MCITP: Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise Administrator, Study Guide

8.2. Introducing the Distributed File System

The purpose behind the distributed file system (DFS) can be summed up into two words: simplification and consolidation. Before the days of DFS, administrators constantly ran into problems where data would be spread across the network infrastructure and its location would be difficult to describe to users. You'd hear stuff like this: "To access the videos, you can look on Server 1; the audio files, however, are on Server 2, and the stripped images for the video are on Server 3."

This became a big problem. The solution that Microsoft created for it was DFS. In effect, DFS takes multiple files and replicates them across the network based on their path. Using Windows Server 2008, Windows Server machines ...