dfs

[terry712]

any dfs boffins around
had a quick read of the bumpf that it resolves through netbios unless you have registry hack in for dns.

so here's the query
the dfs is a hub and spoke (think thats what its called) and it syncs a pac directory around 5 servers on different sites)

so this appears as \\scotland\pac (scotland being our domain name)

if you ping scotland then it will return the domain controllers address on whichever site you are on

so netbios wise how does it return the server that hosts the dfs share ?

this is causing us a problem - i just curious to how it works

 

[TheMisio]

terry712,

It doesn't. DFS uses DNS to resolve namespace.
The confusing part here is that DFS link points to a share, but does not have to be named the same. Take this example: there is a shared folder named share1 on server1 in domain.net. You can create a DFS link called Private\Important_Files that points to that share (Where Private is the ROOT).

Full domain DFS path would be \\domain.net\Private\Important_Files. This will be resolved using DNS. However, nothing stops you from navigating to \\server1\\share1 which is the same folder but it will use NETBIOS to get to it.

It is the Domain Controller that will redirect you to a DFS ROOT server, which will point you to a location of the share.

Hope it helps a bit.

Regards

Michael