In this demo, we'll look at file screens and quotas in File Server
Resource Manager. To make sure we have this installed on my local
machine let me go again the Roles and Features.
We can do this Role and Feature installation with Windows Admin Center.
I just wanted to put that in there as a note. Let me select our
server, and then under File and Storage Services, File and iSCSI
Services, were concerned with the File Server role, as well as File
Server Resource Manager, and if you want to throw in Volume Shadow
Copy as well for good measure.
And then we can go under File and Storage Services, and this is
where we can look, for instance, at our Shares.
We did a little of this when I showed you BranchCache a
moment ago, but let me just quickly show you how to stand
up a new share in this interface.
It's pretty cool actually. If we right‑click New Share,
notice that you can share with Mac and Linux using NFS or
we have the Server Message Block.
And the difference here is we have Quick for general file sharing, then we have
Advanced, where you can just layer in some File Server Resource Manager stuff
like classification and quotas. Or Applications, this is going to be for server
applications and Hyper‑V workloads.
I'm going to go to Quick, and then we'll go into File Server
Resource Manager. I'm going to create a custom path on my e drive,
and I'll just call this workfiles. Windows Server will create this
folder path for us if the folder doesn't exist. Here it is right
here, so let me click OK.
And here again we have our share settings.
Access‑based enumeration is cool, because if a user doesn't have
read to any of the resources in the shared folder,
they just simply won't show up in the directory list. Out of
sight is out of mind, as I think I've already mentioned. If
we're going to do BranchCache,
this is the control for that, Enable BranchCache on the file share.
And, well, next we've got our access control list that we can
customize and then we can create the share.
So this is a nice interface for that.
In terms of the File Server Resource Manager,
let me go to my custom Microsoft management console
that I've created, and specifically,
let's look at File Server Resource Manager. And, again,
what we're doing for our purposes here is just quota
management and file screen management.
Let's take a look here.
In terms of setting quotas, you'll want to have
templates available for ease of use here.
And if we enumerate the built‑in quota templates, these
are just meant to get us started.
Let's take a look here. Notice that we have some hard
limits, as well as some soft limits.
The soft limit is going to track violations of your storage quotas,
but it won't restrict a file copy operation or a file
move, you see what I mean, a hard will.
So let's see here, 200 MB Limit with 50 MB Extension, 250 MB
Extended Limit, 200 MB, let me double‑click this Reports to User
and let's take a look at its properties.
Alright,
so we simply specify a Space limit in the template using a unit of measurement.
As you can see, you determine whether it's Hard or Soft.
Hard means the user cannot exceed the limit; Soft
means that it's just monitoring.
Then you can specify Notification threshold, and you can just
structure this to your heart's content.
It looks like the default in this template is 85%, 95% Warning,
100% Warning. Click OK, and now let's select the Quotas node,
right‑click the node, and create a quota.
We'll select the quota path, we'll browse for folder.
I'm going to go to my F drive under shares, data,
and select the data shared folder.
And what's neat about this is that you can create a quota just on the
folder path, or you can auto apply the template and create quotas on
existing or new subfolders, you see.
So if you do have network‑based home folders for your users,
you could attach the quota template to the root of that share and then cascade
or auto apply the template. As you're bringing on and creating new home folders
for users, you can automatically apply that quota,
which is pretty darn convenient it seems to me.
And then we can select our template here and then click Create. It gives
us the summary down at the bottom, as you can see.
So that's all there is to quotas.
When you right‑click a quota entry, you can disable the quota,
you can edit its properties,
you can create a template from that quota, you can view quotas that are
affecting the folder, so there's some good context here. Of course,
in the MMC console, you also have the Actions pane that you can bring in.
I tend to hide that.
Now the other thing we'll look at is file screens.
So under File Screening Management, again,
there's the concept of File Screen Templates,
but before we look at that, we need to determine what is it that you
actually want to screen out or block. In my experience,
you want to block out media oftentimes. So you see there's
lots of file groups already created.
For example,
this Audio and Video Files one is going to pick up a whole
bunch of audio and video extensions like,
wow, real audio.
Are you serious? In 2022?
This really needs to be updated.
In fact, there is MP3, at least.
So, anyway, you may very well want to create your own file group,
which you can do here just by right‑clicking in an empty space,
Create File Group, and this is just going to be a
collection of file types, as simple as that.
But notice that you can explicitly include and exclude file types.
So we might want to block all of these media types,
for instance, on the Audio and Video Files template, but we want to
accept MP3s, for example. So you create your file groups or decide
what you want to block, and then you can roll this into a file screen
template that you then apply.
And so, again, these are just starter ones.
You can always create your own file screen template.
And besides giving the template a name and choosing what your file groups
are that you're going to block, you then can choose is this going to be a
hard screen or an active screen or is it going to be passive, just for
monitoring, and auditing, etc.
And then we have some notification options here.
It looks like we have to give the template a name before we can
navigate to another tab here in this dialog. And it looks like we
have to choose at least one file group.
Now if we go to E‑mail Message,
this is where you can do notifications and you can even structure
kind of an email merge here with these volatile fields here that you
can substitute in, these variables, Event Log, you can run commands,
so there's remediation that you can take place here with these file
screen templates.
So lastly, to test this,
let's go over to File Screens, let's right‑click, Create File Screen.
The File screen path is going to be the same folder that
I set a quota on, for convenience.
Let's click Browse, we'll select my data folder, click OK. I'm going
to derive the properties from the Block Audio and Video Files
template and click Create to create the file screen. To tie in our
learning from earlier, why don't I make it easier for users to find
this data shared folder?
Let me quickly add a new folder to our DFS namespace.
I'll call it data. And let's add a folder target, click Browse on
this machine. We'll select data from the list,
click OK, and then finish with OK, alright.
And then to test, let's open up a Run prompt here.
I'm going to hit the root of the DFS tree, contosolocal public. We'll
go into data, and I have an MP3 file over here.
Let's go ahead and attempt to copy that file into
this folder. And this is the result.
It's not very useful feedback, but as you saw in the FSRM tool,
we can configure better remediation guidance.
Unfortunately,
it just tells us access denied, you need permission, and
notice that there's no more details.
We can try all we want, but that file screen is going to continue to block us from putting media into that folder.