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Getting started with Storage Replica in Windows Server Technical Preview

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Storage Replica (SR) is a new feature that enables storage-agnostic, block-level, synchronous replication between servers for disaster recovery, as well as stretching of a failover cluster for high availability. Synchronous replication enables mirroring of data in physical sites with crash-consistent volumes ensuring zero data loss at the file system level. Asynchronous replication allows site extension beyond metropolitan ranges with the possibility of data loss.

Ned Pyle, the Product Manager for Storage Replica, has written a great “getting started” guide here:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/f843291f-6dd8-4a78-be17-ef92262c158d/getting-started-with-windows-volume-replication?forum=WinServerPreview

I got mine going after adding the Windows Storage Replication feature in Server Manager:

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It’s configured in Failover Clustering:

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I’m working with a customer who is really excited that in-box volume replication has come to Windows Server. It’s going to be interesting to discover best practices and ideal use cases for Storage Replica as we get closer to the final release.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    A Windows Server Technical Preview Storage Replica Guide from Microsoft is now available for download athttp://download.microsoft.com/download/8/8/F/88FB4BBF-8ADC-41E0-A64F-489CEEF5218E/Windows%20Server%20Technical%20Preview%20Storage%20Replica%20Guide.docx
  • Anonymous
    October 17, 2014
    We've used Technical Preview version to create a two-node failover file server with no shared storage! Part I is "general-purpose" setup and Part II is Scale-Out File Server for Hyper-V. Some issues with a "generic" file server (guess because we've used virtualized setup, comparably slow iSCSI disks and it's still even not beta...) and SoFS works as expected! Good job! Both "cooking books" or Step-by-Step Guides are here:

    http://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/?p=25

    http://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/?p=42

    Thanks again for Storage Replica! :)

    Anton
  • Anonymous
    October 21, 2014
    Anton, good effort. But keep trying ;)
  • Anonymous
    November 26, 2015
    I'm wondering if anybody successfully deployed Storage Replica on locally attached disks. I'm particularly interested in SOFS (or File Server) in MS Failover cluster. I have read several blog posts, reviewed attempts by different people, and tried it myself. The only option works is iSCSI non-shared disks attached to each node in a cluster. But with iSCSI I can have shared disk and build cluster without Storage Replica.

    I have tried different configurations on my own. My HW is 2 Dell servers with Perc 710 Mini controllers. I have disks created and presented to servers. I'm able to create Storage Replica between servers using PowerShell but have never confirmed that actual replication worked. Next step is to create cluster and add those disks into it. Those disks are not showing up on a list of available storage on servers. I tried one different approach (different disks) where cluster was able to see disks, but failed to bring them online.

    In theory Storage Replica looks like really nice feature, but it doesn't seem to work. At least on local disks as it supposed to. I would really like to hear other people opinion on this topic or experience with Storage Replica and I would be glad to be proven wrong.