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Why Windows Storage Server 2008?

The amount of data supported within the organization continues to grow every year. Regulatory requirements, archival demands and data availability push storage requirements to their limits. As the datacenter grows, so does power consumption, physical space requirements and the need for improved hardware to handle the massive volume of data. Administrators need more than just raw storage capacity, but to implement the storage techniques and strategies that help them prioritize data and provide a standard of service. Storage demands will continue to grow and a storage solution is needed that can grow with the demand. Windows Storage Server 2008 can enable your organization to optimize your datacenter storage requirements.

Windows Storage Server 2008

Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008 is built upon an optimized release of the reliable and flexible file services of Windows Server 2008 for better file serving performance. Microsoft then adds advanced storage technologies such as file de-duplication and an iSCSI software target for unified file- and block-based storage and packages it for delivery within storage appliances. Similarly, SQS then offer specialized hardware to create WSS08-based appliances. Windows-powered storage appliances give customers new storage capabilities, simplified deployment and easier management while assuring seamless synergy in their Windows infrastructure in a cost-effective and high-performance platform.

Built upon Windows Server 2008

Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008 (WSS08) provides file services that are built upon the reliable and flexible file services within Windows Server 2008. WSS 08 provides a solid mid-market to enterprise file serving solution with easy manageability and powerful file serving features on a mature base platform and using industry standard hardware. WSS08 is optimized from WS08 for performance in the file serving role, as well as by the hardware partner from basic server configurations - but maintains compatibility with other Windows management tools from Microsoft and third-party Windows solutions.

Advanced Storage Technologies

Windows Storage Server 2008 extends the basic functionality of a file server providing advanced technologies including file & block storage with iSCSI and data deduplication capabilities with SIS. These extended functionalities are designed to be easy-to-use and function transparently to the users of the organizations file infrastructure and require very little maintenance.

iSCSI Software Target

The Microsoft implementation of Internet SCSI (iSCSI) is based on the industry standard developed to enable transmission of SCSI block commands over the existing IP network by using the TCP/IP protocol. The encapsulated SCSI commands and data can be transmitted over a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN). iSCSI provides an ease of management to organizations looking to deliver both messaging traffic and block-based storage over existing Internet Protocol (IP) networks, without installing a separate Fibre Channel network. Combined with better scalability, reliability & availability iSCSI is set to provide an enterprise class solution at a low cost price. Affordable because it leverages existing Ethernet-based hardware and the current expertise of your IT staff.

Industry Standard Storage Protocol

Internet SCSI (iSCSI) is an industry standard developed to enable transmission of SCSI block commands over the existing IP network by using the TCP/IP protocol. iSCSI is a technological breakthrough that offers organizations the possibility of delivering both messaging traffic and block-based storage over existing Internet Protocol (IP) networks, without installing a separate, expensive Fibre Channel network. Implementing this solution is simpler and provides a cost-effective alternative.

Flexible and Unified Block-Storage

The iSCSI Software Target provides block-level storage as disk volumes which can be mounted by any client running an iSCSI initiator. The iSCSI target uses space that is allocated as VHD's within the Windows Storage Server. This helps provide a simplified model for storage management and a more flexible platform for supporting file services at the block level.

Cost-Effective and Manageable SAN

Windows Storage Server 2008 provides the ability to deploy iSCSI SAN solutions which capitalize on the preexisting LAN infrastructure and make use of the much more ubiquitous IP expertise available in most organizations unlike a Fibre Channel (FC) SAN solution, which requires the deployment of a completely new network infrastructure and specialized technical expertise and hardware for troubleshooting. The WSS08 iSCSI solution allows implementers of iSCSI SANs to minimize the initial costs of deploying while still delivering an enterprise class solution for storage purposes.

Single instance Storage

Among the additional storage-centric capabilities provided in Windows Storage Server (WSS) appliances over a traditional Windows Server is file deduplication through Single Instance Storage (SIS). SIS delivers built-in file de-duplication to optimize storage capacity by actively comparing and eliminating identical files on file sharing volumes. Duplicate files are transparently replaced with file system links to the single copy retained in the SIS Common Store -- saving significant amounts of capacity. As a result, file serving performance is improved because more files can be cached by the operating system. In addition, protection and recovery by SIS-aware backup solutions can significantly reduce backup windows and recovery times.

