Storage Replica Windows Server 2016

Storage replica is a new feature on Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition, Storage replica allows us to replicate machines, data, from a server to server, sync data from physical sites, Cluster to cluster, Storage replication in a stretch cluster using Storage Replica.
Storage Replica uses SMB V3.1.1. It can use any fixed disk storage, Storage Replica supports synchronous and asynchronous replication, certainly, we can define the Storage Replica as new disaster recovery method for mirroring data, not many corporate using this handy feature, I have no idea why, but I do suggest you taking look and discover it.

  • Storage replicate supported configurations:
  • Stretch Cluster: configuration of computer and storage in a single cluster, SAS storage, SAN and iSCSI-attached LUNs.
    Diagram showing two cluster nodes in New York using Storage Replica to replicate its storage with two nodes in New Jersey
  • Disaster recovery: replicates between two separate clusters, as you can understand, possibly for DR, different sites, you can manage this using Powershell or Windows Admin Center. manual actions needed for failover.
    Diagram showing a cluster in Los Angeles using Storage Replica to replicate its storage with a different cluster in Las Vegas
    Credit to Microsoft docs:

    Server to server: allows synchronous and asynchronous replication between two standalone servers, using Storage Spaces with shared SAS storage, SAN.

    Diagram showing a server in Building 5 replicating with a server in Building 9
    Credit to Microsoft docs:
Important notes:
  • The volumes must be the same letters in the source and destination.
  • Log and Disk must be GPT, not MBR.
  • Log Volumes must be identical size.
  • Log Volumes must be identical size.
  • All replicate data must have the same sector size, ditto log disks.
  • The log volume must be at least 9GB.

In this demonstration, I show you how to replicate data in “Server-to-Server” way.

In order to use on Storage Replica, we should create “Replication Partnership” between our servers.
For instance, FS01 & FS02 are going to be in the relationship for our demonstration.
We should install this feature on both and then restart the machine.

$Servers = ‘FS01′,’FS02’                                                                                         
$Servers | ForEach { Install-WindowsFeature –ComputerName $_ –Name Storage-Replica,FS-FileServer IncludeManagementTools -restart }

As soon as the machine as restarted we have open machine drive and make sure we copy the particular drive with the same “drive letter” on destination. Q drive is the source, Q drive is the destination.

The next step is to open PowerShell as Administrator on the source machine and run the execution command:

New-SRPartnership -SourceComputerName FS01 -SourceRGName FS01node -SourceVolumeName Q: -SourceLogVolumeName G: -DestinationComputerName FS02 -DestinationRGName FS02node -DestinationVolumeName Q: -DestinationLogVolumeName G: -LogSizeInBytes 1GB -Verbose

After running this command, we have created the partnership between two FS servers.
You can monitor your replication using “Performance Monitor” and under available counters, you can add the “Storage Replicate statistics”.

Using “Get-SRPartnership” command you can get the replication information.

You can get replication source and destination state using this:

Get-SRGroup 
Get-SRPartnership 
(Get-SRGroup).replicas
  • Do you want to check if you meet the Storage replica’s requirements?:
Test-SRTopology -SourceComputerName FS01 -SourceVolumeName Q: -SourceLogVolumeName G: -DestinationComputerName FS2 -DestinationVolumeName Q: -DestinationLogVolumeName g: -DurationInMinutes 30 -ResultPath c:\temp

For further information:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-replica/storage-replica-overview