Chapter 6 “Configuring File Services”

Thursday, March 07, 2013

The File Services role and other features included with Windows Server 2008 provide many different tools that help administrators deal with all the factors that need to be considered when planning for file sharing on a large network.  The first is scalability, or how much storage space is needed now as well as next year.  The second is navigation, or how users are expected to find the files they need when they need them.  The third is protection, or how you control access to network file shares.  The fourth is abuse, or how to prevent users from consuming too much storage space.  The fifth is diversity, or providing file sharing support for operating systems other than Windows.  The sixth is fault tolerance, or the speed at which you can recover from a hard drive failure, server failure, or an entire facility.  Finally, the last is availability, or making sure that your users have continuous access to the files and services they need even on remote networks.  All of these issues can be addressed through the File services role.  Distributed File System (DFS) is scalable to any size network.  The DFS Namespace role provides a basic virtual directory functionality and DFS Replication enables administrators to deploy the virtual directory on many servers over the entire enterprise.  DFS Replication can have two different topologies, a Full Mesh topology and a Hub/Spoke topology.  A Full Mesh topology means that every member of the group replicates with every other member.  A Hub/Spoke topology allows you the ability to limit the replication traffic to specific pairs of members to cut down on the amount of network traffic.  Hub/Spoke would be more useful in a larger installation.