DFS (Distributed File System) - is a component of Microsoft Windows and runs on Windows 2000 or 2003 servers. Its a powerful feature but like everything else with Microsoft, they provide very basic tools to manage or implement it. Using DFS by itself was a disaster for us. VFM from Netapp - Provides an excellent wrapper around Microsoft's DFS, and provides lots of additional features. You can compare DFM - VFM to ntbackup - Netbackup from Veritas. Both DFS and ntbackup (builtin windows utilities) provides rudimentary features with hard to use GUI. Just enough to get you started. Whereas VFM and Netbackup provides a much better GUI and tons of other value adds. Hope you get the picture.

We have been using DFS/VFM for almost 2 years and are very very happy wiith it. -G PS: Am just an end user and not affiliated to any of the vendors mentioned :)

On 4/28/05, Charles Bartels Charles.Bartels@tradebeam.com wrote:

Hi,

My company currently has a couple of Netapps in the office along with a couple of Dell PC file servers.

The windows admins would like to implement DFS. I don't really know what that is, but it sounded kind of like the Netapp VFM (Virtual File Manager).

Could someone give me a short explanation of the two systems? Ideally I would like to consolidate our file servers onto the Netapps or at least avoid having to add unnecessary windows boxes. (These DFS servers sounded unnecessary to me, but if they are needed I wouldn't have a problem).

Thanks.

-C.