Windows Server Network Attached Storage (NAS)
Windows Server 2003 provides a dependable and secure storage platform with integrated file, print, and team collaboration services that help to decrease the cost of managing your storage environment while increasing user productivity and organizational agility.
On This Page
 | Choosing an NAS Solution |
| Increased Performance, Dependability, and Security |
| Greater Operational Efficiency |
| Enhanced User Productivity |
Choosing an NAS Solution
There are many factors that should be considered when choosing a network attached storage (NAS) solution. The Enterprise Strategy Group has recently published a whitepaper entitled “Microsoft File Serving and NAS” that explores some of the most relevant decision criteria for file-serving solutions. Another whitepaper from the Edison Group entitled “When CIFS Performance Matters” provides important new information about file sharing performance in Windows environments.
Increased Performance, Dependability, and Security
New features and improvements in the Windows Server 2003 platform can help businesses of all sizes ensure business continuity by enabling them to protect their files from loss or disaster and secure them from unauthorized access while providing fast and reliable data access for everyone in their organization.
| Feature | Benefit |
With greatly improved NFS performance and unsurpassed CIFS functionality, Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 offer the most robust and cost-effective storage solutions that are available for heterogeneous file-serving environments. | |
Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is an infrastructure feature that enables IT staff to create "point-in-time" volume snapshots for easier, more reliable backups and smaller backup windows when used with compatible applications. | |
Distributed File System (DFS) helps users find data using simplified file paths regardless of where the data is stored—decreasing business losses from network outages and individual server failures. | |
Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) helps IT staff to configure file servers to automatically replicate documents between servers and provide transparent access anytime and anywhere to information stored on multiple file servers. | |
Integration with the Active Directory service provides role-based authentication and authorization with single sign-on to system resources. | |
Enhanced Encrypting File System, PKI, and Kerberos | Encrypting File System (EFS), enhanced Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with Kerberos-based authentication helps protect information against unwarranted access, modification, or theft. |
Greater Operational Efficiency
The Windows Server 2003 platform helps simplify your file server migration and consolidation efforts, streamlines the management of your storage infrastructure, and provides a single platform for DAS, NAS, and SAN architectures.
| Feature | Benefit |
Manage heterogeneous hardware vendors with a single set of management tools, even when your environment includes devices from multiple vendors. | |
Control growing volumes with a SAN-friendly configuration, a benefit that protects volumes from unintentional access. Improved handling of fiber channel SANs and improved SAN Host Bus Adapter (HBA) interoperability also help ease administration. A new, higher-performance driver with simpler management (StorPort) for HBA is available. | |
Control the allocation of CPU resources to applications, services, and processes, allowing on-the-fly resource adjustment and more efficient, cost-effective consolidation. | |
Symmetric Multiprocessing Support | Deploy your storage capacity in large-scale, distributed topologies using 2- to 64-way Symmetric Multiprocessing Support (SMP), up to 64 gigabytes of RAM, and volume sizes up to 64 terabytes. For maximum scalability, Microsoft offers 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003. |
Enhanced User Productivity
Windows Server 2003 storage capabilities help improve user productivity through self-service data recovery, anywhere, anytime access for mobile and offline users, intelligent discovery, installation, and management of print services, and extensible Web-based team collaboration.
| Feature | Benefit |
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services delivers Web-based team workspaces that provide a personalized information repository, providing users with a richer, more productive experience for document and team collaboration. | |
My Documents Redirect with Intellimirror | With My Documents Redirect with Intellimirror you can redirect the My Documents folders for users to company servers, which allows users to access these files from any company computer. In addition, these files are available offline on the users' computer when they are away from the office or not connected to the corporate network. Intellimirror replicates the files between the server and the client machines. |
Allows end users to easily restore their own deleted files, without IT staff intervention, reducing TCO while enhancing user productivity. Shadow Copies of Shared Folders helps alleviate data loss by creating shadow copies of files or folders that are stored on network file shares at pre-determined time intervals. | |
This intelligent printing increases system stability and performance and lowers IT costs of administration, setup, configuration, and support while affording end users greater flexibility to choose printers and manage print jobs. |