Optimizes Storage Capacity

Single Instance Storage (SIS) provides data deduplication for Windows File Services. It can significantly impact the amount storage consumed within an organization. It’s not uncommon to recover between 25-40% of existing disk space once the file consolidation has completed. Easy-to-use tools and a transparent operation means the technology is relatively easy to use and requires very little maintenance.

Improves File Server Performance

SIS minimizes the amount of physical data allowing for quicker backups and recoveries. Loads from file caching and file accesses are reduced and everything operates without users even being aware that many of their files are centrally stored.

What’s new for File Services in Windows Server 2008 R2?

Storage is no longer a marginal expense. Nor is managing storage any longer simply about volume and availability; organizations need to manage their data more effectively as well as more efficiently. Only by gaining insight into their data can companies reduce the cost of storing, maintaining, and managing data. Only by enforcing company policies and knowing how storage is utilized can administrators efficiently use their storage and mitigate the risks of leaking data. The next frontier for administrators is to be able to manage data based on business value.

Windows File Classification Infrastructure

Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) provides insight into your data to help you manage your data more effectively, reduce costs, and mitigate risks by providing a built-in solution for file classification that allows administrators to automate manual processes with predefined policies based on the business value of the data.

Expand the sections below to learn more about the Windows Server 2008 R2 File Solutions

Distributed File Management

Windows Server 2008 R2 file services include Distributed File System (DFS) replication and namespaces to provide customers with better access to data and simplified access to files and shares across a network-wide infrastructure. DFS Replication (DFS-R) efficiently and bi-directionally replicates partial file changes to keep multiple file copies in sync. DFS Namespaces (DFS-N) makes file shares easier to locate and more resilient by enabling users to access their data without regard to which physical file server(s) that the files reside on. With replicated copies and transparent redirection, clients are can be more productive because their data is closer to them and highly available.

The Distributed File System (DFS) technologies offer wide area network (WAN)-friendly replication as well as simplified, highly-available access to geographically dispersed files. The three benefits of DFS are the following:

Better Access to Data: Many organizations have hundreds of file servers throughout the enterprise. Shared folders are often distributed on many of those file servers across a WAN. Managing a file infrastructure like this becomes a familiar IT headache. But the pain is shared by users and business decision makers alike when it becomes apparent that this key enterprise resource is wasting space, money, and time. The good news is that DFS Namespaces and Replication can help organizations manage their file infrastructure much more efficiently and easily.
Simplified Access to Files: DFS Namespace offers a storage management platform that meets the challenges faced by users. Simply put, DFS Namespace is a platform for management of shares and file infrastructures. DFS Namespace does for servers and shares what file systems do for hard disks. Just as file systems provide uniform named access to collections of sectors on disks, DFS Namespace provides a uniform naming convention and mapping for collections of servers, shares, and files.
Increased Productivity & Data Availability: Productivity and collaboration are founded on the ability to process and share information. It’s in the organizations best interests to ensure their employees have maximized access to information AND the ability to share this information. Most organizations consider this to be a business critical standard. DFS helps businesses accomplish this goal by maximizing data availability.
Support for Failover Clusters: Failover clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2 helps ensure that the DFS services are available when you need them. This helps ensure business continuity and access to file data.
Read Only Replicated Folders: Often customers have business requirements publishing data from a central location out to branch locations. A challenge that arises is the management of those remote locations to ensure that the data is not modified by the remote users. Read only replicated folders in Windows Server 2008 R2, offers to an easy to manage solution to address this scenario.

Disk Management

Disk Management is a system utility for managing hard disks and the volumes or partitions that they contain. With Disk Management, you can initialize disks, create volumes, and format volumes with the FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file systems. Disk Management enables you to perform most disk-related tasks without restarting the system or interrupting users. Most configuration changes take effect immediately.

In this version of Windows, Disk Management includes features such as:

Simpler partition creation. When you right-click a volume, you can choose whether to create a basic, spanned, or striped partition directly from the menu.
Disk conversion options. When you add more than four partitions to a basic disk, you are prompted to convert the disk to dynamic or to the GUID partition table (GPT) partition style.
Extend and shrink partitions. You can extend and shrink partitions directly from the Windows interface.

Administrators can easily expand and shrink volumes, including the system volume. All volumes are aligned so that they are optimized for use by server products, such as Microsoft Exchange Server.

