IMPORTANT If payloads have been removed and you don’t specify a source, payloads are restored via Windows Update by default. however, Group Policy can be used to control whether Windows Update is used to restore payloads and to provide alternate source paths for restoring payloads. The policy with which you want to work is Specify Settings For Optional Component Installation And Component Repair, which is under Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System. This policy also is used for obtaining payloads needed to repair components.
You can configure the File And Storage Services role on a server by following these steps:
1. In Server Manager, tap or click Manage, and then tap or click Add Roles And Features, or select Add Roles And Features in the Quick Start pane. This starts the Add Roles And Features Wizard. If the wizard displays the Before You Begin page, read the Welcome text, and then tap or click Next.
2. On the Installation Type page, Role-Based Or Feature-Based Installation is selected by default. Tap or click Next.
3. On the Server Selection page, you can choose to install roles and features on running servers or virtual hard disks. Either select a server from the server pool or select a server from the server pool on which to mount a virtual hard disk (VHD). If you are adding roles and features to a VHD, tap or click Browse and then use the Browse For Virtual Hard Disks dialog box to locate the VHD. When you are ready to continue, tap or click Next.
NOTE Only servers that are running Windows Server 2012 R2 and that have been added for management in Server Manager are listed.
4. On the Server Roles page, select File And Storage Services. Expand the related node, and select the additional role services to install. If additional features are required to install a role, you’ll see an additional dialog box. Tap or click Add Features to close the dialog box and add the required features to the server installation. When you are ready to continue, tap or click Next.
5. On the Features page, select the features you want to install. If additional functionality is required to install a feature you selected, you’ll see an additional dialog box. Tap or click Add Features to close the dialog box and add the required features to the server installation. When you are ready to continue, tap or click Next. Depending on the added feature, there might be additional steps before you get to the Confirm page.
6. On the Confirm page, tap or click the Export Configuration Settings link to generate an installation report that can be displayed in Internet Explorer.
REAL WORLD If the server on which you want to install roles or features doesn’t have all the required binary source files, the server gets the files via Windows Update by default or from a location specified in Group Policy.
■ You can also specify an alternate path for the required source files. To do this, click the Specify An Alternate Source Path link, enter that alternate path in the box provided, and then tap or click OK. For network shares, enter the UNC path to the share, such as \\CorpServer25\WinServer2012R2\. For mounted Windows images, enter the WIM path prefixed with WIM: and including the index of the image to use, such as WIM: \\CorpServer25\WinServer2012R2\install.wim:4.
7. After you review the installation options and save them as necessary, tap or click Install to begin the installation process. The Installation Progress page tracks the progress of the installation. If you close the wizard, tap or click the Notifications icon in Server Manager, and then tap or click the link provided to reopen the wizard.
8. When Setup finishes installing the server with the roles and features you selected, the Installation Progress page will be updated to reflect this. Review the installation details to ensure that all phases of the installation were completed successfully. Note any additional actions that might be required to complete the installation, such as restarting the server or performing additional installation tasks. If any portion of the installation failed, note the reason for the failure. Review the Server Manager entries for installation problems, and take corrective actions as appropriate.
If the File Services role is already installed on a server and you want to install additional services for a file server, you can add role services to the server by using a similar process.
Adding hard drives
Before you make a hard drive available to users, you need to configure it and consider how it will be used. With Windows Server 2012 R2, you can configure hard drives in a variety of ways. The technique you choose depends primarily on the type of data with which you’re working and the needs of your network environment. For general user data stored on workstations, you might want to configure individual drives as stand-alone storage devices. In that case, user data is stored on a workstation’s hard drive, where it can be accessed and stored locally.
Although storing data on a single drive is convenient, it isn’t the most reliable way to store data. To improve reliability and performance, you might want a set of drives to work together. Windows Server 2012 R2 supports drive sets and arrays by using the redundant array of independent disks (RAID) technology, which is built into the operating system.
Physical drives
Whether you use individual drives or drive sets, you need physical drives. Physical drives are the actual hardware devices that are used to store data. The amount of data a drive can store depends on its size and whether it uses compression. Windows Server 2012 R2 supports both Standard Format and Advanced Format hard drives. Standard Format drives have 512 bytes per physical sector and are also referred to as 512b drives. Advanced Format drives have 4,096 bytes per physical sector and are also referred to as 512e drives. 512e represents a significant shift for the hard drive industry, and it allows for large, multiterabyte drives.
Disks perform physical media updates in the granularity of their physical sector size. 512b disks work with data 512 bytes at a time; 512e disks work with data 4,096 bytes at a time. At an elevated, administrator prompt, you can use the command-line utility Fsutil to determine bytes per physical sector by entering the following:
Fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo DriveDesignator
DriveDesignator is the designator of the drive to check, such as:
Fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo c: