Hello, I've got 16 Storage Servers running Windows Storage Server 2008 R2. They're all connected to the network via single GigE links. Anyway, I'm trying to learn how to set up Policy based QoS to do what I want for these servers. They are all part of a small domain, as are all other machines in this post. I want to define a QoS policy that will essentially give me 3 "bandwidth classes". Forgive me, I'm new to all this, and may be a little fuzzy on the terminology / network stupid. Also, all (99%) of my network traffic is SMB 2.0 file serving. Class 1 - Incoming file transfers from an internet facing file server application (Aspera Enterprise Server, for the curious). This is the most important traffic, and must be prioritized over all others. This traffic always comes from one specific IP address, which is in the same subnet as my storage servers (172.20.11.0/24). These transfers are pretty fast for internet transfers, but not terribly fast for LAN transfers (45-200mbps max each). Class 2 - Outbound file transfers to client computers, on a different subnet (172.20.10.0/24). This is also very important. There are 4 client systems, and they will frequently stream video from the storage servers at ~220mbps each. The video files are spread out across all the storage servers, so I could have 4 clients trying to stream off one server, or they could all be on different servers. They're not ALWAYS streaming video, it's bite size chunks - a few minutes at a time totaling a few hours per day. Class 3 - Outbound file transfers to other servers on the same subnet (172.20.11.0/24). There are a lot of these guys (almost 80), and they're trying to copy video files from my storage servers to their local arrays. They'll go line speed if I let them, and they can definitely gang up on the storage servers. It's not critical for them to transfer incredibly fast, but I don't want to limit their bandwidth if I don't have to. I think this would be categorized as "bulk data" traffic? Okay, so I see with Windows Server 2008 R2, the QoS policies can be either throttle rates, or DSCP classes. As a sidenote, my class 2 traffic is a new requirement, so I HAD been getting along just fine by limiting outbound traffic on all my storage servers to ~900mbps, but I can't get away with that now, since I need to differentiate between my class 2 and class 3 traffic. I'm guessing that DSCP classes are the way to do this, but I don't know much about them. Is this something that has to be configured on both the server and the switch / router? We have a fairly beefy Cisco switch, but I know very little about it. Assuming I could get help with that, would I just assign my class 3 traffic the default DSCP (0), and use 1 for my Class 2 traffic, and 3 for my Class 1 traffic? It's easy to just classify all of the 172.20.10.0/24 as class 2 traffic, but if I have all of 172.20.11.0/24 assigned as class 3 traffic, will the separate policy for the Aspera server (at 172.20.11.224/24) to be Class 1 traffic override this for that specific IP? Also.. assuming there's no harm in having these policies affect all ports on both TCP and UDP? I could stamp it down to the SMB ports, but I don't see why... Thanks, Derek

Hi Derek, Thanks for posting here. Policy-based QoS allows you to define the priority of traffic. You can configure a QoS policy to mark outbound traffic with a specific DSCP value. And also manage the use of bandwidth for outbound traffic. We can configure a QoS policy with a throttle rate for outbound traffic. With throttling, the QoS components limit the aggregate outgoing network traffic to a specified rate. In addition, please note that Policy-based QoS enables IT administrators to configure and enforce QoS policies that cannot be configured on routers and switches. For example, it is difficult to create user-level QoS on routers or switches. However, we can easily setting a user-level QoS policy and apply it. When the user logs on at any computers which apply this policy, the network traffic will follow the QoS policy setting. For more detailed information about QoS policy, you may consider check the following articles first. Overview of Policy-Based QoS http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd759093.aspx Policy-based Quality of Service (QoS) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd919203(WS.10).aspx Creating and Editing a QoS Policy http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771283.aspx Quality of Service (QoS) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb530836 Best Regards, AidenAiden Cao TechNet Community Support