Distributed File System (Microsoft)

Distributed File System (Microsoft)

Distributed File System (DFS) is a set of client and server services that allow an organization using Microsoft Windows servers to organize many distributed SMB file shares into a distributed file system. DFS provides location transparency and redundancy to improve data availability in the face of failure or heavy load by allowing shares in multiple different locations to be logically grouped under one folder, or DFS root.

Microsoft's DFS is referred to interchangeably as 'DFS' and 'Dfs' by Microsoft and is unrelated to the DCE Distributed File System, which held the 'DFS' trademark but was discontinued in 2005.

It is also called "MS-DFS" or "MSDFS" in some contexts, e.g. in the Samba user space project.

There is no requirement to use the two components of DFS together; it is perfectly possible to use the logical namespace component without using DFS file replication, and it is perfectly possible to use file replication between servers without combining them into one namespace.

A DFS root can only exist on a server version of Windows (from Windows NT 4.0 and up) and OpenSolaris (in kernel space) or a computer running Samba (in user space.) The Enterprise and Data center Editions of Windows Server can host multiple DFS roots on the same server. OpenSolaris intends on supporting multiple DFS roots in "a future project based on Active Directory (AD) domain-based DFS namespaces".

There are two ways of implementing DFS on a server:

• Standalone DFS namespace allow for a DFS root that exists only on the local computer, and thus does not use Active Directory. A Standalone DFS can only be accessed on the computer on which it is created. It doesn't offer any fault tolerance and cannot be linked to any other DFS. This is the only option available on Windows NT 4.0 Server systems. Standalone DFS roots are rarely encountered because of their limited utility.
• Domain-based DFS namespace stores the DFS configuration within Active Directory, the DFS namespace root is accessible at \\domainname\ or \\fq.domain.name\. The namespace roots do not have to reside on domain controllers, they can reside on member servers, if domain controllers are not used as the namespace root servers, then multiple member servers should be used to provide full fault tolerance.