Improving Your Storage Management Functions

Improving your storage systems and their management is not only an important consideration when deploying Microsoft Windows 2000 Server but is also a critical part of any enterprise network infrastructure. With the enormous amount of data that must be protected in an enterprise environment, you need to be aware of the latest technologies so you can select the hardware and software that best meet your network needs.

Microsoft Windows 2000 provides several features for managing disk resources to enhance performance and protect data. These features include the following:

Disk Management   for setting up and organizing disk storage systems.

Removable Storage   for managing a new class of storage devices.

Remote Storage   for moving unused files to remote storage.

The following Windows 2000 features can help you manage data more effectively:

Windows Clustering   for easier management and higher availability of data and applications.

File system improvements    for improving the performance, availability, security, and manageability of shared information and resources, including the NTFS file system and quota management.

Distributed file system (Dfs)   for linking shares into a single namespace, making it easier to find and manage data.

Indexing Service   for fast file searches by content and property.

In addition to these features, Windows 2000 offers fault tolerance and Backup features to help you improve your data protection.

The sections that follow discuss these features in more detail. In addition to becoming familiar with Windows 2000 storage management features, you need to include a storage management plan in your deployment planning documents.

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