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Use Enhanced Log in Storage Replica

Storage Replica in Windows Server uses a general-purpose logging service to replicate I/O to the secondary volume in any replication group. Beginning in Azure Local 23H2, users can opt in to a more performant logging service called Enhanced Log. To differentiate this redesigned logging service, we refer to the original logging service as Traditional Log.

Note

Enhanced Log is generally available with Azure Local 23H2 and is available in Windows Server 2025.

Enhanced Log vs. Traditional Log

Traditional Log is based on the Common Log File System (CLFS).

Enhanced Log avoids file system abstractions and their performance costs by using a raw format for logging I/O that needs to be replicated. Enhanced Log introduces an architecture that allows multiple I/O data records to be concurrently written to the secondary volume in a replication group, improving overall workload performance.

Important

There's no migration path from Storage Replica Traditional Log to Enhanced Log or vice versa. You must declare the log format when you create the Storage Replica partnership.

Enhanced Log deployment steps

To deploy a Storage Replica partnership that uses Enhanced Log:

  1. Create standard new CSV_ReFS formatted volumes for Storage Replica data/data replication on each site's storage pool:

    New-Volume -FriendlyName south-data -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Pool for Site South" -Size 1tb -FileSystem CSVFS_ReFS

    New-Volume -FriendlyName north-data -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Pool for Site North" -Size 1tb -FileSystem CSVFS_ReFS

  2. Create a new virtual disk for Storage Replica logs and initialize the partition for each site:

    New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName south-log -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Pool for Site South" -Size 16gb

    New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName north-log -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Pool for Site North" -Size 16gb

  3. Identify the disk number of the partitions you initialized in Step 2 so you can assign a drive letter:

    Get-Disk

    On site 1:

    New-Partition -DiskNumber <Disk Number> -DriveLetter 'e' -UseMaximumSize

    On site 2:

    New-Partition -DiskNumber <Disk Number> -DriveLetter 'f' -UseMaximumSize

  4. Create the new Storage Replica partnership by using the -LogType Raw parameter to access Enhanced Log functionality:

    New-SRPartnership -SourceComputerName <Source Computer Hostname> -SourceRGName <Source Replication Group Name> -SourceVolumeName 'C:\ClusterStorage\south-data\' -SourceLogVolumeName e: -DestinationComputerName <Destination Computer Name> -DestinationRGName <Destination Replication Group Name> -DestinationVolumeName 'C:\ClusterStorage\north-data\' -DestinationLogVolumeName f: -LogType Raw -EnableCompression

    Note

    The -EnableCompression parameter is needed only if you intend to use Server Message Block (SMB) compression for Storage Replica traffic.

You can use -LogType FileBased to deploy the Storage Replica partnership by using the Traditional Log format.

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