Beta users generally happy with Windows Storage Server R2

Computerworld - Beta users of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Server 2003 R2 operating system said they are impressed by the system's ability to replace other storage software products and give them advanced discovery and replication features. But they still want to see more robust security and reporting tools added.
Craig Fletcher, IT operations manager at Arcadis G&M Inc., an environmental consulting firm in Highland Ranch, Colo., has been beta-testing Windows Server 2003 R2 for the past six months and said he's very happy with the storage resource management tools used to discover and monitor equipment on his storage-area network (SAN).
While the first two beta versions of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 R2 software had bugs, the final version, released to him six weeks ago, is "flawless." He said the main shortcoming of the software, which was released to manufacturing this week (see "Microsoft releases Windows Server 2003 R2"), is a lack of robust reporting for data-replication functions.
"We'd like to be able to look at the status of replication from a branch office to the hub site in real time," Fletcher said. He added that he wants to see "automated e-mail summaries as to the previous days' summary totals on replicated data, so we know that replication [and] backups are working well."
Although Microsoft told him those features will be available later, "right now, we have to manually run a report if we want to know what is going on," Fletcher said. Arcadis G&M uses the software's distributed file system to replicate snapshots of file data from branch offices to a central data center, replacing direct attached tape backup.
Prior to installing the software, the company's 75 branch offices had a number of problems related to backing up 240 Wintel servers, including the use of untrained personnel to handle tapes and backup failures that caused data losses. Fletcher said he not only likes the disk-to-disk replication features, but also the continuous data protection features that give him a single, central copy of all file data.
"Now, if they do lose that [branch office] file server, we can use the distributed file service and point users straight to here," he said. "The downtime for end-users is virtually nothing, while we're recovering the branch server that crashed."

Performing incremental backups of file data automatically to the company's main data center has greatly reduced administrative overhead and data losses, Fletcher said, although he could not say by exactly how much.
"The only thing I think really needs to be addressed by Microsoft is biometrics," said Jeff