The Distributed File System is used to build a hierarchical view of multiple file servers and

shares on the network. Instead of having to think of a specific machine name for each set of files,
the user will only have to remember one name; which will be the 'key' to a list of shares found on
multiple servers on the network. Think of it as the home of all file shares with links that point to
one or more servers that actually host those shares. DFS has the capability of routing a client to
the closest available file server by using Active Directory site metrics. It can also be installed on
a cluster for even better performance and reliability. Medium to large sized organizations are
most likely to benefit from the use of DFS - for smaller companies it is simply not worth setting
up since an ordinary file server would be just fine.
Understanding the DFS Terminology
It is important to understand the new concepts that are part of DFS. Below is an definition of
each of them.
Dfs root: You can think of this as a share that is visible on the network, and in this share you can
have additional files and folders.
Dfs link: A link is another share somewhere on the network that goes under the root. When a
user opens this link they will be redirected to a shared folder.
Dfs target (or replica): This can be referred to as either a root or a link. If you have two
identical shares, normally stored on different servers, you can group them together as Dfs
Targets under the same link.

The image below shows the actual folder structure of what the user sees when using DFS and
load balancing.

Figure 1: The actual folder structure of DFS and load balancing

Windows 2003 offers a revamped version of the Distributed File System found in Windows
2000, which has been improved to better performance and add additional fault tolerance, load
balancing and reduced use of network bandwidth. It also comes with a powerful set of command-
line scripting tools which can be used to make administrative backup and restoration tasks of the
DFS namespaces easier. The client windows operating system consists of a DFS client which
provides additional features as well as caching.
Setting Up and Configuring DFS
The Distributed File System console is installed by default with Windows 2003 and can be found
in the administrative tools folder. To open, press Start > Programs > Administrative Tools >
Distributed File System or in the Control Panel, open the Administrative Tools folder and click
on the Distributed File System icon. This will open the management console where all the
configuration takes place.
The first thing you need to do is create a root. To do this, right click the node and select New
Root.
Press next on the first window to be brought to the screen where you will have to make the
choice of creating either a stand alone or domain root. A domain root will publish itself in Active
Directory and supports replication, whereas a stand alone root does not. If you have an AD
Domain Controller set up on your machine, I recommend choosing the domain root.

Note: The root would be the top level of the hierarchy. It is the main Active Directory container
that holds Dfs links to shared folders in a domain. Windows 2003 allows your server to have
more than one root - which wasn't the case in Windows 2000.
The next screen is the one where you have to select which trusted domains will be hosted. Since
I only have one domain in my network, only domain.com is visible.

Once this is done you have to select a server on that domain - in my example it is netserv. The
FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) of this host server is netserv.domain.com.

Figure 2: inputting the host server name

The following screen allows you to specify the root name of your primary DFS root. You should
give it something which will accurately define the contents of that share.
In my example I have called this root "Company" - which would be a real name of an
ogranization. You can change this to anything you want. You might wish to have a root called
"Documents" - which would clearly state that one can expect to find anything related or specific
to documents, and documentation in that root.
Figure 3: entering the dfs root name
You will now have to select the location of a folder in which all the files will be stored.

Figure 4: selecting the root share

Tip: for added security, when selecting a folder, try to choose one that is located on a partition
other than that of the operating system.

Your DFS root is now configured and visible in the configuration console. Right click the root
target and press Status to check if it is online or not.
A green check mark verifies that everything is working properly and that the node is online,
whereas a red X means that there is a problem.
To add a new link, right click the root for which you want the link to be created, and select New
Link.
In the "New Link" screen, enter a name and path for the link and click OK. Repeat this for as
many links as you need to create.
Figure 5: creating a new link
Links are visible right under the node. Below is a screenshot displaying the three links I have
created for the COMPANY root.

