Server Storage Configuration and Active Directory Management

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering Windows Server 2012 R2 storage concepts, disk formats, Storage Spaces layouts, and Active Directory Organizational Unit configuration.

Solid State Drive (SSD)

A storage drive utilizing flash memory and high-speed interfaces such as SATA or SATA Express; it has no moving parts, uses less power, and provides faster speeds and higher shock resistance than an HDD, but typically has lower storage capacity.

Local Storage

Storage media installed inside a computer's chassis with a direct, exclusive connection to the system board through a disk controller, granting direct access only to that specific system.

Direct-Attached Storage (DAS)

Storage connected directly to a computer system, often consisting of one or more hard disk drives in an external enclosure with its own power supply that can be configured as a disk array such as RAID.

Network-Attached Storage (NAS)

A dedicated storage appliance containing drive bays, a power supply, a network interface, and a specialized operating system designed for file sharing via network protocols like SMB, NFS, and FTP.

Storage Area Network (SAN)

A specialized high-speed network infrastructure (commonly utilizing Fibre Channel or iSCSI) that provides servers with rapid block-level access to large pools of shared storage.

Logical Unit Number (LUN)

A logical reference point used in SAN architectures to identify a distinct unit of storage, which can represent an entire disk array, a single disk, or a portion of a disk.

Disk Interface

The physical and logical connection system, typically using cables, that links a storage drive to a computer system and governs data transfer speeds.

Serial ATA (SATA)

An inexpensive, high-speed disk interface that replaced parallel ATA (PATA); its version $3.2$ standard supports transfer speeds up to $16\,\text{Gb/s}$.

Small Computer System Interface (SCSI)

A legacy parallel bus interface technology used in servers whose highest performance standard, Ultra-640, supports transfer rates up to $640\,\text{MB/s}$.

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)

A serial interface replacement for parallel SCSI that supports transfer rates of $6\,\text{Gb/s}$ and higher, allowing SATA drives to connect to SAS backplanes.

Backplane

A server connection system using a printed circuit board instead of traditional cabling to route data signals and power to storage drives.

Boot Volume

The volume or partition on a Windows computer where the \Windows operating system directory is stored.

System Volume

The unlettered volume containing the hardware-specific boot files required to find and load the Windows operating system; it cannot be viewed directly in File Explorer.

Basic Disk

A traditional disk configuration type that accommodates basic volumes (partitions) and supports a maximum of four partitions: either four primary partitions, or three primary partitions and one extended partition.

Dynamic Disk

A Windows disk configuration type that can support up to $128$ volumes, span across multiple physical disks, and configure software RAID arrangements.

Primary Partition

A partition on a basic disk that can be assigned a drive letter, marked as active, and host the Windows system volume.

Extended Partition

The fourth allowable partition on an MBR basic disk, which cannot hold data directly and must be subdivided into logical drives.

Master Boot Record (MBR)

A legacy partitioning scheme in use since DOS that stores partition tables in the first sector of a disk and supports volume sizes up to $2\,\text{TB}$.

GUID Partitioning Table (GPT)

A modern partitioning method supported since Windows Server 2008 that accommodates volume sizes up to $18\,\text{EB}$ and provides partition table replication and Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) protection.

Spanned Volume

A dynamic volume layout that combines unallocated space across two or more physical disks into a single logical drive without striping or redundancy.

Striped Volume

A dynamic volume layout across two or more dynamic disks that interleaves data equally across all drives to maximize read/write performance without fault tolerance.

Mirrored Volume (RAID 1)

A fault-tolerant volume layout that uses space on two dynamic disks to write identical copies of data simultaneously to both disks.

RAID 5 Volume

A fault-tolerant dynamic volume that stripes data and distributed parity information across three or more disks to reconstruct lost data in the event of a single disk failure.

File System

The software structure and format an operating system utilizes to organize, store, locate, and access files on storage media.

FAT16

A legacy file allocation table format limited to partition sizes of $2\,\text{GB}$ (extended to $4\,\text{GB}$ in Windows NT) and a maximum file size of $2\,\text{GB}$, lacking native security permissions, compression, and encryption.

