File sharing between Win Server 2012 and older versions of Win Server should be understood

Windows Server 2012 uses the new SMB3.0 protocol (formerly SMB2.2) to share files with other Windows systems. When the SMB3.0 client connects to the peer, it always tries to use the highest version of the protocol. So if you establish a shared access between Windows Server 2012 and an older version of Windows Server, the connection will be negotiated using the highest version of the protocol on the server hosting the SMB. Microsoft TechNet blogger Jose Barreto gave a chart on one of his blogs explaining the highest version of the SMB protocol that can be used between two versions of Windows when establishing a connection. New features in SMB 3.0 can only be applied to Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8. These new features include: Extensions: Folders can be shared from multiple nodes in a cluster, which facilitates failover, optimized bandwidth, capacity dynamic expansion, load balancing And fault tolerance. Multi-channel support: Multiple or redundant networks can be used to accelerate connections between multiple SMB clients. End-to-end encryption: By default, SMB3.0 clients use encrypted encryption for data transmission. Support for VSS: Now Shadow Copy (VSS) can also support SMB sharing, so any software with VSS features can back up and restore file-shared data. SMB Direct: Using a server with RDMA (via remote direct memory access) feature network card, you can benefit from high-speed data transfer from memory to memory, which greatly reduces CPU usage and latency compared to traditional copy operations. SMB Directory Leasing: When using the Branch Cache feature to access documents, SMB directory leasing can reduce access latency, locally cache more metadata associated with the document, and reduce the round-trip process of getting metadata from the server. One thing to note is that if your IT infrastructure is a hybrid environment, all clients and servers use SMB2 or higher (for example, the client uses Windows Vista and the server uses Windows). Server 2008), disable SMB 1. X using the PowerShell command SmbServerConfiguration – EnableSMB1Protocol $false. Disabling SMB1.X can reduce the potential attack surface of the server. If the server does not use this protocol, it is best to disable it to prevent future attacks from exploiting this vulnerability.