Greetings, I'm Professor Kay and in this short video presentation, we're going to see how we go about configuring a distributed file system using Windows Server. The distributed file system allows you to set up Shared Folders deployed on different servers into one or more logically structured namespaces. Each namespace will appear to users as a single shared folder with a series of sub folders. This lab demonstration I will be using server 2016. But the same procedure works on either server 2012 or server 2019. Additionally, for this lab, I will be using two of my domain controllers DC one and DC two.

The first install of DFS is going to be conducted on my DC one My primary domain controller for my domain. Now I can go up here to manage and click on Add Roles and Features or I can launch the Add Roles and Features wizard using the dashboard of my Server Manager. Either one, we can go ahead and skip this first window. Say Next, we're going to use the role based or feature based installation say Next, we're going to ensure that we have DC one selected, we're going to say next, we're going to open up our file and storage services. We're now going to expand file and I scuzzy services. And down here, we're going to select two of the rolls.

First is the DFS namespace. We're going to add those features, and then we're going to check the box for DFS replication. We're going to go ahead and click on Next. And we're going to click Next. And now we're going to go ahead and commit by clicking on install. While DFS has been installed on my DC one, let's move on over to my DC two And we're going to do the same thing.

I'm now on my DC two. And I'm not going to install the same two roles as I did on my DC one. So let's begin by launching the Add Roles and Features wizard. We're going to go ahead and skip this window. And we're going to accept the default for role based or feature based installation say Next, we're going to make sure that we are installing this on DC two going click Next. We're now going to expand file and storage services.

And we're going to expand file and I scuzzy services. Again, I'm going to check the box for DFS namespaces. I'm going to go ahead and add the features. I'm going to check the box for DFS replication. And now I'm going to click Next. I'm going to click Next, I'm going to accept the changes I have committed.

And I'm now going to click on Install and we will return over to DC one. DC one has completed the installation of the roll for DFS. I can go ahead now and close out my Server Manager Now I'm going to open up File Explorer, I'm going to go into the C drive here, I'm going to create a folder called data. I'm going to share this folder out, right click, I'm going to go to properties. I'm going to go to sharing, click on Advanced sharing, check the box to share this folder. And I'm going to go to permissions.

And I'm going to give everyone full control. Say apply, say, OK, say OK to this, say close. Now I'm going to right click go back into properties. I'm going to go into the Security tab. And I'm now going to add the domain users. So I'm going to click on Edit.

I'm gonna click Add from here, I'm going to type in domain users. I'm going to search and say OK, to that. I'm going to make sure my domain users are selected. I'm going to give them full control. I'm going to say Apply, say OK, and then say, OK, close that out. I'm not going to return over to my other domain controller Dc.

And I'm going to do the same thing. We can close this out, I'm going to close out Server Manager, we're going to go into File Explorer on my second domain controller, I'm gonna click on this PC, open up my C drive, right click, new folder, call this folder data, right click, go to properties. And let's go to sharing, advanced sharing. Click the box to share this folder and go to permissions. Give everyone full control. So you apply, say, OK, say OK to that.

Now, I'm gonna go up here to the Security tab, I'm going to go to Edit. I'm going to add domain users check names. I'm not going to say OK to this, make sure my domain users are selected, give them full control, say Apply, say OK, so close. We're now ready to return back over to our DC one. So I'm gonna go back on over here to DC one and we're going to bring up my Server Manager one more time. And we're going to go to Tools.

And we're going to go to DFS management. We're going to begin by creating a new namespace. Then later on, you'll see how we come back. And we're actually going to use that replication role to configure replication of any changes that happen to any folder inside of my DFS namespace. So let's go ahead and begin by right clicking on namespace. Let's go to new namespace.

And we're going to browse. And over here, I'm just going to type in VC one. We'll check my name. Say ok to that. Now we can say now, I'm going to call my namespace DFS. And now we're going to click on Edit.

Now these settings here are going to be for their permissions, and we're going to allow individuals to have access to DFS. Prior to that we configured the permissions for the data folder, but now Now we have to grant people access to DFS. So for this demonstration, we're going to use custom permissions. I'm going to go to Customize. Here, we're going to select everyone. And again, we're going to give them full control.

And we're going to say OK to that. And now we're going to click on Next. For this lab, we are configuring DFS for a domain environment. But we could also use DFS in a non domain environment. If that was the case. Then we would select this option right here for a standalone namespace.

But we are using it in a domain environment. So this is going to be our namespace us cyber offense.com for slash DFS, that is our namespace, or anything Click Next to this. Now we can review all our settings we can confirm everything is the way we want it and we can say create. We are given a green checkmark that's no that's it commands completed successfully. We have configured our namespace Go ahead, close that out, we can now test out to see if our namespace is actually working by opening up File Explorer. And we're just going to type in the network path for our namespace.

And if I hit Enter, we come up and there's nothing in this window. And that's the way it should be. Because we are not assigned any folders to our DFS namespace. And that's what we're going to do next. We now need to add our folders to our new namespace. And to do this, we're just going to go up to our new namespace, we're going to right click, click on folder.