FAT32

A file allocation table format supporting partition volumes up to $2\,\text{TB}$ and file sizes up to $4\,\text{GB}$, though Windows operating systems cap the creation of new FAT32 volumes at $32\,\text{GB}$.

NTFS

The standard file system for Windows Server, offering security access control lists (ACLs), disk quotas, volume mount points, shadow copies, file compression, and Encrypting File System (EFS).

Resilient File System (ReFS)

A Windows Server 2012 file system designed for large file shares with Storage Spaces that supports volumes up to $1\,\text{YB}$ and automatically repairs corrupt data, but cannot be booted from or used with EFS, compression, or quotas.

Petabyte (PB)

A unit of digital storage capacity equal to $1024\,\text{TB}$ (or $2^{50}\,\text{bytes}$), equivalent to roughly $1.5\text{ million}$ CD-ROMs.

Exabyte (EB)

A unit of digital storage capacity equal to $1024\,\text{PB}$ (or $2^{60}\,\text{bytes}$).

Zettabyte (ZB)

A unit of digital storage capacity equal to $1024\,\text{EB}$ (or $2^{70}\,\text{bytes}$), equivalent to approximately $30\text{ billion}$ 4K movies.

Yottabyte (YB)

A unit of digital storage capacity equal to $1024\,\text{ZB}$ (or $2^{80}\,\text{bytes}$), estimated to require approximately one million data centers.

Hot Add (Hot Swap)

The administrative procedure of inserting or attaching a new hard disk drive into an operational server while the system remains powered on.

Virtual Hard Disk (VHD)

A virtual disk image file format used by Hyper-V virtual machines that can also be directly created, mounted, and managed in Windows Disk Management as a physical disk.

Storage Spaces

A storage virtualization feature introduced in Windows Server 2012 that aggregates physical hard disks into pools and provisions virtual disks and volumes dynamically.

Storage Pool

An aggregated collection of physical disks from which virtual disks and storage volumes are dynamically provisioned in Storage Spaces.

Primordial Pool

The default system storage pool containing all raw, unallocated physical disks attached to a server that are available to be grouped into custom storage pools.

Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD)

A disk arrangement where multiple individual hard drives are combined without hardware RAID and presented to the operating system as a single storage pool.

Thin Provisioning

A storage allocation method that creates a virtual disk with a large defined capacity but only consumes physical drive space dynamically as data is actually written.

Data Deduplication

A storage optimization feature in Windows Server that locates duplicate chunks of data across a volume and replaces redundant copies with pointers to a single stored chunk.

Storage Tiering

A Storage Spaces capability that integrates high-speed SSDs with high-capacity HDDs in a single pool, automatically keeping the most frequently accessed data on SSDs.

Simple Space

A Storage Spaces layout (comparable to RAID 0) that stripes data across physical disks without fault tolerance or data redundancy.

Mirror Space

A fault-tolerant Storage Spaces layout (comparable to RAID 1) that creates two-way or three-way duplicates of data across separate physical disks.

Parity Space

A fault-tolerant Storage Spaces layout (comparable to RAID 5) that stripes data and parity across three or more disks to protect against drive failure.

Organizational Unit (OU)

A subdivisional container object in Active Directory used to organize users, groups, and computers within a domain, serving as the smallest scope to which Group Policy can be directly linked.

Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC)

A Microsoft Management Console (MMC) administrative snap-in used to manage domain objects, accounts, groups, and organizational units in Windows Server.

Active Directory Container

A built-in organizational folder (such as Computers or Users) that houses directory objects but cannot have Group Policy objects linked directly to it.

Protect Object from Accidental Deletion

An Active Directory security property located on an object's properties sheet that prevents administrators or users from deleting the object until the checkbox is cleared.

Advanced Features (ADUC View)

A display setting under the View menu in Active Directory Users and Computers that makes advanced properties visible, including the Object tab necessary to toggle accidental deletion protection.