File Server Resource Manager

Windows Server 2008 R2 file services include File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) to deliver better managed file services across CIFS/SMB and NFS. By centralizing several different file service utilities available in previous versions of Windows, administrators now have a single management interface to manage all of the file allocation, quota and sharing options in one place. With flexible quota and file-type controls, administrators gain improved control and compliance over files and resource consumption, while spending less time managing file resources than ever before. With built-in reporting, FSRM provides insight into how your file serving resources are being used for management, audit and planning purposes.

Better Managed File Services: FSRM provides a single administrator interface for managing and monitoring the file serving resources in your server environment. By combining storage allocation, share management for CIFS/SMB, as well as NFS, administrators gain a single view for all file serving responsibilities.
Improved Control and Compliance over Files: FSRM provides flexible quotas for consumption of file services, as well as file screening to ensure that corporate server resources are only storing appropriate kinds of data. This enhances the servers’ availability to provide a more productive and secure environment. Tighter control also increases an organizations ability to maintain compliance requirements for data storage.
Providing Insight into how your file servers are being used, today and in the future: FSRM enables administrators to be better informed about file resource usage and have tighter controls they can be much more efficient about their time. Costs are also important and are reduced by making better use of existing hardware and limiting the amount of time required to support file services. The reporting and ability to set enforceable, network storage policies enables administrators to plan and strategize for future growth and reduce TCO. This includes evaluating network bandwidth, storage devices and corporate policy as file services grow. Better planning tools help drive an organization's growth.

Removable Storage

You can use Removable Storage to easily track your removable storage media (tapes and optical disks) and to manage the libraries that contain them (such as changers and jukeboxes).

Removable Storage does the following:

Labels, catalogs, and tracks media.
Controls library drives, slots, and doors.
Provides drive-cleaning operations.

This component works with your data-management programs, such as Backup. You use data-management programs to manage the actual data stored on the media. Removable Storage makes it possible for multiple programs to share the same storage media resources, which can reduce your costs.

Removable Storage organizes all the media in your libraries into different media pools. It also moves media between media pools in order to provide the amount of data storage your applications require.

Service for Network File System (NFS)

Services for Network File System (NFS) provides a file sharing solution for enterprises that have a mixed Windows and UNIX environment. With Services for NFS, you can transfer files between computers running Windows Server 2008 R2 and UNIX operating systems using the NFS protocol.

Services for NFS includes the following improvements:

Simplified Administration. Simplified configuration for supporting NFS clients with the Unmapped Unix User Access feature. This makes data storing on Windows file servers easier.
Active Directory Lookup. The Identity Management for UNIX Active Directory schema extension includes UNIX user identifier (UID) and group identifier (GID) fields. This enables Server for NFS and Client for NFS to look up Windows-to-UNIX user account mappings directly from Active Directory Domain Services. Identity Management for UNIX simplifies Windows-to-UNIX user account mapping management in Active Directory Domain Services.
Enhanced server performance. Services for NFS includes a file filter driver, which significantly reduces common server file access latencies.
Unix special device support. Services for NFS supports UNIX special devices (mknod).
Enhanced Unix support. Services for NFS supports the following versions of UNIX: Sun Microsystems Solaris version 9, Red Hat Linux version 9, IBM AIX version 5L 5.2, and Hewlett Packard HP-UX version 11i. NFS security is now enhanced with Kerberos.

Shadow Copies of Shared Folders

Shadow Copies of Shared Folders provides point-in-time copies of files that are located on shared resources, such as a file server. With Shadow Copies of Shared Folders, users can view shared files and folders as they existed at points of time in the past. Accessing previous versions of files, or shadow copies, is useful because users can:

Recover files that were accidentally deleted. If you accidentally delete a file, you can open a previous version and copy it to a safe location.
Recover from accidentally overwriting a file. If you accidentally overwrite a file, you can recover a previous version of the file.
Compare versions of a file while working. You can use previous versions when you want to check what has changed between two versions of a file.

