule the time to start the backups each day. (It is also possible to schedule backups more than once a day.)

Finally, it is appropriate to examine adding the use of an off-site backup service as mentioned in the text. This would give Fresh Recipes two options in case of a disaster: the backups regularly done on-site and the backups done by the off-site backup service.