Windows Server 2003 Distributed File system features

Microsoft has made a lot of effort to drive their Windows storage technology. One of the most critical measures is the constant cost of spending on Windows Server 2003 and the development of new Distributed File System (DFS) features.

Distributed File System (DFS) is the cornerstone of Microsoft's storage strategy, which is reflected in their policy guide on the profile server (available on Microsoft's official website), which also includes further information on planning and implementing Distributed File System solutions.

The following describes some of the technical highlights of the new Distributed File System (DFS) feature and how they provide long-term benefits to users.

The 1th advantage is that new technologies support large namespaces. Under Windows 2000 systems, an administrator is limited to the maximum number of 10,000 connections that can be established under a single DFS root. In many small to medium sized installations, this does not pose a problem. (I did see a user setting up more than 5,000 connections under a single root.) However, under the Windows Server 2003 system, this limit is increased to 50000. Having such a large number of connections under a single DFS root has been tested and has shown acceptable performance.

The 2nd benefit is to increase the number of Dfs root that can be placed on the same server. Windows 2000 has a limit of one root for each server with an administrator, and Windows Server 2003 removes this restriction. Although the Standard Edition can only place one root on a single machine, the Enterprise and Datacenter Editions can place multiple root on one machine. This frees the administrator from buying 5 servers to accommodate 5 different root burdens. Of course, administrators must provide greater possibilities for multiple root placement by clustering or using domain-based root.

Distributed File System (DFS) now places more emphasis than ever. Typically, a DFS client chooses the target closest to itself based on his IP subnet and the IP subnet of the copy target. If the customer is in a location where there is no target, then the customer randomly chooses any one of the other destinations. For example, consider a customer in Houston, whose copy is in Houston, Dallas and New York. If the server in Houston is not available, then this customer has the same possibility to choose Dallas or New York to retrieve the data again. The new advantage of Windows Server 2003 is that customers can connect to destinations elsewhere based on the principle of the lowest connection cost, when local targets are not available.

Such features make the Distributed File System (DFS) on the Windows platform a viable foundation on which to build a long-term strategy for high utilization file servers.