You are an Enterprise administrator for contoso.com. The company consists of a head office and a branch office. The corporate network of the company consists of a single Active Directory domain, which run at the functional level of Windows Server 2008. All the servers on the network run Windows Server 2008 and all client computers run Windows Vista.
You have been asked to design a file sharing strategy that ensures that the users in both the offices must be able to access the same files using the same Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to access the files.
The users must be able to access files even if a server fails. While designing your file sharing strategy, you need to take care you’re your design must reduce the amount of bandwidth used to access files.
To start with you deployed file servers on the network. Which of the following options would you choose next to accomplish this task?
A.
Domain-based DFS namespace using replication
B.
Stand-alone DFS namespace using replication
C.
Multi-site failover cluster having two servers, one located in the head office and another in the branch office
D.
Network Load Balancing cluster having two servers, one located in the head office and another in the branch office.
E.
None of the above
Explanation:
To design a file sharing strategy that meets the given requirements, you need to configure a domain-based DFS namespace that uses replication.
The domain based namespaces require all servers to be members of an Active Directory domain. This environment support automatic synchronization of DFS targets.
The domain-based DFS enables multiple replications that provides you with a degree of scalability. Rather than having every user in your organization access their files from the same server, you can distribute the user workload across multiple DFS replicas rather than over burdening a single server. This ensures that the users in both the offices must be able to access the same files using the same Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to access the files in reduced bandwidth.
Another reason for having multiple DFS replicas is because doing so provides you with a degree of fault tolerance.DFS can also provide fault tolerance from the standpoint of protecting you against network link failures.The fault tolerance ensures that users are able to access files even if a server fails.