Microsoft Windows NT Server White Paper
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will refer the client to multiple servers for the same path. For example, on a Dfs
server, the administrator has defined that users connecting to the UNC path
\\Dfsserver\Dfsshare\Customfolder, will be returned a response with three dif-
ferent servers, \\Server1\Customerfolder, \\Server2\Customerfolder, and
\\Server3\Customerfolder, all of which contain the same data. The client ma-
chine, which can be either a Windows NT-based 4.0 machine or a
Windows 95-based machine with the Dfs client software, randomly selects one
of these servers and uses that path to generate the custom shared folders for
the user. If one of the servers is unavailable, the client has the other two serv-
ers to select from. Note that the the Dfs host server must be running for this
fault tolerant structure to work. (Although Dfs software currently supports a
single host server, Microsoft is developing a fault-tolerant version of Dfs for a
future release of Windows NT.)
For more information on the Dfs server and client components, see
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/info/distributedfilesystem.htm.