Drives must provide port association. Windows depends on drive enclosures to provide capabilities such as drive-slot identification and visual drive indications (commonly implemented as drive LEDs). Windows matches a drive in an enclosure with SES-3 identification capabilities through the port address of the drive. The computer hosts can be separate from drive enclosures or integrated into drive enclosures. Multiport drives must provide symmetric access. Drives must provide the same performance for data-access commands and the same behavior for that arrive on different ports as they provide when those commands arrive on the same port. Drives must provide persistent reservations. Windows can use physical disks to form a storage pool. From the storage pool, Windows can define virtual disks, called storage spaces. A failover cluster can create high availability for a pool of physical disks, the storage spaces that they define, and the data that they contain. In addition to the standard Windows Hardware Compatibility Test qualification, physical disks should pass through the Microsoft Cluster Configuration Validation Wizard. In addition to the drives, the following enclosure requirements exist: Drive enclosures must provide drive-identification services. Drive enclosures must provide numerical (for example, a drive bay number) and visual (for example, a failure LED or a drive-of-interest LED) drive-identification services. Enclosures must provide this service through SCSI Enclosure Service (SES-3) commands. Windows depends on proper behavior for the following enclosure services. Windows correlates enclosure services to drives through protocol-specific information and their vital product data page 83h inquiry association type 1. Drive enclosures must provide direct access to the drives that they house. Enclosures must not abstract the drives that they house (for example, form into a logical RAID disk). If they are present, integrated switches must provide discovery of and access to all of the drives in the enclosure, without requiring additional physical host connections. If possible, multiple host connections must provide discovery of and access to the same set of drives. Hardware vendors should pay specific attention to these storage drive and enclosure requirements for SAS configurations when they are used in conjunction with the Storage Spaces feature in Windows Server 2012 R2. Nearline SAS (NL-SAS) Nearline SAS (NL-SAS) drives deliver the larger capacity benefits of enterprise SATA drives with a fully capable SAS interface. The physical properties of the drive are identical to those of traditional SATA drives, with a rotational speed of 7,200 RPM and average latency of around
Drives must provide port association. Windows depends on drive enclosures to provide capabilities such as drive-slot identification and visual drive indications (commonly implemented as drive LEDs). Windows matches a drive in an enclosure with SES-3 identification capabilities through the port address of the drive. The computer hosts can be separate from drive enclosures or integrated into drive enclosures. Multiport drives must provide symmetric access. Drives must provide the same performance for data-access commands and the same behavior for that arrive on different ports as they provide when those commands arrive on the same port. Drives must provide persistent reservations. Windows can use physical disks to form a storage pool. From the storage pool, Windows can define virtual disks, called storage spaces. A failover cluster can create high availability for a pool of physical disks, the storage spaces that they define, and the data that they contain. In addition to the standard Windows Hardware Compatibility Test qualification, physical disks should pass through the Microsoft Cluster Configuration Validation Wizard. In addition to the drives, the following enclosure requirements exist: Drive enclosures must provide drive-identification services. Drive enclosures must provide numerical (for example, a drive bay number) and visual (for example, a failure LED or a drive-of-interest LED) drive-identification services. Enclosures must provide this service through SCSI Enclosure Service (SES-3) commands. Windows depends on proper behavior for the following enclosure services. Windows correlates enclosure services to drives through protocol-specific information and their vital product data page 83h inquiry association type 1. Drive enclosures must provide direct access to the drives that they house. Enclosures must not abstract the drives that they house (for example, form into a logical RAID disk). If they are present, integrated switches must provide discovery of and access to all of the drives in the enclosure, without requiring additional physical host connections. If possible, multiple host connections must provide discovery of and access to the same set of drives. Hardware vendors should pay specific attention to these storage drive and enclosure requirements for SAS configurations when they are used in conjunction with the Storage Spaces feature in Windows Server 2012 R2. Nearline SAS (NL-SAS) Nearline SAS (NL-SAS) drives deliver the larger capacity benefits of enterprise SATA drives with a fully capable SAS interface. The physical properties of the drive are identical to those of traditional SATA drives, with a rotational speed of 7,200 RPM and average latency of around
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