Best Practices Guide Nimble Storage Best

Summary

B E ST P R ACT I C ES G U ID E
Nimble Storage Best Practices
for Microsoft Windows File Sharing
Table of Contents
3 Introduction
4 Benefits of Native Windows File Sharing Functionality
4 SMB
4 Distributed File System (including DFS-R)
4 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI)
5 File Server Resource Management Tools (FRSM)
5 Native Disk Management Utility
5 Shadow Copies (previous versions) of Shared Folders
5 Offline Folders / Files and Folder Redirection
6 Security
6 Additional Microsoft File Services Features
7 Configuring Nimble Volumes
7 Volume Creation
10 Configuring Windows with Nimble Storage
10 Configure Roles and Features
10 Configure Failover Clustering
11 Connect Volume
11 Test the Volume
11 Configure Clustered File Sharing
11 Enable Continuous Availability
13 Data Protection
14 Data Restoration
14 Summary
NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 2
NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 3
Introduction
Nimble Storage provides a revolutionary block-level storage platform that simultaneously
improves storage performance and capacity. Block-level storage is perfect for application servers;
however users typically share their work using File-level storage or Network Attached Storage
(NAS). When considering NAS solutions, customers can either choose specialized NAS solutions
or leverage more general purpose operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Linux

This best practices guide provides a multi-protocol file sharing NAS solution for both Windows and
Linux systems that still leverages the power of Nimble Storage performance and scalability. This
document leverages Windows Server 2012 native enterprise file services role to provide the NAS
functionality with the most complete coverage for the SMB/CIFS and NFS protocols that are most
common in data center environments. Microsoft has a tremendous number of capabilities that
have been requested over the years by IT organizations. Such organizations can leverage the
extensive file-serving and data management capabilities found natively in Microsoft Windows
Servers while leveraging the economics and
performance of converged storage using Nimble
CS Array technology

This solution also leverages Microsoft Failover
Clustering features to provide high availability in
the event of a Windows operating system failure

Windows Server 2012 Failover Clusters require
shared storage accessible to each participating
node in the cluster. The storage must also permit
the use of SCSI-3 Reservation Protocol to
ensure that only one node of the cluster controls
the storage at a time to avoid conflicts. This
means that the virtual cluster nodes must avoid
using virtual disks for the data storage and
connect directly to the Nimble Storage array as
shown in the architectural diagram

NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 4
Benefits of Native Windows File Sharing Functionality
SMB
SMB 3.0 is the new Microsoft CIFS implementation. It’s an improved version of the Server
Message Block protocol that ships with Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. SMB 3.0 further
enhances the SMB protocol offering:
 SMB Transparent Failover
 SMB Scale Out
 SMB Multichannel
 SMB Direct
 SMB Encryption
 VSS for SMB File Shares
 SMB Directory Leasing
 SMB PowerShell
Many non-Microsoft CIFS implementations do not support CIFS SMB 3.0 and the ones
which do have weak interoperability and integration. This can compromise the
performance and overall stability of your CIFS file serving environment

(DFS) Distributed File System (including DFS-R)
DFS simplifies the management of multiple file servers by
aggregating file shares located in different file servers under
a single logical folder. DFS provides location transparency
and redundancy to improve data availability during failure or
heavy load scenarios by allowing shares in multiple different
locations to be logically grouped under one folder. DFS-R
offers file replication capabilities that support remote
differential compression to minimize network bandwidth

Ensure the non-Microsoft CIFS implementation you’re
evaluating has full support and integration for DFS and
DFS-R. DFS-R is Microsoft proprietary and it is not available in non-Microsoft
implementations

File Classification Infrastructure (FCI)
Windows Server File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) provides insight into your data to help you
manage your file data more effectively, reduce costs, and mitigate risks by providing a built-in
NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 5
solution for file classification that allows administrators to automate manual processes with
predefined policies based on the business value of the data

Non-Microsoft CIFS implementations cannot integrate with FCI functionality

File Server Resource Management Tools (FSRM)
Windows Servers also includes a set of tools that offer quota, file screen and report management

These tools can generate a variety of reports on utilized storage, such as the number of duplicate
files that are stored and a report of large files. There is also support quota management and real-
time file screening to halt the storage of illegal content

The FSRM tools are proprietary to Microsoft file servers and thus are not available on
non-Microsoft CIFS implementations

Native Disk Management Utility
The Disk Management utility is used for managing hard disks and the volumes or partitions that
they contain. With Disk Management, you can initialize Nimble CSArray disks and format volumes
with the FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file systems. Disk Management enables you to perform most disk-
related tasks without restarting the system or interrupting users