Figure 6: dfs root and three links in the DFS mmc console
Publishing the root in Active Directory

By publishing dfs roots in AD as volume objects, network users will be able to search for shares
more easily and administration can be delegated.
To do this right click the desired dfs root, select Properties and go to the Publish tab. Enter the
appropriate details in each box and press OK.
In the keywords section you can specify certain words that will help locate the dfs root when it is
being searched for.
Figure 7: publish tab in the dfs properties window
The dfs root will now be published in Active Directory.
File Replication Services
There are two types of replication:

* Automatic - which is only available for Domain DFS

* Manual - which is available for stand alone DFS and requires all files to be replicated
manually.

The four ways in which replication can be achieved between two or more servers are:

- Ring
- Hub and Spoke
- Mesh
- Custom

The first three refer to network topologies and the last allows you to specify an advanced method
of replication, which can be tuned to your needs.
The advantages and disadvantages of replication are as follows:

Advantages - client caching, integration with IIS, easy to administer and setup.
Disadvantages - limited configuration options, there is no method of programmatically initiating
a replication session.
Conclusion
We have seen how with the use of the Windows 2003 Distributed File System, one is able to
manage data more efficiently. The new and improved features make data management and
distribution faster and more effecient because users are able to find what they need when they
need it. Having highly available and reliable file services means that the total cost of ownership
is kept low - making the life of an administrator much easier when it comes to managing data!

About Disk Quotas

Unfortunately, in Windows NT Disk Quotas didn’t exist, which was much to the disappointment
of Windows Administrators. Along came Windows 2000 and with the introduction of Disk
Quotas it meant Administrators had the ability to track and control user disk usage. The only
problem was that they didn’t really have a sufficient way of managing disk quotas. Scripting,
reporting and remote usage methods were somewhat limited and ambiguous. Windows 2003
offers better all round functionality and easier enterprise-wide disk quota manageability.
Disk quotas are used in conjunction with NTFS, Group Policy and Active Directory technology.
NTFS is the file system on which disk quotas can be set, Group Policy is what is used to set disk
quotas on a specific set of users and computers, and Active Directory is used to gather a list of
users to which the disk quota group policy will be set. It is important to note that disk quotas can
only be used with NTFS; setting them up on FAT or FAT32 drives is not possible.
Disk quotas are configured on a per volume basis and cannot be set on a file or folder level. Each
volume would have its individual settings which do not affect any other volumes. You may have
a single disk partitioned into two volumes (drives C and D for example) with each having their
own quota settings. Disk quotas can also be configured on a per user basis and different groups
of users can have different limits set. Administrators are the only ones to whom a disk quota does
not apply; by default there are no limits for an Administrator.
There are numerous reasons you may wish to make use of disk quotas. Based on the
requirements of your organization you might choose to configure disk quotas if you have a
restricted amount of disk space on a specific server, a limited number of servers, or perhaps the
need to monitor user disk space usage without actually enforcing a quota. You might be
wondering why you’d want to just monitor user disk space usage. Well, let’s say you have a
fileserver set up with multiple users in your organization using it everyday to store temporary
files. As time goes by and perhaps people forget to delete the files from the server, the amount of
available disk space will continue to decrease. If nothing is done about it then users will be
denied the right to add more files on the server (until some old files are removed). By monitoring
user disk space usage with Microsoft’s disk quotas, you can be notified of when space is running
out and then increase the allocated space on the server accordingly or notify your users that they
need to delete their files from the server. Additionally, setting a quota warning level will allow
for a system event log to be written for your review.
Setting a Group Policy
The most practical means of configuring disk quotas on a large scale would be through a
domain-level group policy. This will configure the settings automatically on any of the volumes
you wish to have disk quotas enabled, saving you the need to have to configure each volume
independently.
Open the Group Policy Object Editor (gpedit.msc) and navigate to Computer Configuration >
Administrative Templates > System > Disk Quotas. On the right hand pane you will see a list of
policies that can be applied. Double click the “Default Quota Limit and Warning Level
Properties” setting.

