Performing Disk Management Tasks

Managing your disk storage can make the difference between a server that everyone likes to use and one that fails to do the job. A server should have enough storage for everyone's basic needs, plus additional storage for growth and potential emergencies. The following sections describe a number of disk management utilities.

Performing share and storage management

The Share and Storage Management console helps you manage the shares on your server. You can determine with ease which resources are shared, how you've shared them, and who is using them. You can also define new shares and disconnect users from shares when necessary. This console provides a complete listing of shares on your system.

You can use this console to create new shares by clicking Provision Share in the Actions pane. The process for creating a share is essentially the same no matter where you create it.

It's also possible to use this console to manage users. If you want to see all sessions that are using shares on the local machine, click Manage Sessions in the Actions pane. You see a list of every user who has some shared resource open on the system. Highlight a user and click Close Selected to stop that user from using resources. If you want to disconnect everyone, click Close All instead.

When you need a little more control over share management, click Manage Open Files in the Actions pane. You see a list of all open files on the server, along with the name of the user who has opened them and how the files are opened (read-only, write-only, or read/write). The display even tells you how many locks each of the files has. As with the sessions display, you can select individual files and click Close Selected to close that file or click Close All when you want to close all open files.

In addition to working with users and opened resources, you can manage the shares. Highlight a share and click Properties in the Actions pane when you want to change characteristics of that share, such as the description, permission, and method of caching. If you simply want to stop sharing the resource, highlight it and click Stop Sharing in the Actions pane. Windows asks whether you're sure that you want to stop sharing the resource. Clicking Yes removes the share. It's important to note that most changes you make to a share take effect the next time the user logs in to the system.