Features

[Guest Michael Yardley]

Distributed File System (DFS): DFS allows multiple network shares to

be aggregated as a virtual file system.

Support for SAN and iSCSI: Computers can connect to a Storage Server

over the LAN, and there is no need for a separate fibre channel

network. Thus a Storage Area Network can be created over the LAN

itself. iSCSI uses the SCSI protocol to transfer data as a block of

bytes, rather than as a file. This increases performance of the

Storage network in some scenarios, such as using a database server.

Virtual Disc Service: It allows NAS devices, RAID devices and SAN

shares to be exposed and managed as if they were normal hard drives.

JBOD systems: JBOD (Just a bunch of discs) systems, by using VDS, can

manage a group of individual storage devices as a single unit. There

is no need for the storage units to be of the same make and model.

Software and Hardware RAID: Windows Storage Server 2003 has intrinsic

support for hardware implementation of RAID. In case hardware support

is not available, it can use software enabled RAID. In that case, all

processing is done by the OS.

Multi Path IO (MPIO): It provides an alternate connection to IO

devices in case the primary path is down.