Shadow Copies (previous versions) of Shared Folders
Shadow Copies of Shared Folders provides point-in-time copies of files that are located on shared
file server resources that are attached to the Nimble CSArray. With Shadow Copies of Shared
Folders, users can view shared files and folders as they existed at points of time in the past

Accessing previous versions of files, or shadow copies, is useful because users can:
 Recover files that were accidentally deleted

 Recover from accidentally overwriting a file

 Compare versions of a file while working

Ensure the non-Microsoft CIFS implementation you’re evaluating has full support and
integration with Microsoft’s Shadow Copies

Offline Folders/Files and Folder Redirection
Windows offline folder and file redirection provides a cached online mode, whereby read
operations go to the local cache and write operations go to the cache and the server endpoint

Other changes include better handling of per-user encryption and synchronization, support for
differential transfers of large files such as PSTs, and seamless offline and online transitions

Ensure the non-Microsoft CIFS implementation you’re evaluating has full support and
integration with Microsoft’s Offline Folders/Files and Folder Redirection

NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 6
Security
NTFS Folder/File Security: Windows supports all the NTFS security types for files/folders (ACLs,
DACLs, SACLs) which are necessary for user / group permissions as well as file auditing
purposes

Non-MS CIFS implementations may not support the full spectrum of NTFS ACLs, DACLs
and SACLs. This can often lead to incompatibilities with applications and security
vulnerabilities within your organization

Active Directory Domain Support: This is the primary and critical means most organizations
control and enforce user authentication and authorization within their file serving environments

Failure to have full and proper AD integration and support of all domain types (W2K,
W2K3, W2K8, native-mode, mixed mode, etc.) can cause security, integration and support
headaches

Additional Microsoft File Services Features
Many non-Microsoft 3rd party NAS CIFS implementations do not offer the same, “exact” level of
specific integration and interoperability when compared to Microsoft. Often times these specific
“under-the-cover” details are overlooked at first, but can become major issues later on. These
incompatibilities and integration gaps are viewed by Microsoft as non-supported and non-qualified
configurations, leaving the organization in a precarious situation

rd
Some of the more common integration and feature gaps found in 3 party non-Microsoft
CIFS implementations that should be tested and verified include:
 Support for Microsoft reparse points
 Support for Alternate Data Streams (aka. named streams)
 Support for CIFS Opportunistic locking (better performance.)
 Support for NTFS ChangeNotify operations
 Support for Roaming User Profiles
 Support for NTFS Extended Attributes
 Support for NTFS Sparse Files
 Support for Symbolic links via SMB 2.1
 Support for full use of Local Users and Local Groups
 Support for Microsoft Encryption
NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 7
 MMC support for user, group and directory quotas
 Support for all security levels for CIFS connections (hisec.inf)
 Support for Secure LDAP (LDAP over SSL)
 Server & client side SMB signing
 Support for Access Based Enumeration (ABE)
 Support for Microsoft Group Policy Objects
 Support for LDAP signing and sealing
 Support for Local account policies
 Support for file System Access & Logon Auditing via EventViewer
 On-board, on-access and on-demand Antivirus protection
 Support for Microsoft WebDAV
 Support for IPv6 with CIFS
 Support for Granular file blocking
 MMC Support for Local Users/groups
Configuring Nimble Volumes
Volume Creation
Login to your Nimble Storage array, select Manage -> Volumes, then click the “New Volume”
button. Enter a Name that will be used to form the iSCSI target volume name and optionally a
description. Next select the Performance Policy “Windows File Server” which will help the Nimble
array to better understand the characteristics of the data stored on the volume. The Windows File
Server Performance Policy uses a block size of 4 KB and enables both Compression and Caching
which is suitable for most file server applications

However, if your file server will hold a majority of data that is already compressed, such as a video
file share, then you should create a customer Performance Policy that disables Compression and
possibly Caching if there will not be a likelihood of random access patterns. If you are at all unsure
about using the custom Performance Policy features for your data then use the “Windows File
Server” performance profile or contact Nimble Storage Technical Support for additional guidance

NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 8
You should limit access to the volume at a minimum by using iSCSI Initiator Groups. You can
create a new Initiator Group and add each cluster server’s IQN that is available in the Microsoft
iSCSI Initiator tool on each clustered server. You should avoid using the cluster node’s IP address
which can change and is also unique to a single NIC port, which would require you to add every
potential server data IP versus using the single IQN per server

Another key consideration for sharing the iSCSI volume between Windows 2012 cluster nodes is
to enable “Allow multiple initiator access”. This enables support for SCSI-3 Reservation Protocol
which is required by clustered servers to arbitrate cluster resource ownership

The next step is to define the size and optionally the space
characteristics of the volume. Nimble Storage provides
thin provisioning of volumes by default which means that
storage is not immediately reserved until it is actually used

