The Basics of the Windows Server 2008 Distributed File System (DFS)

For those of you who are not using Distributed File System (DFS) I would really encourage you to have a close look at what it is, and consider the value it will add to the management of your company`s file system.

I`ve found this excellent blog post by Jose Barreto (Senior Program Manager with the File Server Foundation team) called “The Basics of the Windows Server 2008 Distributed File System (DFS)” (Yes, I did copy the blog post title :-) )

It`s a best practice to set up DFS for managing the file system, and I always encourage my clients to implement this for the following main reasons:

-Unified file structure (\\domain.local\Share-root) for file shares
-Future file server replacements will be transparent to users and applications
-Replication (WAN-scaling and redundancy)

DFS links (copied from Jose`s post):

TechNet on DFS
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753479.aspx

DFS Step-by-Step Guide for Windows Server 2008
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732863.aspx

DFSUTIL overview
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc782897.aspx

DFS Step-by-Step Guide for Windows Server 2003 R2
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc737358.aspx

DFS FAQ (from Windows Server 2003 R2)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/dfsfaq.mspx

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