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Accepted
Kvad
Asked: 2013-07-09 22:43:22 +0800 CST

DFS linking to a target folder within another target folder

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Windows Server 2012 - Attempting to setup a file server using DFS

I have the following scenario:

Namespace: \\domain\resources

Folder without targets:
Files > \\domain\resources\files

Folders with targets:
Clients > \\domain\resources\files\clients
Restricted > \\domain\resources\files\restricted

I want to create a drive map at the following level
\\domain\resources\files\clients

I also want \\domain\resources\files\restricted as a folder inside of \\domain\resources\files\clients. So end result would be \\domain\resources\files\clients\restricted points to \\domain\resources\files\restricted

This is possible? Or do I have to accept the fact I will have to look at mapping \\domain\resources\files then having people update their links in various files?

I could achieve this by using a symbolic link but this would not be replicated by DFS, also it would needed to be done per server.

Update: DFS Targets Basically I want to symlink restricted into the clients folder.

windows-server-2008

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    From your description I get the impression that you've not used DFS before. Basically (in really simple terms) DFS allows you to do this:

    \\<domain>\<namespace>\<share> and point that to \\<server1>\<share> and/or \\<server2>\<share>

    So in your example:

    \\domain\resources\clients -> \\fileserver\files\clients
    \\domain\resources\files -> \\fileserver\files\
    \\domain\resources\restricted -> \\fileserver\files\clients\restricted

    In my setup for example:

    \\domain\namespace\users points to \\fileserver1\users$ and to \\fileserver2\users$ (the files are replicated between the two shares using DFS-R so the users can use either server to access their files).

    The "$" obfuscates the user shares on the file servers and exposes them to the users under the domain's DFS namespace. This makes looking at the shares a bit cleaner on the network and "kinda" prevents the users from short-cutting directly to a server share that might or might not be up.

    The simple answer is yes, I think you can do what you are asking, but you need to read up a bit. Decisions you make now will become permanent shares your users will rely on and changing it later is a pain. I use \\<domain>\<branch location>\<sharename>. In our case our branch location is in Los Angeles so I just use "LA".

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