One of the main features of Windows SBS 2011 is the
comprehensive setup procedure, which prevents new administrators from
having to perform complex component installations and configurations. The Windows SBS setup process makes many configuration
and administration decisions for you, and this necessarily entails a
certain amount of compromise.
One of the areas in which compromise is necessary is in the server’s storage configuration. One of the traditional rules of server
administration is to keep your operating system and application files
on one volume and your data on another. This simplifies the process of
locating specific files and facilitates proper backup procedures.
Windows SBS cannot comply with this rule because the setup
program cannot realistically modify the installation of applications
such as Microsoft Exchange or Windows Server
Update Services (WSUS) to accommodate the additional volumes that might
be present in the computer. The decision the product designers had to
make was between keeping the installation procedure as simple as
possible and providing additional flexibility. They chose the former.
As a result, the Windows SBS setup program places all the operating
system files, application files, and data files on the same C drive
that the program creates during the installation process. Once the server installation is complete, you are free to create as many additional volumes as you need, using advanced storage technologies such as spanning, striping, mirroring, and RAID-5, if desired.
The concession that Windows SBS 2011 makes to the “separate disks”
rule described earlier is to make it a simple matter to move your
application from its default
location on the C drive. After you create additional volumes on your
disks, you can use the Windows SBS Console to move your Exchange,
SharePoint, and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) data stores to a
volume on another disk.
This capability enables administrators to move data stores for several reasons, including the following:
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To separate your data from the operating system files
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To optimize system performance by separating data read operations from programming reads
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To allocate additional storage space to a data store that is running out of space on the C drive.
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To store application data on a fault tolerant volume, such as one using mirroring or RAID-5
Before you actually move your data to a new location, consider the following prerequisites:
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Destination volumes are ready
You must install the new disks and any drivers they might need, create
the new volumes, and format them using the NTFS file system.
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Sufficient space is available
Make sure that the destination volume has sufficient free space to hold
the application data, including room for future expansion.
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Users are not accessing the data
Perform the move during off hours, when users are not logged on to the
network, or make sure that users are not accessing the data while you
perform the move.
To move Windows SBS application data to another location, follow these steps:
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Log on to your Windows SBS 2011 server, using an account with network Administrator privileges. The Windows SBS Console appears.
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Click Backup and server storage, and then click the Server storage tab.
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Select the Local disk (C:) drive. The console displays how much data for each of the Windows SBS–installed applications is stored on the disk.
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In the Tasks pane, click one of these tasks:
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Move Exchange Server data
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Move SharePoint Foundation data
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Move users’ shared data
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Move users’ redirected documents data
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Move Windows Update repository data
The Move Data Wizard for the task you selected appears, displaying the Getting Started page.
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Click Next. The Choose A New Location For The Data page appears.
Note
If you have not configured a backup job yet or if you are using a
product other than Windows Server Backup to perform your backups, a
message box appears, warning you to back up your data before you attempt to move it.
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In the New location list, select the volume where you want to store the data and click Move.
The wizard moves the data to the selected volume and reconfigures
Windows SBS 2011 to access the data from its new location. A page
appears, indicating that the data was moved successfully.
-
Click Finish.
Note
Once you have moved data
to a new location, be sure to enable shadow copies on the new folder
and reconfigure your backup software to find the data on its new volume.
There is no wizard to move
shares that you have created yourself. To move manually created shares,
you must stop sharing them, move the folders to the new location,
re-create the NTFS permissions, if necessary, and then share the
folders again.
As you have learned in previous chapters, creating
volumes makes a hard disk accessible to the operating system, but to
make the volumes accessible to users on the network, you must create shared folders on them. Windows SBS 2011 creates a number of shared folders, commonly called shares,
during the installation process. Some of these shares are intended for
use by applications, such as Microsoft Exchange Server and WSUS, but
the following three shares are meant for direct access by users:
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Public
Contains folders
accessible to everyone, for the purpose of storing files that
individuals want to share with other users on the network
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RedirectedFolders
Contains the user profile folders for each account that has folder redirection enabled
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UserShares
Contains a subfolder for each user on the network, to which only that user has access permissions
You can also create as many additional shares on your server as you need to support your users.
Note
To create shares, you can use the Provision A Shared Folder Wizard, accessible from the Windows SBS Console or the Share And Storage Management Console. You can also create shares directly from a folder’s Properties sheet.
