DFS Windows 2003/Windows 2008

May 13, 2008

We are planning on implementing DFS to our organization this year and next.

We are currently using DFS now, but very limited. We want to expand this for

userdata (Desktop/My Documents folder redirection) as well as some of our

other shared folders. Our current environment is a Windows 2003 R2 domain

with 5 Windows 2003 R2 DFS Namespace servers.

In reading some of the limitations online I’m reading that if you use a

domain-based namespace, which is how we are setup today, then we are limited

to 5000 target folders. Our plan is to bring in Windows 2008 and slowly

replace our file servers at which point we will enable DFS. We don’t have

plans on upgrading our Domain Controllers until later next year to Windows

2008. I want to make sure that we don’t run into a size limitation on the

amount of folders or size of the namespace.

Can we have a mixed DFS environment running both Windows 2003 R2 and Windows

2008 Enterprise? Do we need to upgrade our Domain first to 2008? What are

our options so we don’t hit the 5000 limitations?

1. Can we have a mixed DFS environment running both Windows 2003 and Windows

2008?

2. Do we need a 2008 Domain controller first?

3. What are our options so we don’t hit the 5000 limitations

4. Scenario: We want a DFS name space called company.com\userdata$ and link

that to all file servers both local and remote. Change our current folder

redirection GPO’s to new DFS paths. This is for both desktop and My

Documents. What happens when a user in location A travels to location B will

they get there folder redirection? Also same scenario, but with department

files using company.com\deptfiles. This won’t be redirected.

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