Share and Storage Management

Share and Storage Management provides a centralized location for you to manage two important server resources:

Folders and volumes that are shared on the network
Volumes in disks and storage subsystems

You can share the content of folders and volumes on your server over the network using the Provision a Shared Folder Wizard, which is available in Share and Storage Management. This wizard guides you through the necessary steps to share a folder or volume and assign all applicable properties to it. With Share and Storage Management, you can provision storage on disks that are available on your server, or on storage subsystems that support Virtual Disk Service (VDS). The Provision Storage Wizard guides you through the process of creating a volume on an existing disk, or on a storage subsystem attached to your server. If the volume is going to be created on a storage subsystem, the wizard will also guide you through the process of creating a logical unit number (LUN) to host that volume. You also have the option of only creating the LUN, and using Disk Management to create the volume later.

Share and Storage Management also helps you monitor and manage the volumes that you have created, as well as any other volumes that are available on your server.

Shared Folders

You can use the Shared Folders Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in to centrally manage file shares on a computer. Shared Folders enables you to create file shares and set permissions, as well as view and manage open files and users connected to file shares on the computer.

Storage Explorer

With Storage Explorer, you can view and manage the Fibre Channel and iSCSI fabrics that are available in your storage area network (SAN).

A fabric is a network topology where devices are connected to each other through one or more high-efficiency data paths. In the case of a Fibre Channel fabric, the network includes one or more Fibre Channel switches that allow servers and storage devices to connect to each other through virtual point-to-point connections. For iSCSI fabrics, the network includes one or more Internet Storage Name Service (iSNS) servers that provide discoverability and partitioning of resources.

Storage Explorer can display detailed information about servers connected to the SAN, as well as components in the fabrics such as host bus adapters (HBAs), Fibre Channel switches, and iSCSI initiators and targets.

You can also perform many administrative tasks on an iSCSI fabric—for example, you can log on to iSCSI targets, configure iSCSI security, add iSCSI target portals, add iSNS servers, and manage Discovery Domains and Discovery Domain Sets.

Storage Manager for SANs

Storage Manager for SANs helps you create and manage logical unit numbers (LUNs) on Fibre Channel and iSCSI disk drive subsystems that support Virtual Disk Service (VDS) in your storage area network (SAN).

A LUN is a logical reference to a portion of a storage subsystem. A LUN can comprise a disk, a section of a disk, a whole disk array, or a section of a disk array in the subsystem. Using LUNs simplifies the management of storage resources in your SAN because they serve as logical identifiers through which you can assign access and control privileges.

File Services for Mobile Workers and Branch Office Users – Folder Redirection and Offline Files

What does Offline Files do?

Before the introduction of Offline Files, Windows users could access files available on a shared network resource only when connected to the network. By using Offline Files, Windows users can access files that are available on a shared network resource and continue to work with network files when the computer is not connected to the network.

Offline Files maintains a local cache of remote files and folders on your computer, so that they are available to you when you are working offline. You continue to access these files in the same way that you accessed them when you were online because the shared network resource paths and namespaces are preserved. The cache also speeds up the access to these files and folders when working over a slow connection.

When your network connection is restored, any changes that you made while working offline are updated to the network by default. Any changes you make while working on a slow link will be automatically synchronized with the version on the server at regular intervals in the background. If you and someone else on the network have made changes to the same file, you have the option of saving your version of the file to the network, the other user's version, or both.

Who does Offline Files benefit?
Offline Files is useful for:

All Windows users who want to be able to continue to access network files if there is a network outage.
Mobile users who need to access network files while working offline or fast experience over a slow link.
Backup administrators who want to centralize data backups from client computers.
Network administrators who want to enhance the experience of users in branch offices who access files and folders hosted by servers on the corporate network while reducing their bandwidth utilization.

Migrating Your Data to Windows Server 2008 R2 – File Server Management Toolkit (FSMT)

Migrating from an old version of Windows Server to a Windows Server 2008 R2 is not just about copying the data across. Administrators must take into consideration making sure the permissions are set properly, and ensuring that the way users access files and the naming conventions that are used are preserved and not broken to help ensure a consistent user experience. The File Server Migration Toolkit contains two step-by-step wizards that helps administrators migrate existing file servers to Windows Server 2008 R2 in an easier fashion and less error prone. FSMT can be used to migrate from Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 R2, Windows 2008 to a new Windows Server 2008 R2 server.

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	ProVault 424 WSS08 Untitled Document The SQS ProVault 424S WSS2008 NAS/iSCSI Meeting the Storage Requirements of the Future As a business cont…	£4045.00	Buy More

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