HP CIFS Windows 2000 Interoperability (October 2002)

CIFS/9000 and Windows 2000 Interoperability

Hewlett-Packard

Chapter 7 Windows 2000 DFS

DFS represents Distributed File System. Microsoft DFS refers to the ability to combine

multiple servers and/or shares into a common namespace. Be aware that the industry

common definition of DFS refers to OSF DCE/DFS, which is a very robust distributed file

system used primarily in technical UNIX environments. Windows 2000 DFS bears no

relation to OSF DCE/DFS.

The key feature of Windows 2000 DFS is referrals. Referrals allow multiple servers and/or

shares to be consolidated under a single namespace. A user would then map the common

namespace, and have transparent share mapping among a group of servers and/or shares.

Key features are:

• Transparent share mapping

• Root share – source of common namespace

• Root subordinate mappings are ‘referred”

A referral is simply a re-directed share map to another server, but it appears as a local

directory under the root namespace. Windows 2000 also adds additional features to DFS:

• Automatic file replication

• Fault tolerance

7.1 Standard Namespace

Observe an explorer view of a standard namespace:

The red arrows point to:

• 3 mapped shares

• 3 separate servers

• 3 logical drives

• 3 distinct namespaces