Setting up Remote Storage

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Setting up Remote Storage

Remote Storage is not installed by default when you install the operating system. You can set Remote Storage for installation when you set up your operating system, or afterwards using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel. For information on how to set up Remote Storage after you have installed the operating system, see Set up Remote Storage.

You should not install Remote Storage on a Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition or Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition computer in a server cluster configuration. Remote Storage will not fail over to the other computer node.

Before you can use Remote Storage, you must satisfy three requirements:

  • You must be logged on with administrative credentials.

  • You must verify that a sufficient number of tapes or disks are in a free media pool. (Use Removable Storage to perform this task.)

  • You must verify that volumes managed by Remote Storage are formatted with the version of NTFS used in Windows 2000 and the Windows Server 2003 family. For more information, see Convert.

If you intend to use data compression on managed volumes, compress the volumes beforehand. Also, if you intend to use content indexing, run your indexing software beforehand. See the product documentation for your particular software

You must open Remote Storage using an account in the Administrators group. To maintain system security, log in using an account in a different security group and run Remote Storage as an administrator. To do this, right-click Remote Storage, click Run as, and choose an account in the Administrators group.

Remote Storage is administered in Microsoft Management Console (MMC) using the Remote Storage snap-in. The first time you open the Remote Storage snap-in, the Remote Storage Setup wizard guides you through the steps required to fully configure Remote Storage for operation. After you have configured Remote Storage with the wizard, you can use either the Remote Storage snap-in or the Remote Storage command-line tool, Rss, to administer Remote Storage.