Figure 1: The Default Quota Limit and Warning Level Properties Dialog
The default quota limit is the maximum amount of space assigned per default quota, whereas the
warning level is the amount of space at which a warning is triggered. Normally 90-95% of the
total value is a good limit to set as a warning.
Now configure any other settings you wish to be applied by selecting them from the right hand
pane. To have your changes applied immediately you can enable the “Disk Quota Policy
Processing” policy and choose “Process Even If The Group Policy Objects Have Not Changed”
from Administrative Templates > System > Group Policy.
Figure 2: The Disk Quota Policy Processing Dialog
You may also want to manually force a group policy update using the gpupdate utility. Simply
go to Start > Run and type gpupdate followed by the return key. This will refresh both the
computer and user policies.
Whatever changes you make in the group policy will be reflected on the Quota properties tab of
each volume you wish to configure in your domain. The options will appear grayed out and non-
editable.
Configuring Disk Quotas and Disk Quota Entries
Using the Computer Management console, you can configure disk quotas for a local or remote
volume from a central location. To open Computer Management, you have three choices; either
right click My Computer and select Manage, type compmgmt.msc in the Run bar or select
Computer Management from the Administrative Tools folder.
Select which computer you wish to manage from the root node. To select a remote machine right
click the “Computer Management” node, select “Connect to another computer…” and choose the
computer you wish to manage. Now, navigate to Storage > Disk Management and select the
volume you want to configure from the right hand pane and open the properties dialog. Click the
Quota tab and enable the options you want to be enforced.
Figure 3: The Disk Quota Properties Dialog
The traffic lights icon at the top indicate the status of the disk quota; red means quotas are
disabled, orange signifies a changeover is taking place (while it rebuilds the disk information),
and green means disk quotas are enabled. A textual representation of the status is shown on the
right of the image.
Check “Deny disk space to users exceeding quota limit” to have Windows restrict users from
adding more data to their allocated disk space when the quota limit has been reached. Users will
be unable to add more data until some space is freed up.
As you can see from Figure 3 above, the quota limit for new users is greyed out. This is because
we have already set it from the group policy, which overrides any customizable settings on the
quota tab of a volume. In this case we have limited the user’s disk space to 500MB and set a
warning level to 450MB.
You may choose not to limit disk usage and just enable quotas to track disk space usage on a per
volume basis by leaving the “Deny disk space to users exceeding quota limit” checkbox
unchecked and logging a warning when a user exceeds the warning level defined as part of the
quota limit. Whenever a user exceeds this limit a Warning event log will be written to the
Application Event Log and shown in the Event Viewer.
Figure 4: A warning event log for disk quotas
As per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/915182 there is a known issue in the pre service pack
version of Windows 2003 in that the Warning event log is incorrectly shown as an Information
log in Event Viewer. In the Quota Entries application however, it is correctly displayed as a
Warning.
When you press the Apply button on the Disk Quota Properties Dialog you are notified that the
volume will be rescanned to update the statistics and that this operation may take several
minutes. Simply press OK to continue and have disk quotas enabled on that volume.
Quota Entries
Click the Quota Entries button on the Disk Quota Properties Dialog to view a list of individual
disk quota entries. From this section you can create, delete and manage quota entries for specific
users or groups. If a user requires more space than others then you can set this from here.
Go to Quota > New Quota Entry and the Active Directory User Picker will appear. Choose a user
from Active Directory and press OK. You will be given the option to limit disk space and set a
warning level or not limit disk usage at all.
Figure 5: Adding a new quota entry
Once you have chosen your preferred settings, press OK and the user will be added to the list.
You can monitor a user’s disk usage by looking at the properties of each of the columns. ‘Status’
indicates whether the user is within their limit, if a warning has been logged or if the limit has
been exceeded; the icon will change accordingly.

Figure 6: Viewing a list of Quota Entries

Conclusion
This article has given you an overview of Disk Quotas in Windows 2003. We’ve looked at why
they would be used and how to configure them.
Some Administrators will find they won’t need to utilize Disk Quotas, but for those who do I
have no doubt that you will find them very useful indeed.

