File and Print Services

 

One of the biggest challenges that IT administrators face today is the exponential growth in file storage needs. This trend is the result of numerous business drivers such as regulatory requirements to retain data and increased levels of digitization of content. IT budget cuts have forced CIOs and system administrators to manage and deal with this data growth with reduced staff. Enterprises are looking for new and additional ways to cut costs.

 

Windows Server 2008 R2 offers a cost effective, enterprise ready file serving platform for Windows and mixed environments. It offers an abundance of capabilities that have been requested over the years by IT organizations. Your organization can leverage the extensive file-serving, data management and data protection capabilities found in Windows Server 2008 R2.

 

In addition to file services, Windows Server 2008 R2 also includes the Print Management Console (PMC) Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that enables you to install, view, and manage all of the printers in your organization from any computer running Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. The printer subsystem includes a new printer architecture that provides users with better printer and print server performance and provides a new foundation for future applications.

 

 

The amount of data supported within the organization continues to grow every year, pushing conventional storage requirements to their limits. Digitization of content, regulatory requirements and archival demands are resulting in the need to retain information for longer periods of time. By adopting Windows Server 2008 R2 you can achieve significant savings on management, operations and acquisition costs. This results in the total cost of ownership of the entire file infrastructure.

 

 

File services innovations in Windows Server 2008 R2 provide the highest performing & most robust platform from Microsoft yet, allowing enterprises to consolidate more file servers than ever before. This results in reduction of file servers thereby significantly lowering the TCO.

 

 

Increasing the density of your storage footprint means less power consumption, less physical space demands and an overall more manageable environment. Windows Server 2008 R2 is designed to help you consolidate file services and more efficiently manage the data you have.

 

 

It’s not uncommon for these mixed-mode environments to require administrators to duplicate administrative services because they can’t leverage existing network services. Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 R2, allows integration with the Active Directory service and supports multiple file protocols (SMB/CIFS, NFS) making it an ideal solution for heterogeneous file serving.

 

 

Print Services enables you to share printers on a network, as well as to centralize print server and network printer management tasks. It also enables you to migrate print servers and deploy printer connections using Group Policy. This results in easier management and deployment for your organization. For more information, see Overview of Print Management in Windows Server2008 R2 Product Help.

 

 

To reduce the processing load on the print server, print rendering is performed on the Windows Vista client rather than on the server. By moving the processing load from the server to the clients, one server can support more print clients than before. In addition, depending on the print job content and the Page Description Language (PDL), network bandwidth can be reduced significantly, in some cases.

 

In Windows Server 2008 R2, the print spooler uses Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) to communicate between the client and the server. By dramatically reducing the number of separate processing threads required for RPC, Windows Server 2008 R2 can greatly enhance performance in medium- to large-scale print environments.

 

 

 

The Print Management Console (PMC), first shipped in Windows Server 2003 R2, is enhanced in Windows Server 2008 R2. The PMC in Windows Server 2008 R2 includes support for print server migration from Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2. It also features an improved Network Printer Installation Wizard, which reduces the number of steps that an administrator must perform to add network printers to the print server by automatically locating printers and installing the driver when the driver is available.