Improved Data Center Power Consumption and Streamlining Management

Storage is no longer a marginal expense. Nor is managing storage any longer simply about volume and availability; organizations need to manage their data more effectively as well as more efficiently. Only by gaining insight into their data can companies reduce the cost of storing, maintaining, and managing data. Only by enforcing company policies and knowing how storage is utilized can administrators efficiently use their storage and mitigate the risks of leaking data. The next frontier for administrators is to be able to manage data based on business value.

The Windows File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) in Windows Server 2008 R2 provides insight into your data to help you manage your data more effectively, reduce costs, and mitigate risks.

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Windows File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) in Windows Server 2008 R2 Overview

Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) provides insight into your data by automating classification processes so that you can manage your data more effectively and economically. FCI does this by enabling to automatically classify files based on properties defined by administrators (such as whether or not a file contains personally identifiable information) and performing administrator-specified actions based on that classification (backing up files containing personal information to an encrypted store, for example). These mechanisms are included in the box as well as provided by extensible interfaces that allow IT organizations and partners to build rich end to end solutions for classifying and applying policy based on classification. FCI helps customers save money and reduce risk by managing files based on their business value and business impact.

You can use the Windows File Classification Infrastructure to identify files that:

• Contain sensitive information and are located on servers with lower security and move the files to servers with higher security.

• Contain sensitive information and encrypt those files.

• Are no longer essential and automatically remove the files from servers.

• Are not accessed frequently and move the files to slower, more affordable storage solutions.

• Require different backup schedules and backup the files accordingly.

• Require different backup solutions based on the sensitivity of the information in the files.

The Windows File Classification Infrastructure allows you to:

• Centrally define policy-based classification of the files stored in your intranet.

• Perform file management tasks based on the file classification that you define, rather than on only simple information such as the location, size, or date of the file.

• Generate reports about the types of information stored in the files in your intranet.

• Notify content owners when a file management task is going to be performed on their content.

• Create or purchase custom file management solutions based on the Windows File Classification Infrastructure.

Reducing administrative effort for day-to-day administrative tasks is another key design goal for Windows Server 2008 R2. Many of the management consoles used to manage Windows Server 2008 R2 have been updated or completely redesigned to help reduce your administrative effort. Some of the prominent updated and redesigned management consoles are listed in the following table with descriptions of the improvements.

Identity management has always been one of the critical management tasks for Windows-based networks. The implications of a poorly managed identity managed system are one of the largest security concerns for any organization. Windows Server 2008 R2 includes identity management improvements in the Active Directory Domain Services and Active Directory Federated Services server roles.

Windows Server 2008 R2 includes an integrated Best Practices Analyzer for each of the server roles. The Best Practices Analyzer creates a checklist within Server Manager for the role, which you can use to help perform all the configuration tasks.