Distributed File System (Microsoft)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about Microsoft's implementation of DFS. For general discussion of the concept and
other implementations, see Distributed file system.
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[1] 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[2] (in kernel space) or a computer running Samba (in user space.) The Enterprise
and Datacenter 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".[3]
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 does not 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\<dfsroot>

or
\\fq.domain.name\<dfsroot>

. 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, multiple member
servers should be used to provide full fault tolerance.
Contents
[hide]

1DFS namespaces

2DFS replication

3History

4See also

5References

6External links

DFS namespaces[edit]
Traditional file shares, associated with a single server, have SMB paths of the form
\\<SERVER>\<path>\<subpath>

Domain-based DFS file share paths are distinguished by using the domain name in place of the
server name, in the form
\\<DOMAIN.NAME>\<dfsroot>\<path>

When a user accesses such a share, either directly or by mapping a drive, their computer will access
one of the available servers associated with that share, following rules which can be configured by
the network administrator. For example, the default behaviour is that users will access the closest
server to them; but this can be overridden to prefer a particular server.
If a server fails, the client can select a different server transparently to the user. One major caveat
regarding this flexibility is that currently-open files will potentially become unusable, as open files
cannot be failed-over.

DFS replication[edit]
Early versions of DFS used Microsoft's File Replication Service (FRS) which provides basic file
replication capability between servers. FRS identifies changed or new files, and copies the latest
version of the entire file to all servers.
Windows Server 2003 R2 introduced "DFS Replication" (DFSR) which improves on FRS by only
copying those parts of files which have changed (remote differential compression), by using data
compression to reduce network traffic, and by allowing administrators flexible configuration options
for limiting network traffic with a customizable schedule.

History[edit]
The server component of Distributed File System was first introduced as an add-on to Windows NT
4.0 Server, called "DFS 4.1",[4] and was later included as a standard component of all editions
of Windows 2000 Server. Client-side support is included in Windows NT 4.0 and later versions of
Windows.
Linux kernels 2.6.14 and later[5] come with an SMB client VFS called "cifs" that supports DFS.
On Mac OS X DFS is supported natively in Mac OS X 10.7 ("Lion") onward.

See also[edit]

List of Microsoft Windows components

References[edit]
1.

Jump up^ Dfs vs. DFS

2.

Jump up^ PSARC/2009/534 SMB/CIFS Standalone DFS

3.

Jump up^ Template Version: @(#)onepager.txt 1.35 07/11/07 SMI Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems

4.

Jump up^ "DFS: When, Why, and How". Archived from the original on August 25, 2005.

5.

Jump up^ "LinuxCIFS utils - SambaWiki". Wiki.samba.org. Retrieved 2013-07-08.

External links[edit]

How DFS Works: Remote File Systems

[MS-DFSC]: Distributed File System (DFS): Referral Protocol Specification