How to stop windows server 2008 from scanning directory when file sharing?

[cyr0n_k0r]

In windows 2003 the default behavior for setting up a file share was going to "sharing and security" giving the share a name, and either doing share permissions or NTFS security permissions. Once you clicked "ok" the folder was shared. Easy as that.

In windows 2008 however they have added a "feature" that when you click "ok" after sharing the directory the OS will preform a scan of the entire folder. Why?

We need to do a migration from 2003 to 2008 and we will have to re setup the file shares. No big deal except the shares we have to setup again contain millions of files inside hundreds of thousands of directories. Getting those shared in in a timely fashion is next to impossible if windows has to scan every single file/folder when we make the new shares.

We only have downtime windows of a few hours. And we need to migrate about 70 or 80 shares containing a total of about 35-40TB of data.

Has anyone run across the behavior or know how to get back the 2003 sharing behavior?

 

[xenios]

Not sure what you are referring to, as when I share anything it is instant and there is no disk activity after. Do you have smb indexing on? (i have never enabled it so I cant say what happens with that on) I also remember the default share window is a shitty wizard, use the advanced sharing button instead.

 

[cyr0n_k0r]

Sorry, just finally able to get back to this issue.
What I mean is, I am looking for a way to reduce the time it takes to apply NTFS security permissions for files and folders that have hundreds of thousands of files in them.

Each folder can take HOURS to change and update permissions. Is there a better/easier/faster way to get this done?

EDIT: My exact problem
http://serverfault.com/questions/51...windows-permissions-for-a-huge-directory-tree
although without any solutions.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I haven't seen a difference in 2K8 or 2K3 or 2K or NT 4.0 when it comes to changing permissions on large directories with lots of content. When making changes on folder structures with massive amounts of content...the disk activity can go on for a while simply because it has to propagate the permissions across all of them.

The amount of time it takes will be dependent on several factors:
*Obviously the size of the amount of data, as well as how deep the folder tree is
*Performance of the disk(s)/array, both speed of disks, and fragmentation
*Other loads on the server at the time you're doing this
*Are your permissions based on a kajillion different users, or a small handful of groups?

 

[cyr0n_k0r]

I am noticing this issue now, because in 2003 I was doing share permissions. In 2008 I am now moving to NTFS permissions. So things might not have changed much but I I do realize I am not making an apples to apples comparison.

The changes would be only for a single user, perhaps 2. But the issue is the top level folder that I am modify has underneath it hundreds of thousands of files inside tens of thousands of folders.......each.

I would then need to do this for about 80 different folders across 8 disk arrays totaling about 35 terabytes.

All in a maintenance window of a few hours. So you see my issue!

What I am thinking of doing is getting a new array and just putting that 1 blank array on 2008. Then create the shares and apply the NTFS permissions while the directories are empty. Then just file copy everything over the network from an 03 box to the 08 box.

Once the file copy is done and both folders are synced, I can cut each customer over to the 08 box. This way I avoid downtime. How does that sound?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Ahh that makes sense......you used to do it on the share level, and now you're doing it on the NTFS level. Yeah, no way around that...it's working deeper now.

 

[StarTrek4U]

Microsoft has a tool that will automatically migrate the shares and their permissions from one server to another- the File Server Migration Toolkit I used it and it worked perfectly, if you use DFS it will automatically update the namespace, etc. It does take some time to do the verification between the two systems of file changes, etc but it takes all the legwork of setting up the shares and permissions manually away.