Find the Shares you Need with DFS by L.J. Johnson, Windows NT Pro
Shares here, shares there, shares everywhere! Is the share you need on \\AbcCo789786 or \\AbcCo675230? Wouldn't it be nice if there was just one place on the network where a user could find all the appropriate shares? Well, with Win2K, Microsoft introduced DFS (Distributed File System) that, while not perfect, is at least an attempt to make this desire a reality.
DFS provides functions to "logically group shares on multiple servers and to transparently link shares into a single hierarchical name space." You can have stand-alone implementations (those with a single host server) or domain-based implementations. Each DFS tree can have one or more root shares, and each root share can have any number of DFS links, while each DFS link points to one or more shared folders on the network. Note that the folders must be shared (see Adding a Share to a Local or Remote Machine) before adding them as a DFS link.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was just one place on the network that a user could find all the appropriate shares?
