Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Prepare File and Print Servers

The most basic network server is the file and print server. Both services are one of the main reasons why groups of people tend to put networks in place. Central file storage provides the ability to share information as well as protect it, and provides a single location for backup and recovery operations. Print servers allow the reduction in hardware printer costs by sharing fewer printers among more users. In addition, central file storage servers can index content for all users, making it easier for everyone to reuse information.

Windows Server 2008 offers several features for the support of both operations. In fact, file and print sharing in WS08 has become quite sophisticated.

Share Files and Folders

One of the key aspects of any network is server standardization. When staging and preparing servers for file and folder sharing, you need to begin by identifying the purpose, or rather, the type of file sharing you intend to perform. After years of existence, file sharing has become concentrated on a few core file-sharing functions. The types of files most organizations need to share today are the following:

• User data: The files that make up both personal user information and the user's profile. This is a private share.
• Public data: Information that is made widely available to all corporate personnel, though with the advent of internal Web technologies, this file share is becoming less and less useful.
• Departmental data: Information that is widely available to a department and to the services that are located within that department. Once again, this file share is becoming less used in favor of Web-based technologies.
• Project data: Information that is shared between the members of a project.
• Software applications: Applications that operate from a central location.
• Installation sources: Source files for software installed on either servers or PCs.
• System administration: Special system administration files used by technical and operational personnel.
• Virtual machines: Host servers will often use shared folders to host virtual machines because of the redundancy advantages the file share offers. Without a file share, automatic backups and file replication features are not available. In many cases, the file share you can rely on for this service is the special administrative share that is automatically generated by Windows during installation. This special share takes the format of drivename$ where the name of the share is the name of the drive-C, D, E, and so on-and the dollar sign ($) is added to hide it so that users cannot find it when browsing network environments.

As you can see, several of these shares are being replaced with Web technologies, especially Windows SharePoint Services. Most end users are comfortable with the traditional file share and continue to use it even though more innovative technologies are now available to replace this function.

File and folder sharing are supported by two core features: the file system itself and its capability for disk management and the Windows sharing sub-system. The first is the most important in terms of information storage.

Disks and Volumes

All of the disks you work with, whether they are physical, logical, or virtual, should be formatted with the New Technology File System (NTFS) file system. This is the only file system you should use, because it is the only file system that allows complete control over disk features, especially security features. Since you're running an intelligent operating system, you need to rely on an intelligent file system.

Also, while Windows Server 2008, like its predecessors, supports the ability to manage disk protection mechanisms, such as the random array of independent disks (RAID), through the operating system (OS), you should rely on hardware components to manage disks at this level because using the OS to do so will decrease the performance of your servers. In Windows, you will encounter several different terms for storage technologies. The most common are:

• Disks: Disks are the actual hardware components that store data.
• Volumes: Volumes are logical disk structures that delimit an area of storage on a hard disk.
• Partitions: Partitions are portions of hard disks that function as though they were separate physical disks.
• Basic disks: Basic disks are partitions that address only one physical disk. When using hardware-based RAID, the RAID structure can be viewed by Windows as a basic disk, even though it is made up of multiple physical disks.
• Dynamic disks: Dynamic disks are created in Windows to allow the operating system to manage partitions that span more than one physical disk. Dynamic disks should only be used if you intend to manage disk redundancy through the Windows OS, which is not recommended.
• Drive letters: Drive letters are used to address disk volumes through the Windows interface.

There are several other disk terms in use in Windows, but these are the terms you will address when working with both resource pools and virtual service offerings.

The one undeniable fact of file storage is that it always increases and rarely needs to shrink. Fortunately, disks are a low-cost commodity today. But since you know that you will probably be expanding the disk storage system at some point in time, it makes sense to use a disk sub-system that can easily accept physical expansions with little or no impact on logical partitions. This is why it is so important to use hardware-based RAID systems, because they free the operating system from low-level disk management tasks. RAID systems are available for both Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) and Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) disks today, so almost any organization can acquire the appropriate storage infrastructure and use its hardware capabilities to protect data at the disk level.