This feature can allow you to overprovision a storage array
but may prove beneficial to reduce manual effort to grow
data volumes in the future or in environments where the
full data store is seldom used such as development and
testing environments. You can pre-allocate storage space
ahead of time by using the Volume Reserve function

NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 9
Data protection will be covered later in this document with more detail, for now you can select the
radio button marked “None”. We will fully configure the clustered file shares and then come back
to enable automated snapshot protection

Configuring Windows with Nimble Storage
This section assumes that you have two newly installed Windows 2012 Server edition machines,
either virtual or physical, that will be configured to host clustered file shares for high-availability

Configure Roles and Features
The first step is to install the necessary Roles and
Features that we will use to build the clustered
NAS solution. Use the Server Manager
Dashboard and select Manager -> Install Roles
and Features. Select the following features within
“File and Storage Services”. You may want to
install other components for additional data
management and monitoring functionality such
as the Data Deduplication and File Server
Resource Manager, however these are not
required. Also, note that Server for NFS is
selected by default, but can be ignored if you will
not be sharing data with Unix/Linux systems
using this protocol

Install the Failover Clustering and MPIO Features, which enables high-availability and permits
load balancing of data I/O across multiple network connections between server nodes and the
Nimble Storage array. This provides resiliency in the event of a network path failure as well as
additional performance when multiple connections are available

Configuring iSCSI and MPIO
Follow the Nimble Storage Best Practices for Networking to properly configure both iSCSI and
MPIO on each server node. It is available on the Nimble support site

Configure Failover Clustering
Create a new cluster by adding each of the server nodes to the cluster. You should give the
cluster a unique name on the network, this name will be used to manage the clustered roles and
resources but will not be used by normal user traffic. For example, FSCluster.domain.com

NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 10
Connect Volume
Use the iSCSI Management tools on each cluster node to connect to the Nimble Volume that you
want to use as a file share. Use the Disk Management tools provided in the Computer
Management tool to bring the volume on-line and initialize it with a GPT partition table. You can
format it using Windows NTFS best practices (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314878) which will
normally be “default”

Test the Volume
Testing volume performance is a quick way to determine if there are any problems between the
Windows file server and the storage. A simple method uses the Windows Explorer to copy many
files from the file server to the volume used as a file share

Configure Clustered File Sharing
There are two types of clustered file shares that you can create with Windows 2012 Failover
Clustering, General Use and Scale-Out File Server. The Scale-Out File Server is a new addition
with Windows Server 2012 and leverages Clustered Shared Volumes to distribute load between
cluster nodes in an Active/Active methodology. Scale-Out File Servers are designed to support
server applications like databases or virtual disk files in Hyper-V implementations. Note: using a
Scale-Out File Server role has limitations that do not permit the use of certain Windows-native
tools such as Deduplication; see the Microsoft Tech Note for further information:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831349.aspx

Enable Continuous Availability
SMB3 includes a powerful feature called “Continuous Availability” which provides transparent
failover of shares between cluster nodes without impacting the client. This feature is only available
in Windows 2012, Windows 8 and newer operating systems. The feature essentially shares client
state between cluster nodes to enable file share failover without service downtime. You can
NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 11
enable the feature easily when creating your file shares or modifying the existing file shares as
follows

NIMBLE STORAGE BEST PRACTICES GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS FILE SHARING 12

To enable “Allow multiple initiator access”. This enables support for SCSI-3 Reservation Protocol which is required by clustered servers to arbitrate cluster resource ownership. The next step is …

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Frequently Asked Questions

How does nimble integrate with vmware srm?

Nimble Storage fully integrates with VMware SRM to automate DR protection, test and recovery for the storage layer. Major points of integration between VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager and the Nimble Storage Arrays are done via a “Storage Replication Adapater” (SRA) written by Nimble to the specifications provided by VMware.

What is nimble storage?

Introduction About Nimble Storage Nimble Storage is the leader in flash-optimized hybrid storage solutions, providing customers with scalable, efficient, and high performance storage for all mainstream applications, user data, and server and desktop virtualization workloads.

What are the design considerations for dr testing with srm and nimble?

Here are the key design considerations for DR testing with SRM and Nimble Storage: NOTE: Ensure base infrastructure service could be verified during DR testing. This means all critical application VMs could join the domain, end users and applications could authenticate against AD, and the application components could communicate on the network.

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© 2013 Nimble Storage, Inc.. Nimble Storage and CASL are trademarks of Nimble Storage, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. BPG-SRM-0313 Title JPEG in Word > PDF Author Sachin Chheda Created Date 3/19/2013 9:40:02 AM