With the release of Windows Server 2016, there’s a lot of new features that have been added to increase availability and security. One hot feature that will add a lot of benefits for small, medium and enterprise business environments is Storage Replica (SR). Be sure that’s going to help you in your Disaster Recovery Plan and protect your data against catastrophic losses.

Windows Server 2016 will be released the next month said Microsoft the last month. Windows Server 2016 brings a lot of new features compared to the last Windows Server version for Hyper-V, networking and storage. In this topic I will try to convince you to move from prior Windows Server edition to Windows Server 2016 with eight reasons.

Microsoft published details of how Windows Server 2016 will be released and maintained, which includes a “Windows as a service” model of frequent operating system updates. Windows Server 2016 will be launched at the Ignite conference (September 26 to 30 in Atlanta, Georgia); there will be three editions: Datacenter, Standard and Essentials.

With Windows Server 2016 we have gained some very welcome capabilities to do cost effective VDI deployments using all in box technologies. The main areas of improvement are in storage, RemoteFX and with Discrete Device Assignment for hardware pass-through to the VM. Let’s take a look at what’s possible now and think out loud on what solutions are possible as well as their benefits and drawbacks.

Warning: This article is written with information related to Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4. Storage Replica is a new feature introduced in Windows Server 2016 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.

This post is about Microsoft Storage Replica, a new solution introduced by Microsoft in Windows Server 2016. Basically, it enables replication between two servers, clusters or inside a cluster, also being capable of copying data between volumes on the same server. Storage Replica is often utilized for Disaster Recovery, allowing the user to replicate data to a remote site, thus being able to recover from complete physical failure on the main location. The post is dedicated to building a “shared nothing” cluster. It is an experimental part of a series and features a “Shared Nothing” Hyper-V guest VM cluster. As always, there is a detailed instruction as to how to create the subject setup and there are results for everyone to check.

This post is dedicated to the new solution from Microsoft – the Microsoft Storage Replica. It is a practical part of a series of posts about this technology and features a “Shared Nothing” Hyper-V HA VM Cluster in practice. Microsoft Storage Replica is designed to perform replication between various media: servers, clusters, volumes inside a server, etc. It’s typical usage scenario is Disaster Recovery, which is essential for data protection in case anything happens to the main location. Critical data is replicated to a remote site, often located hundreds and thousands of miles away for better data safety. The experiment is performed by StarWind engineers, so the post contains detailed instructions and a comprehensive conclusion.

This post is about Microsoft Storage Replica – a disaster recovery tool, introduced by Microsoft in Windows Server 2016. It is a part of series about this technology, which is all featured on this blog. Basically, the post is a practical guide for building a “Shared Nothing” Scale-Out File Server, prepared by StarWind engineers after they did it themselves. The “Shared Nothing” is an architecture, which implies that each node is self-sufficient and completely independent, which makes the system more reliable. It got its name because the nodes don’t have a shared storage at all, moving closer to eliminating the single point of failure. The architecture is almost infinitely scalable, becoming popular with use cases where unpredictable and explosive growth is typical.

This is the first test in the series, dedicated to Microsoft Storage Replica – a new solution introduced in Windows Server 2016. It shows a step-by-step process of “Shared Nothing” Failover File Server building, based on the Server Message Block protocol (SMB3). Microsoft Storage Replica is a versatile data replication solution. It performs replication between servers, between volumes in a server, between clusters, etc. The typical use case for Microsoft Storage Replica is Disaster Recovery, which is basically replication to a remote site. It allows easy recovery of data in case the main site operation is disrupted by some sort of a force majeure, like natural disasters. The test is performed by StarWind engineers with a full report on the results.