A dedicated file server provides centralized, always-available file storage for networked devices, unlike shared folders on a desktop or laptop that become inaccessible when the machine is moved or shut down. This content covers how to configure a Windows Server 2022 machine as a file server, including creating department-level shared folders, managing local user groups, and setting NTFS permissions.
Setting Up a File Server
If we start sharing out files from a single machine, we've now essentially turned that machine into a file server. However, there are times when we want a dedicated machine that just does file serving, or maybe file serving and a few other options.
When we share out a file from a desktop or maybe a laptop, the problem is, let's say that laptop goes somewhere else — now you don't have access to those files. Same thing with a desktop: let's say we shut down the desktop because we're done using it, now other devices on the network don't have access to it. So there may be times when we want to set up a dedicated file server that does file sharing.
This demo machine is not a regular desktop or laptop machine. This is a server. This is a Microsoft Windows Server 2022. Now it's very similar to a desktop, it has a lot of similar functionality, and I would navigate this very similarly as I would just a Windows machine like a Windows 11 machine. However, it's got some extra features to it and extra capabilities. For instance, there can be a lot more connections to this device than I could have to a Windows 11 machine, so I can have more connections to it. It also has a lot of features to manage things like shares.
So we're setting up file serving on this machine. Just like a regular machine, what I would want to do is set up some shares on this. Perhaps I go to this E drive right here. I'm going to right-click and say new, and new folder. Maybe I'm just sharing this out into my home network, but maybe not — maybe this is a business, and so I would create a folder, and maybe the folder is going to be by department. So we have the finance department, and so we're going to create a finance folder, and I'm going to share it out with the finance group. Then same thing, I'm going to create a new folder. Maybe IT wants their own folder, so we're going to create one for it. Maybe sales wants their own folder, so I'm going to create a folder for sales. And then maybe operations wants their own folder, so I'm going to create an operations folder. So now each one of the groups has their own folder.
Probably what I want to do next is have some way of sharing out to the whole finance group, so I want to establish a group connection to that. Normally what I'd probably do is set up active directory to share out to these different groups, but we're not going to go through the process of setting up a whole directory system for this process. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to open up computer management, and we're going to create the groups for these different shares. I'm going to go into the local users and groups, and I'm going to create these groups. I'm going to say new group, and the first one is finance, so I'll create a finance group, and then I'd add the members to this group. The next one is IT, so I'll do IT and create that group. The next one is operations, so we'll put that in there, and sales, and we'll put that in there. So now I have these groups in here.
What I want to do is I want to adjust the NTFS permissions of these different folders. So I'm going to go into properties, security, and I'm going to edit this, and we're going to add the group finance to it, so finance can get to this folder. And I'm going to allow them to pretty much have full control except for the final full control. This full control right here allows them to change permissions, and maybe I don't want them to do that. So I click on okay there, and okay. So now finance can get into there.
I'm going to go into the NTFS permissions here, I'm going to edit this, we're going to add the IT group and click on okay. Same thing, I want them to be able to modify but not full control, so I'm going to click okay there. Sales, I'm going to do the same thing. So what we're doing is now we're creating a machine here that's really for the purpose of being able to access all these files. So I'm going to sales, hit okay, and modify, okay. And then finally operations.
So now, in actuality, I probably want to do a little more adjusting, like take the users off of here. I don't want users to have the access that they do, so if I click on users you can see that they have read and execute. So maybe at that point I would want to remove the users from the group. It's giving me a warning, but that's okay. The point is that I would change these NTFS permissions to give permissions to certain groups and take away permissions from certain groups, and that's how I'd engineer this.
Then what I would do is, for each one of these I would create a share out of this. So I go into properties, sharing, I'd click on the share button, and in this case we're just going to give access to everyone, and we'll add that. Notice that finance is a contributor, so I might not need to go through this process of adding everyone to here. But I would set out these shares then and create these shares for these groups.
Now that folder is shared out, I can click on this shared folders here and I can see which shares are on here. I can see finance right there, which I've shared out. We'll notice that there's actually other shares on here. I can also see what sessions, who's connected to it, if there's any open files at this point. So it does give me some additional ways to manage these shares here, through this shared folders under the computer management tools they have here.
Now I mentioned there's extra features that are on Windows Server that help me manage this. So what are those? Well, like I say, one of them is just how many connections can we have to each one of these folders here. But there are extra services that can help manage this. So if I click on the start menu right here, I'm going to go to server manager, and this is now some tools that I have through this Microsoft server. I'm going to click on manage and I can add roles and features. So I'm going to add roles and features, and I'm going to go through this installation process for this. And notice now I can add features that are specific to file services, so these like DFS namespace, or DFS replication, or file server resource manager. So here are things that we can add now to this machine to help us manage these folders and files.
It's beyond the purpose of this lesson to really get in depth into what all of these are and what they do. I just wanted to show you that this Windows Server — what we've essentially done is we've created now a file server out of this machine right here, that other machines now have access to these different folders right here, so they can start sharing files and folders and putting files and folders in here, and we have a central way of managing all of this. So this has now become a file server.
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