Blade Watch

Some ideas about setting up or optimizing the configuration of your file server:

• File shares should be on a separate disk to the operating system, so if you need to re-install windows you shouldn’t have to impact the data that is already there – C for Windows, D/E/F etc for data.
• Network card set to the correct speed and duplex to avoid any network issues, coupled with switching on the buffers/time out settings on the card if necessary.
• Drivers and firmware up to date – it shouldn’t have any impact, but let’s not forget that if it’s done, we can rule that out.
• Format the file system in line with the files that are going to be there if possible – if we’re going to have millions of 1k files, then 1k cluster size it shall be.
• Backup the share names – so we can quickly restore them in the event of failure – a net view \\servername will do to a text file using a scheduled task once a week?
• Consider separating the file shares/drives per business line – all sales on d drive, all IT on E, and shared files on f – that way if we want to take action on a drive, we minimize the people impacted.
• Think about how you permission the file shares – should we be using file level permissioning or share permissioning, but use groups for easy administration and auditing.
• Defragment the file system regularly, it can make a tremendous difference to end user experience and reduce the workload of the server itself as it tries to locate and serve files. Remember that the defrag works best when there is free space on the drive.
• Archiving – what is it that really needs kept online?  Could we offload some data to an ‘archive file server’, or have IT restores on a separate box so we’re not mixing client data with back office support work?
• Anti virus configuration – if it’s a high volume file server, do we need both the client and the server scanning on both read and write, or can we turn off scanning when reading a file on the server?
• Backups – the defragmentation of the file system should help improve backup times, but what needs backed up and how regularly, can we stagger the backup? Backup the IT drive during the day, sales after 6pm and shared at 8pm with the system itself at 10?
  
• Remember that even a Pentium 200/400 server running Windows 2000 can easily serve hundreds of users running Windows NT4/2000 if everything is optimized, it’s not the performance of the box as much as it is the configuration, the steps you take to optimize it.

When you do run a defragmentation the first time it might take a long time, but once you’ve done it a few times it should fly through, you could schedule it using a scheduled task just running a command prompt – defrag d: -f -v, defrag d drive, force the defrag with the verbose switch so if there’s an issue you can see what’s happening on screen. The defrag might be run during the day, providing you consider the impact on server performance and monitor it.

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