Windows Server 2012, File Servers and SMB 3.0 – Simpler and Easier by Design

 Introduction

I have been presenting our solution in Windows Server 2012 for File Storage for Virtualization (Hyper-V over SMB) and Databases (SQL Server over SMB) for a while now. I always start the conversation talking about how simple and easy it is for an IT Administrator or an Application Developer to use SMB 3.0.

However, I am frequently challenged to detail exactly what that means. After all, both “simple” and “easy” are fairly subjective concepts. In this blog post, I will enumerate some design decisions regarding the SMB 3.0 protocol and its implementation in Windows to make this more concrete.

Please note that, while the topic here is simplicity, I will essentially be going into details behind the implementation, so this could get a little intricate. Not to scare anyone, but if you’re just getting started with SMB, you should probably start with a lighter topic. Or proceed at your own risk :-).

Here’s a summary of the items on this post:

• 1. Introduction
• 2. SMB Transparent Failover
  • 2.1. SMB Transparent Failover – No application failures, no application changes
  • 2.2. SMB Transparent Failover – Continuous Availability turned on by default
  • 2.3. SMB Transparent Failover – Witness Service
• 3. SMB Scale-Out
  • 3.1. SMB Scale-Out – Volumes, not drive letters
  • 3.2. SMB Scale-Out – Single name, dynamic
  • 3.3. SMB Scale-Out – Using node IP addresses
• 4. SMB Multichannel
  • 4.1. SMB Multichannel – Auto-discovery
  • 4.2. SMB Multichannel – Transparent failover
  • 4.3. SMB Multichannel – Interface arrival
  • 4.4. SMB Multichannel – Link-local
• 5. SMB Direct
  • 5.1. SMB Direct – Discovery over TCP/IP
  • 5.2. SMB Direct – Fail back to TCP/IP
• 6. VSS for SMB File Share
  • 6.1. VSS for SMB File Share – Same model as block VSS
  • 6.2. VSS for SMB File Shares – Stream snapshots from file server
• 7. SMB Encryption
  • 7.1. SMB Encryption – No PKI or certificates required
  • 7.2. SMB Encryption – Hardware acceleration
• 8. Server Manager
  • 8.1. Server Manager – Simple Wizards
  • 8.2. Server Manager – Fewer knobs
• 9. SMB PowerShell
  • 9.1. SMB PowerShell – Permissions for a New Share
  • 9.2. SMB PowerShell – Permissions on the Folder
  • 9.3. SMB PowerShell – Cluster type based on disk type
  • 9.4. SMB PowerShell – Shares, Sessions and Open Files across Scale-Out nodes
  • 9.5. SMB PowerShell – Connection
• 10. Conclusion 

--> Please see the article on the blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/10/08/windows-server-2012-file-servers-and-smb-3-0-simpler-and-easier-by-design.aspx