Share and Storage Management

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Storage Server 2008

With the Share and Storage Management snap-in provided in this release, you can more easily set up and manage shared folders and storage. Share and Storage Management provides the following:

  • MMC-based management of shared folders and storage.

  • Provision Storage Wizard for creating and configuring storage for file sharing and block sharing, including creating LUNs on storage subsystems, as well as creating and formatting volumes on LUNs or server disks.

Note

You must have a VDS Hardware Provider that is appropriate for your storage appliance installed in order to provision storage on an iSCSI target. If you have Microsoft iSCSI Software Target running on a Windows Storage Server 2008 storage appliance, install the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target VDS Hardware Provider on the client computer.

  • Provision a Shared Folder Wizard for creating and configuring shared folders that can be accessed by using either the server message block (SMB) or NFS protocol.

  • Single Instance Storage (SIS) can be enabled or disabled for each volume that is displayed in Share and Storage Management. SIS recovers disk space by reducing the amount of redundant data stored on a volume. It identifies identical files, storing only a single copy of the file in the SIS Common Store, and replacing the files with pointers to the file in the SIS Common Store. For more information on SIS, see Single Instance Storage.

The Share and Storage Management snap-in makes it possible to complete most of the administrative tasks that are required to create and manage shared folders and volumes without having to use the Shared Folder Management, Storage Manager for SANs, or Disk Management snap-ins. These tasks include configuring quotas to restrict the quantity of data, configuring file screening to prevent certain file types or only allowing certain file types defined by the administrator, and enabling indexing.

Share and Storage Management includes the following tabs for managing shared folders and volumes:

  • Volumes

    This tab displays all volumes that are available to the server and information about each volume. From here, you can track and manage volumes.

  • Shares

    This tab displays all shared folders created by using Share and Storage Management and information about each shared folder. From here, you can track and manage shared folders.