Provisioning SMB shares

After you create volumes using Storage Spaces, you can create shared storage for various purposes by provisioning new file shares. Storage Spaces supports the provisioning of two types of shares:

• SMB shares Server Message Block (SMB) is a network file-sharing protocol that allows SMB clients to read and write to files and to request services from SMB servers on the network. Windows Server 2012 supports the new SMB 3.0 protocol, which includes numerous enhancements in performance, security, and scalability. Using SMB 3.0 enables you to implement new file-server scenarios, such as storing Hyper-V virtual machines and Microsoft SQL Server databases on SMB file shares. SMB 3.0 also helps reduce latency over branch-office wide area network (WAN) connections and can help protect data from eavesdropping attacks.
• NFS shares Network File System (NFS) enables file sharing in heterogeneous environments that include both Windows and non-Windows computers. Windows Server 2012 includes two NFS components:
  • Server for NFS This component enables Windows Server 2012 to act as a file server for non-Windows client computers.
  • Client for NFS This component enables Windows Server 2012 to access files that are stored on a non-Windows NFS server.
  Server for NFS has also been enhanced in Windows Server 2012 to support continuous availability. This makes possible new scenarios, such as running VMware ESX virtual machines from file-based storage over the NFS protocol instead of using more expensive SAN storage. This improvement enables Windows Server 2012 to provide continuous availability for VMware virtual machines, making it easier for organizations to integrate their VMware infrastructure with the Windows platform. Using Server for NFS as a data store for VMware virtual machines requires using VMware ESX 4.1. You also need a management server with VMware vSphere Client version 4.1 installed. You can use PowerShell to provision and configure shared files on your Server for NFS data store.

Because NFS is useful only for certain types of scenarios, the remainder of this section focuses on provisioning SMB shares.

Configuration options for SMB shares

When you create a new SMB share, you can select from the following configuration options:

• Enable Access-Based Enumeration Enabling this option causes users who access a share to see only files and folders they have permission to access. When access-based enumeration is disabled for a share, users can see all of the files and folders in the share even if they don't have permission to read or modify the files and folders. Implementing access-based enumeration helps reduce user confusion that might be caused when users are unable to access some of the files and folders in a share.
• Allow Caching Of Share Enabling this option makes the contents of the share available to offline users. This ensures that users can have access to the files in the share even when they are working offline without access to the network.
• Enable BranchCache By enabling this option, you allow computers in a branch office to use BranchCache to cache any files downloaded from the shared folder. The computers can then securely serve the files to other computers in the branch office. This option can be enabled only if the Allow Caching Of Share option is also enabled.
• Encrypt Data Access Enabling this option causes remote file access to the share to be encrypted to protect against eavesdropping attacks.
• Folder Usage You can use this option to specify the purpose of the share and the kinds of files stored in it. Folder Usage is used by data-management policies, such as when specifying the classification rules for the new File Classification Infrastructure feature of Windows Server 2012.
• Quota You can use this option to limit the space allowed for a volume or folder. You can also define quota templates that can be automatically applied to new volumes or folders.

Note: Configuring the Folder Usage and Quota options requires that the File Server Resource Manager feature be installed on a Windows Server 2012 file server in your environment.