Map network share to a folder (DFS?)

[nickzat]

First off, I do have a lot of experience with computers, but I'm not an IT pro, so please forgive my ignorance. I have several computers networked at home. My problem is that I have too many networked drives on each computer. In addition, each computer may have different drives letters for each network share (I know I can change them, but it wasn't always possible to free other letters). I would like to be able to map the network shares to, instead of a drive, to a folder. I understand that there is a mechanism for this, Distributed File System (DFS). I tried to research this to answer my questions, but couldn't find anything. Below is an example of what I would like to do:

D:\Network Shares

___\Videos

_____\MediaComputer (which is mapped to \\MediaComputer\Video)

_____\DenHTPC (which is mapped to \\DenHTPC\Video)

__\Music

_____\MediaComputer (which is mapped to \\MediaComputer\Music)

_____\FileServer (which is mapped to \\FileSever\Music)

My questions:

1) Will DFS do as I described above?

2) Do I need Windows XP Server 2003, for this, or is there a way with just Windows XP Pro?

3) Does Vista Enterprise/Ultimate have DFS, or is it renamed to something else?

4) What about the client Windows XP machines, will they have the ability to map network shares as folders too?

5) Will it truly act like just any other folder, so it will be accessed in any application?

Thank you.

[cluberti]

DFS will allow you to create a namespace (either domain or local to the file server) to place your current shares under - DFS is mainly to allow multiple shares from multiple servers to appear as a single logical namespace under the DFS root. For example, a domain DFS root (say domain.com) may have the following structure once created and configured:

\\domain.com\DFSshare
	|
	|---\Videos
	|		 |
	|		 |---\MediaComputer (is actually \\MediaComputer\Video)
	|		 |
	|		 |---\DenHTPC	  (is actually \\DenHTPC\Video)
	|---\Music
			  |
			  |---\MediaComputer (is actually \\MediaComputer\Music)
			  |
			  |---\FileServer	 (is actually \\FileServer\Music)

That way, you can map one drive to \\domain.com\DFSshare, and access all of the other folders in the tree below it without having to map any additional drives. This allows you to disperse data amongst multiple servers, but have all of it appear as one logical share structure.

You do need to use a Windows Server 2003 box for this, unless you want to setup a Linux box and try and get Samba working as a DFS root (it's painful, but can be done).

[nickzat]

Great thanks cluberti! This does answer my questions. This will work for me, but I'd rather run it under Vista (I'm setting up a new main computer as we speak). Does anyone know if Vista Enterprise or Vista Ultimate can serve DFS (or what ever it's called in Vista, MS loves to rename things, just to confuse everyone)?

[cluberti]

No, Vista will not act as a DFS root. Read my comment again :

You do need to use a Windows Server 2003 box for this, unless you want to setup a Linux box and try and get Samba working as a DFS root (it's painful, but can be done).

[tain]

You could also use Server 2000, but are then restricted to one DFS root.

[nickzat]

Thanks for everyone's help. It's a shame that I have to have all the overhead of Windows Server 2003 just for clean, organized network shares. But, I did find this: http://win2k3.msfn.org/

Thanks msfn.org!

--

No, Vista will not act as a DFS root. Read my comment again :

QUOTE(cluberti @ Sep 27 2007, 07:54 PM) You do need to use a Windows Server 2003 box for this, unless you want to setup a Linux box and try and get Samba working as a DFS root (it's painful, but can be done).

Sorry, I didn't understand this statement to be exclusive.