Windows Server 2008 R2 Reviewers Guide

Improved Management of File Services

Windows Server^® 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) provides insight into your data by automating classification processes so that you can manage your data more effectively and economically. FCI does this by enabling to automatically classify files based on properties defined by administrators (such as whether or not a file contains personally identifiable information) and performing administrator-specified actions based on that classification (backing up files containing personal information to an encrypted store, for example). These mechanisms are included in the box as well as provided by extensible interfaces that allow IT organizations and partners to build rich end to end solutions for classifying and applying policy based on classification. FCI helps customers save money and reduce risk by managing files based on their business value and business impact.

You can use the Windows File Classification Infrastructure to identify files that:

Contain sensitive information and are located on servers with lower security and move the files to servers with higher security.

Contain sensitive information and encrypt those files.

Are no longer essential and automatically remove the files from servers.

Are not accessed frequently and move the files to slower, more affordable storage solutions.

Require different backup schedules and backup the files accordingly.

Require different backup solutions based on the sensitivity of the information in the files.

The Windows File Classification Infrastructure allows you to:

Centrally define policy-based classification of the files stored in your intranet.

Perform file management tasks based on the file classification that you define, rather than on only simple information such as the location, size, or date of the file.

Generate reports about the types of information stored in the files in your intranet.

Notify content owners when a file management task is going to be performed on their content.

Create or purchase custom file management solutions based on the Windows File Classification Infrastructure.

Improved Policy-based Classification of Files in the box

With no additional third-party applications, FCI provides the following benefits:

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  Getting insight to data on file server — Administrators can create automatic classification rules that classify files according to the location or content of the files. As a result, a new layer of efficiency is added, driving down the typical costs associated with managing and protecting the file server.
  
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  Reduce storage costs and eliminate old documents with no business value — Storing stale, unused data can grow to be a major expense for organizations. Indeed, IDC estimates that 60-80 percent of file data has no legal or business value. Expiring files based on usage and business value can reduce both the cost (storage and management) and risk (information leakage) on file servers. The in-box FCI solution provides automatically scheduled tasks that expire files based on age, location, or other classification categories.
  
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  Mitigate risk by customizing how and where your data is stored — FCI empowers administrators to run custom commands that automate management tasks based on file name, age, location, or other classification categories of files. For example, IT administrators can automatically move data based on policies for either centralizing the location of sensitive data or for moving data to a less expensive storage facility.
  
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  Easily track files — Reports can provide administrators with a powerful tool to assess the risk of the wrong files being in the wrong place on their servers. Using the built-in capabilities of FCI, administrators can create reports in a variety of formats that contain details—including location—about files that have a particular classification. The FCI reporting infrastructure can also be used to generate information that can be used by another application.