Enhanced End User Experience

Shadow Copy Restore and improvements to Offline Files and WebDAV Redirector combine to provide an enhanced user experience.

Shadow Copy Restore

Studies have shown that human error causes more than one-third of all data loss. Windows Server 2003 includes a new feature to address this problem: shadow copies.

A shadow copy is a previous version of a file. Using shadow copies, a Windows. NET Server 2003 “based file server will efficiently and transparently maintain a set of previous versions of all files on the file server. Clients use a separate add-on program, which is included on the Windows Server 2003 CD and integrates seamlessly with the client machine, to view the previous versions.

Shadow copies are a low-cost way to recover files from many accidents caused by human error, such as inadvertent editing, corruption, and deletion.

While shadow copies cannot replace your current backup solution ”for example, shadow copies cannot protect you from data loss resulting from media failures ”shadow copies should reduce the number of times you need to restore data from tape.

Improvements to Offline Files

Windows Server 2003, in conjunction with changes made to the Windows XP client, presents several improvements for file serving. On the client side, Windows XP includes several improvements to Offline Files. This feature, introduced in Windows 2000, lets client machines cache copies of network files and folders on local machines.

There are two types of caching ”caching for documents and caching for programs. The server administrator chooses the type of caching used for a network file share:

When the client is caching documents, the operating system uses the copy of the document on the file server if the server is available. However, when the file server is not available, Windows XP transparently lets the user work on the cached copy of the document.
When the client is caching programs and the file server is available, Windows XP simply checks the file server to verify that the cached version of the program is up-to-date. If the program is up-to-date, Windows XP executes the cached copy of the program. This offloads work from the file server to the desktop operating system, improving the scalability of the file server.

Improvements to Offline Files are more robust in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 than in Windows 2000 for additional reasons. For example, with Windows XP, users can cache files from a DFS namespace ”an improvement over Windows 2000. Also, Offline Files in Windows XP works better with the Encrypting File System (EFS).

WebDAV Redirector

The WebDAV Redirector provides an improved file sharing experience on the Windows XP client.

Today you can create Web-based document repositories, and special-purpose Web publishing tools can use the WebDAV protocol to update the documents in those repositories. In Windows XP, the WebDAV Redirector makes those Web repositories accessible to any application. It does this by mapping a drive letter to the WebDAV server. Existing applications can access the files through the new drive letter.

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