William Stanek - Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage, Security, & Networking Pocket Consultant

2.Specify the share name and location as you would for an SMB share.

3.On the Specify Authentication Methods page, configure Kerberos v5 Authentication and No Server Authentication. The options provided are similar to those discussed previously in this section.

4.On the Specify Share Permissions page, configure access for UNIX hosts. Hosts

can be set for no access, read-only access, or read/write access to the share.

5.On the Specify Permissions To Control Access, optionally set NTFS permissions for the share.

6.On the Confirm Selections page, review your selections. When you tap or click Create, the wizard creates the share, configures it, and sets permissions. The status should state, “The share was successfully created.” If an error is displayed instead, note the error and take corrective action. However, because typical errors relate to configuring host access, you probably won’t need to repeat this procedure to create the share. Instead, you might need to modify only the share permissions. Tap or click Close.

Any time your organization uses shared folders, you should consider creating shadow copies of these shared folders as well. Shadow copies are point-in-time backups of data files that users can access directly in shared folders. These point-in-time backups can save you and the other administrators in your organization a lot of work, especially if you routinely have to retrieve lost, overwritten, or corrupted data files from backups. The usual procedure for retrieving shadow copies is to use the Previous Versions or Shadow Copy client. Windows Server 2012 R2 includes a feature enhancement that enables you to revert an entire (nonsystem) volume to a previous shadow copy state.

You can create shadow copies only on NTFS volumes. You use the Shadow Copy feature to create automatic backups of the files in shared folders on a per-volume basis. For example, on a file server that has three NTFS volumes, each containing shared folders, you need to configure this feature for each volume separately.

If you enable this feature in its default configuration, shadow copies are created twice each weekday (Monday-Friday) at 7:00 A.M. and 12:00 P.M. You need at least 100 megabytes (MB) of free space to create the first shadow copy on a volume. The total disk space used beyond this depends on the amount of data in the volume’s shared folders. You can restrict the total amount of disk space used by Shadow Copy by setting the allowable maximum size of the point-in-time backups.

You configure and view current Shadow Copy settings on the Shadow Copies tab of the disk’s Properties dialog box. In File Explorer or Computer Management, press and hold or right-click the icon for the disk with which you want to work, tap or click Properties, and then tap or click the Shadow Copies tab. The Select A Volume panel shows the following:

■ VolumeThe volume label of NTFS volumes on the selected disk drive

■ Next Run TimeThe status of Shadow Copy as Disabled, or the next time a shadow copy of the volume will be created

■ SharesThe number of shared folders on the volume

■ UsedThe amount of disk space used by Shadow Copy

Individual shadow copies of the currently selected volume are listed in the Shadow Copies Of Selected Volume panel by date and time.

To create a shadow copy on an NTFS volume with shared folders, follow these steps:

1.Open Computer Management. If necessary, connect to a remote computer.

2.In the console tree, expand Storage, and then select Disk Management. The volumes configured on the selected computer are displayed in the details pane.

3.Press and hold or right-click Disk Management, point to All Tasks, and then tap or click Configure Shadow Copies.

4.On the Shadow Copies tab, select the volume with which you want to work in the Select A Volume list.

5.Tap or click Settings to configure the maximum size of all shadow copies for this volume and to change the default schedule. Tap or click OK.

6.After you configure the volume for shadow copying, tap or click Enable if necessary. When prompted to confirm this action, tap or click Yes. Enabling shadow copying creates the first shadow copy and sets the schedule for later shadow copies.

NOTE If you create a run schedule when configuring the Shadow Copy settings, shadow copying is enabled automatically for the volume when you tap or click OK to close the Settings dialog box. However, the first shadow copy won’t be created until the next scheduled run time. If you want to create a shadow copy of the volume now, select the volume and then tap or click Create Now.

Users working on client computers access shadow copies of individual shared folders by using the Previous Versions or Shadow Copy client. The best way to access shadow copies on a client computer is to follow these steps:

1.In File Explorer, press and hold or right-click the share for which you want to access previous file versions, tap or click Properties, and then tap or click the Previous Versions tab.

2.On the Previous Versions tab, select the folder version with which you want to work. Each folder has a date and time stamp. Tap or click the button corresponding to the action you want to perform:

■Tap or click Open to open the shadow copy in File Explorer.

■Tap or click Copy to display the Copy Items dialog box, which lets you copy the snapshot image of the folder to the location you specify.

■Tap or click Restore to roll back the shared folder to its state at the time of the snapshot image you selected.

Windows Server 2012 R2 features a shadow copy enhancement that enables you to revert an entire volume to the state it was in when a particular shadow copy was created. Because volumes containing operating system files can’t be reverted, the volume you want to revert must not be a system volume. The same goes for volumes on a cluster shared disk.

To revert an entire volume to a previous state, follow these steps:

1.Open Computer Management. If necessary, connect to a remote computer.

2.In the console tree, expand Storage. Press and hold or right-click Disk Management, point to All Tasks, and then tap or click Configure Shadow Copies.

3.On the Shadow Copies tab, select the volume with which you want to work in the Select A Volume list.

4.Individual shadow copies of the currently selected volume are listed by date and time in the Shadow Copies Of Selected Volume panel. Select the shadow copy with the date and time stamp to which you want to revert, and then tap or click Revert.

5.To confirm this action, select the Check Here If You Want To Revert This Volume check box, and then tap or click Revert Now. Tap or click OK to close the Shadow Copies dialog box.

Each point-in-time backup is maintained separately. You can delete individual shadow copies of a volume as necessary, and this recovers the disk space used by the shadow copies.