Monday, June 2, 2014

Distributed File System

 What is Microsoft Dfs?

Microsoft's Distributed File System or DFS provides a stable, location-independent naming scheme for all shared files you need to access when using Windows. A single  share, or a single drive mapped to such a share, is able to contain files and directories on any number of le servers. It works by looking up the actual locations of remote shares in a table called the Dfs map.

DFS Characteristics:

  • The permissions of shared folders that are part of the DFS are still the same.
  • Shares with important information can be replicated to several servers providing fault tolerance.
  • The DFS root must be created first.

DFS Components: 

DFS root - A shared directory that can contain other shared directories, files, DFS links, and other DFS roots. One root is allowed per server. 

Types of DFS roots: 

Stand alone DFS root - Not published in Active Directory, cannot be replicated, and can be on any Windows 2000 Server. This provides no fault tolerance with the DFS topology stored on one computer. A DFS can be accessed using the following syntax: 
\\Server\Dfsname

Domain DFS root - It is published in Active Directory, can be replicated, and can be on any Windows 2000 Server. Files and directories must be manually replicated to other servers or Windows 2000 must be configured to replicate files and directories. Configure the domain DFS root, then the replicas when configuring automatic replication. Links are automatically replicated. There may be up to 31 replicas. Domain DFS root directories can be accessed using the following syntax:
\\Domain\Dfsname


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