Storage Interconnect Options

Prior to diving into the storage options, the various storage interconnects should be introduced. The
two most widely know and used are Fibre Channel and iSCSI. First, Fibre Channel, or Fibre
Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL), is a high-speed storage interconnect standard that provides up to
400 MBps of bandwidth (4 Gbps) in a given Fibre Channel segment or loop. An FC-AL loop can
support 126 devices with host to server distance up to 10 km. SCSI over IP, or Internet SCSI (iSCSI)
is an IP based storage interconnect standard that provides an alternative to traditional Fibre Channel
SAN fabrics by using standard Ethernet networking hardware to create the back-end storage network.
iSCSI speeds today are 1 Gigabit with 10 Gigabit on the way. Fibre Channel typically out-performs
iSCSI but for many cases, the performance of iSCSI is adequate and the storage industry is
experiencing a shift towards iSCSI deployment.
These two storage interconnects provide the necessary path for SCSI storage commands to be
encapsulated and sent from the host to the storage controller for processing.

Direct Attached Storage (DAS)

Direct Attached Storage (DAS) involves the direct connection of servers to storage. This can either
be with the use of an internal server disk controller with either internal or external drives, or with a
completely external storage subsystem that includes the controller and disks. The main characteristic
of DAS is that the storage connection from the server to the storage is non-virtualized and is hard-
connected. This connection is typically through a direct SCSI cabled connection (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1
Internal Controller/Disk DAS Configuration

Systems Integration Technical Brief Figure 2

Internal Controller/External Disk DAS Configuration
With an internal DAS controller solution, only the host server has access to the storage and therefore
owns all of the connected storage. Some flexibility can be achieved with DAS by using a completely
external storage subsystem (Figure 3) which allows a minimal number of servers to directly connect
without creating a storage network. For external controller DAS, a Fibre Channel or iSCSI
interconnect is used. In this configuration, server A may own part of the storage while server B owns
a separate part of the storage. However, because of cabling and storage design constraints, the
number of servers that can directly connect to an external storage subsystem is typically limited to no
more than eight (vendor dependent). Multiple host cable paths to the storage array are encouraged for
high availability requirements and various RAID solutions are used to protect data at the disk level.
Clustering is also supported with shared DAS storage where the clustering software determines
which server can see a particular logical disk at any one time.
Figure 3
External Controller/Disk DAS Configuration
Systems Integration Technical Brief DAS is a fairly straightforward solution for small implementations
with few servers. ArcSDE databases with known storage sizes are good candidates for DAS since
storage size can be determined fairly accurately thus limiting unused storage capacity. However, as a
data center grows, heavy use of DAS among multiple server racks can result in an inefficient use of
storage as unused per-server capacity begins to accumulate. Management of various DAS islands of
storage can also become inefficient and expensive.
Storage Area Networks (SAN)
Storage Area Networks (SAN) are, as the name implies, back-end storage networks that connect
multiple hosts through a switched fabric such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI. A typical SAN is
configured with multiple switches and multiple server Host Bus Adapters (HBA) to create a high-
availability storage configuration and various RAID solutions are used to protect data at the disk
level. Clustering is supported with a SAN in a similar fashion as DAS via shared logical drives. A
SAN provides flexibility for "carving" out storage for multiple servers where the servers can be
spread out across a data center. Using SAN switches, it is possible to configure a SAN with
potentially thousands of hosts in the data center. The real strength of a SAN is that storage can be
assigned and later reassigned as needed to support the changing needs of specific servers. This results
in the efficient use of storage and minimizes unused storage capacity for a given server.
Initially, building a SAN is more expensive than DAS or NAS and requires expertise with specific
hardware and software used to configure the SAN. A SAN should be considered when supporting
many servers as part of an overall data center storage design concept. Because a SAN is a back-end
storage technology and is several layers removed from the application layer, it can be used to support
GIS databases with no integration issues. Figure 4 depicts a typical SAN configuration.
Figure 4
Storage Area Network Configuration
5

Systems Integration Technical Brief Conclusion

Several storage technologies and configuration options exist to support GIS client/server enterprise
requirements. Choosing the correct one depends on several factors including performance,
scalability, cost, ease of implementation, and supportability. ESRI software, including ArcSDE, has
been successfully deployed in the GIS enterprise using all three aforementioned storage
configurations.