Overview of Share and Storage Management

You can share the content of folders and volumes on your server over the network using the Provision a Shared Folder Wizard, which is available in Share and Storage Management. This wizard guides you through the necessary steps to share a folder or volume and assign all applicable properties to it. With the wizard, you can:

• Specify the folder or volume that you want to share or create a new folder to share.
  
  
• Specify the network sharing protocol used to access the shared resource.
  
  
• Change the local NTFS permissions for the folder or volume you will be sharing.
  
  
• Specify the share access permissions, user limits, and offline access to files in the shared resource.
  
  
• Publish the shared resource to a Distributed File System (DFS) namespace.
  
  
• If Services for Network File System (NFS) has been installed, specify NFS-based access permissions for the shared resource.
  
  
• If File Server Resource Manager is installed on your server, apply storage quotas to the new shared resource, and create file screens to limit the type of files that can be stored in it.
  
  

Using Share and Storage Management, you can also monitor and modify important aspects of your new and existing shared resources. You can:

• Stop the sharing of a folder or volume.
  
  
• Change the local NTFS permissions for a folder or volume.
  
  
• Change the share access permissions, offline availability, and other properties of a shared resource.
  
  
• See which users are currently accessing a folder or a file and disconnect a user if necessary.
  
  
• If Services for Network File System (NFS) has been installed, change the NFS-based access permissions for a shared resource.
  
  

For more information about using Share and Storage Management to manage shared resources, see Provisioning Shared Resources.

With Share and Storage Management, you can provision storage on disks that are available on your server, or on storage subsystems that support Virtual Disk Service (VDS). The Provision Storage Wizard guides you through the process of creating a volume on an existing disk, or on a storage subsystem attached to your server. If the volume is going to be created on a storage subsystem, the wizard will also guide you through the process of creating a logical unit number (LUN) to host that volume. You also have the option of only creating the LUN, and using Disk Management to create the volume later.

Share and Storage Management also helps you monitor and manage the volumes that you have created, as well as any other volumes that are available on your server. Using Share and Storage Management you can:

• Extend the size of a volume.
  
  
• Format a volume.
  
  
• Delete a volume.
  
  
• Change volume properties like compression, security, offline availability and indexing.
  
  
• Access disk tools for error checking, defragmentation, and backup.
  
  

For more information about using Share and Storage Management to manage storage resources, see Provisioning Storage.