Distributed File Systems
Enhanced insight and control over your IT systems
The Distributed File System (DFS) technologies in Windows Server 2008 R2 offer wide area network (WAN)-friendly replication as well as simplified, fault-tolerant access to geographically dispersed files.
DFS Replication: New state-based, multimaster replication engine that is optimised for WAN environments. DFS Replication supports replication scheduling, bandwidth throttling, and a new byte-level compression algorithm known as remote differential compression (RDC).
DFS Namespaces: Technology that helps your administrators group shared folders located on different servers and present them to users as a virtual tree of folders known as a namespace.
If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2 and want to keep folders synchronised, we recommend using DFS Replication instead of FRS. DFS Replication system in Windows Server 2008 R2 has many benefits over File Replication Service (FRS), including improved management tools, higher performance, and delegated management.
- Effective WAN network usage: Only changes made to a file need to be transmitted over the WAN, thanks to the remote differential compression (RDC) algorithm, which serves as the basis for DFS Replication
- Potential to eliminate backup processes at the branch office: With an efficient, wide area network (WAN)–friendly way to collect content for the corporate central office, DFS Replication makes it possible to eliminate the local backup at the branch and rely on daily backup from the corporate office
- High availability: A namespace offers a simple way to redirect users to other servers that contain required data when their primary server is down, helping to achieve a higher level of server availability. You can use DFS Replication to synchronize data on all servers that host a particular folder in the namespace. As a result, no matter which folder the user connects to, the user sees the same data
- Ease of data access with namespace virtualisation: A namespace offers uniform access across multiple file servers, making it easier for users to ‘remember’ their server names and easily access their data
- Ease of publishing content to branch locations from the central office: DFS Replication makes it is easy to distribute core content in the corporate central office to all remote offices
- Local access for users without going across the WAN: With content easily publishable to local servers that are part of a namespace, users in branch offices can access their data locally. If a server malfunctions, the namespace automatically refers clients to the next closest server
- Easier management of data and server locations: Your IT administrators benefit from a new, easy-to-use Microsoft Management Console snap-in called DFS Management. This snap-in greatly simplifies the management of DFS Replication and DFS Namespaces
- Large-scale deployments: DFS Replication is a scalable, reliable, multimaster replicator that can scale to several thousand nodes and arbitrary topologies because it stores its configuration in Active Directory. You can achieve large fan-out deployments by using hub-and-spoke topologies
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