Now lets get to some tasks that directly impact your server. If you installed more than one hard disk drive in your server, or if the volume that you installed Windows Server 2003 on is smaller than the disk drive on which the boot partition resides, you need to set up and format remaining unallocated disk space.
Well use the Disk Manager to do this task. Its located in the Computer Management (Local) snap−in of the MMC that you created earlier. Open the snap−ins tree, and select the Disk Management folder. If you have one or more disk drives that havent been initialized, in a moment or two youll see the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard, shown in Figure 7.35.
Figure 7.35: The Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard
This wizard performs a couple of simple tasks. First, it initializes a disk by writing a unique identifier on whatever new physical disks you select. A disks unique identifier is used to store information about it in the Windows 2003 registry. After the identifier is written, the wizard will upgrade the basic disk to a dynamic disk, if you desire.
You can do a number of things with dynamic disks, including mirroring, setting up various levels of
Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID) storage, spanning across multiple physical drives, or striping a volume across multiple drives for better performance. You can also expand single−disk volumes and volumes that cross multiple volumes without rebooting your server. Add to this the capability to set up a Computer Management snap−in for servers other than your local one, and youve got a tremendous amount of control over storage on your Windows 2003 network.
Warning Although software implementation of the redundant storage solutions discussed previously works just fine, you should strongly consider implementing these solutions in hardware. Hardware implementations include smart disk controllers that do work that must be done by software run on your servers CPU. Software−based redundant storage solutions can significantly affect performance by placing a heavy load on a computers CPU.
Back to the wizard. Click Next, and youre offered the opportunity to select the physical disks which you want to initialize (see Figure 7.36). Because I have only one new physical disk in my new server, the wizard offers
Figure 7.36: Selecting a physical disk drive to be initialized
When you click Next, the disk is quickly initialized, and the disk becomes a basic disk. Then the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard offers to upgrade your disk to a dynamic disk (see Figure 7.37). Your new disk or disks should already be selected for upgrade to dynamic disk status. Accept this default unless you have a good reason to do otherwise. Click Next once more, and then click Finish on the final page to begin the upgrade.
Figure 7.37: Selecting a physical disk drive to be upgraded to dynamic disk status
When the wizard is finished, your servers disk configuration shows up in the right pane of the MMC. Figure 7.38 shows my disk setup after processing by the wizard. In the top pane on the right side is a list of my current volumes. The boot volume created during Windows Server 2003 installation is the only volume on my server, so it is the only volume displayed.
Figure 7.38: The status of physical disks and volumes as shown in the Disk Management subfolder of the Computer Management snap−in
My disks are displayed graphically in the lower pane on the right side. There you see my first disk with its healthy NTFS partition. Disk 1 is the disk that was just processed by the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard. Its now ready for me to create one or more new volumes on it.
To start creating volumes, right−click your unallocated physical disk space and select New Volume. This starts the New Volume Wizard, shown in Figure 7.39. Click Next on the wizard to select the type of volume that you want to create (see Figure 7.40). Assuming that youve installed but one disk, youll be offered only the option of creating a simple volume.
Figure 7.39: Starting up the New Volume Wizard
Figure 7.40: Accepting the creation of a simple volume using the New Volume Wizard
On the next wizard page, you select the disks to be included in a volume and set the size that you want the volume to be. In Figure 7.41, my single unallocated disk has been automatically selected, and Ive accepted the default option to use all the space on the disk for the new volume. If you have unallocated space available on multiple physical disks, you can create volumes that span as many or as few of those disks as you want.
Figure 7.41: Accepting default values for the disk to be included in a new volume and the size of the volume using the New Volume Wizard
On the next wizard page shown in Figure 7.42, you assign a drive letter or mount point for your new volume. Drive letters are old stuff. Mount points, borrowed from the Unix operating system, are new to Windows Server 2003. Mount points finally let you create volumes unlimited by the number of available drive letters. Ive chosen to assign a drive letter to my new volume.
Figure 7.42: Assigning a drive letter or mount point for a new volume using the New Volume Wizard
You select formatting parameters for your volume using the next wizard page (see Figure 7.43). Ive chosen to format my new volume with the NTFS file system, Ive accepted the default allocation unit size, and Ive labeled my volume LocalDisk E. You cant go wrong for now following my lead.
Figure 7.43: Selecting formatting parameters for a new volume using the New Volume Wizard
Finally, the wizard shows you what its about to do. Click Finish, and the wizard begins formatting your new volume. This takes some time. When it has finished its work, if the wizard tells you that your computer needs to be rebooted, do so.
Now the right pane of \Computer Management (Local)\Storage\Disk Management in your MMC should look something like the one in Figure 7.44. Your new volume has been created and is in a healthy state. What else could you ask for?
Figure 7.44: A newly created volume as shown in the Disk Management subfolder of the Computer Management snap−in
Dont Forget Shutdown
Like all good operating systems, Windows Server 2003 must be shut down; you should never just turn off Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2003 buffers a lot of data to RAM before writing it to disk. Although the writes from RAM are done quickly, on a busy server theres always data waiting in the buffers. A graceful shutdown ensures that this data is all written out to disk. To shut down a server, click the Start menu icon and select Shut Down. You can select from four options: Log Off, Shut Down, Restart, or Stand By. The latter option is for computers with energy−saving capabilities. If you pick Shut Down and the computer doesnt shut itself down, dont turn off the computer until you see a message telling you that its okay to turn off the
computer.