Top 10 Benefits of Windows Storage Server 2003 R2

Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 is designed to help keep your organization's data highly available and protected, whether that information is local to users, stored remotely at different branch or departmental sites, or consolidated into a data center. Small, midsized, and enterprise-sized businesses can all benefit from Windows Storage Server 2003 R2's effective and dependable means of sharing files and storage.

Network attached storage (NAS) solutions based on Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 are quick and easy to deploy, making additional storage capacity available to your organization within minutes of implementation. NAS devices running Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 come preconfigured for simple Plug and Play integration into existing networks. An intuitive Web-based user interface with simple step-by-step installation instructions helps to ensure that storage is correctly installed on an existing network within minutes.

Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can be added to your organization's information technology (IT) infrastructure wherever additional storage is needed, without having to reconfigure the existing storage infrastructure or bring down the network. Through its support for a broad range of file serving protocols, Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 makes possible simple and effective file sharing across heterogeneous environments, including Windows, UNIX, Novell, and Macintosh platforms. This means that users on different platforms can access the same files without additional interventions. In addition, Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can work with your current business investments. These include server management infrastructure, such as the distributed file system (DFS) and Active Directory directory service; utilities, such as antivirus and backup software; and security capabilities, such as user authentication and file and data encryption.

Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can provide networked storage solutions for small, midsized, and enterprise-sized organizations. Devices built on Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can range in storage capacity from 160 gigabytes (GBs) to several terabytes. Because disk capacity can be extended by adding new disks to devices without the need for network or server downtime, the process of making additional storage available is simple and non-disruptive. In addition to scalability benefits, NAS devices built on Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 are highly reliable and have low maintenance requirements. Because NAS devices contain only those components necessary to dedicated file serving functionality, there are fewer potential points of failure. Moreover, because Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 is designed to support both clustering and fully redundant hardware components, it can help your organization realize high data availability and protection through fault tolerance.

Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 provides your organization with an efficient alternative to direct attached storage. Adding storage to a network enables users to share storage resources from a centralized pool, which helps to eliminate many resource provisioning problems associated with direct attached storage. Also, by consolidating storage onto devices running Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, your organization may realize lowered total cost of ownership (TCO) through both decreased capital equipment costs and reduced IT staff hours.

With the new Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 has the built-in capability to provide extremely fast recovery of lost data—recovery times can be dramatically reduced to minutes rather than the hours or days it can take to recover from tape. Shadow copies, also known as point-in-time images or data "snapshots," can be made as frequently as an administrator deems necessary, as often as every 4 hours. Shadow copy creation, unlike tape backup, is a non-intrusive process where users do not need to stop work on open files during backup. End users can also benefit from the Shadow Copies for Shared Folders feature, which, if activated, makes possible simple and almost instantaneous restoration of a previous version of a file or folder that was accidentally deleted or overwritten.

Administrators will find managing network attached storage easier than ever with Windows Storage Server 2003 R2. A Web-based user interface enables system administrators to set up NAS devices in only a few short steps. In addition, Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can be remotely managed from devices on the network. Because Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 devices can be acquired preconfigured with redundant arrays of independent disks (RAID), fault tolerant and high performance solutions are potentially already built in. For companies with complex or extensive storage deployment needs, Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 includes scriptable command line utilities for customizing disk configuration.

A NAS device running Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can be easily integrated into a storage area network (SAN) as a NAS gateway to the SAN. This configuration brings to NAS devices all the advantages of SANs, including high performance (Fibre Channel) storage, SAN backups, and maximum flexibility in allocating and sharing storage among NAS devices. For organizations with a pre-existing SAN, adding a NAS gateway allows for consolidation of general purpose file servers. Because Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 provides support for clustering, attaching multiple NAS gateways to the SAN provides failover capacity if a NAS device failure occurs.

Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 serves files to users, applications, and servers faster than previous NAS solutions. Because NAS devices separate file serving read/write operations from application read/write operations, they are not overburdened with CPU-intensive operations; instead, they are dedicated to file management functions and so can be optimized for high-speed, high-performance solutions. In addition to NAS hardware being configured by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to optimize file serving performance between the server and the storage device, the operating system itself can be configured for high performance.

Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 is designed so that OEMs are able to offer a broad range of NAS hardware configurations, enabling customers to build storage solutions that work best for their businesses. Organizations can choose from a wide variety of NAS appliances with different storage capacities, performance, and management options. In addition, independent software vendors (ISVs) can offer a range of utilities that function effectively with Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, including backup, management, and antivirus utilities.