Here, we're going to type in the name of the folder. We created this earlier, it was called data. We're going to click on Add. And we're going to type in DC one. And we're going to click Browse. And we're in Click OK to that.

And we're going to say OK, to that, and now we're going to click add one more time. And this time, we're going to type in DC two, and we're going to click Browse. And there's our other data folder. And we're going to click OK to that. We're going to click OK to that. And now we're going to click ok one last time.

And now it says the replication group can be used to synchronize the folder targets of the folder you have just created. Do you want to create a replication group while we're going to go ahead and say yes to that, when we said yes, that's going to launch the replicate folder wizard. And we're going to go ahead and accept the defaults here. We're going to go ahead and click Next, we're going to go ahead and click Next to this. And the primary member server is the one that's going to trigger the replication. And this is going to be our DC one.

We're going to click Next to that. And we're going to use the full mesh topology. The full mesh topology is going to allow this server to communicate with our second server and replicate changes between them. Now if we had a third server, we could use a hub and spoke. So let's go ahead and click next here. So on this next screen, we're going to have to select replicate continuously using the specified bandwidth.

Now if you have a slow network connection between two sites, then you can pull this down, you can select how much of that bandwidth you want to use. And you can also select to replicate during specific days and times. For instance, you may want to just schedule replication to happen during non business hours. And you can do that as well cancel this. And we're going to select replicate continuously using the specified bandwidth. We're going to say next.

And now we're going to confirm our changes. And we're going to click on Create. And it comes back saying everything was successful, we can go ahead and close out this window. And we can go ahead and check this box. This is just a message letting us know that it won't take effect. The amount of time it takes depends on Active Directory Domain Services, replication latency, and we're going to say OK to that, now underneath replication here, you can go down to our new namespace and you'll see that we have To servers configured to replicate between the two data folders.

And this replication is also part of the Active Directory now. So this over here you don't want to play with, leave this alone. And this is what you're concerned with right here. So to test to see if our replication and to see if our new namespaces actually working, we can go up, and we can do that same test again, up inside of my file explorer. And when I did was, I just typed in backslash, backslash, the name of my new namespace. And now we see that the data folder is present.

Now to further confirm this, we can open up our data folder, we can right click and go to new, and we can create a new text document. And we can just call this test. Now when replication occurs, this test document will now appear over on my DC too, so we can bring up BC to click on my dashboard is bring up my file explorer here. And we're going to do the same thing, we're going to type in the name of my namespace. And when I hit Enter, we see we have the data folder. Now if the replication occurred between DC one and DC two, that test document will appear and it does.

Now, for everyone in the domain to have access to our DFS namespace, we have to configure them to use a map drive. Now that everyone needs to have access to our DFS namespace, easiest way to do this is to use Group Policy and push out a map drive to everyone in the domain. To create this group policy, we're going to go up to tools are scrolling down to Group Policy Management. Open that up real quick. Now, I like to use the default domain policy since this is going to affect everyone in the domain. This keeps everything centrally located, and it keeps the number of group policies that I'm pushing out to a minimum.

So instead of having a separate group policy, just for this map drive, we can use the The default domain policy. If this DFS namespace was designed just for a special group of individuals, I would put those individuals into their own container. And then I would create a new Group Policy Object and link it to that container just so they would have access to the DFS share. But in this case, everybody in the domain is going to have access to the DFS share, and I want it to appear as a map drive on everyone's machine. So let's go ahead and see how we're going to do that. We're going to begin by right clicking on my default domain policy selecting Edit.

Inside the editor, we're going to go to user configuration, we're going to click on preferences, expand windows settings. Once I'm up inside of the editor, for this group policy, I'm going to go to map drive and right click and select new map drive. And I'm going to choose hold down this first window we're going to say create. Now the location is going to be my namespace, so I have to type that in completely. So we're going to type in backslash, backslash us. Cyber offense, comm backslash DFS, and we're going to label this as DFS share, just like that, only I'm going to spell shared as it should be spelled.

And now we're going to pull down a drive letter that we want to use. For this demonstration, we can use any of these drive letters, but I'm going to use G. And I'm going to say show this drive. And I'm going to select Show All drives. Alright, so now we have the path for my share that I want to make a map drive up on everyone's machine. Alright, so let's go ahead and say apply that. Let's just say OK to that.

And you'll see that I have it now created so we can close out this editor. I can close out the Group Policy Management Console, and we're going to bring up File Explorer and here, we're going to go into This PC. And you'll see that I don't see the map drive yet. But we can force it to appear sooner if we go ahead and force the group policy to update. And to do this, I'm just going to go to my search engine here. And I'm going to type in cmd.

And I'm going to type in GP update. Now I'm going to type in for slash, and of course, just like that, and I'm gonna hit Enter. And in just a moment, the group policy for the domain will update both the Computer Configuration and the user settings. And once it does, you'll see that the map drive that we just created does appear. So using Group Policy, I have been able to push out this map drive from my DFS share to everyone in the domain and we're going to confirm this by going over to my DC two, and we'll see if that share is present at that location. So as we see the group policy has not updated yet for this machine.

So if I want that DFS share to appear now I'm going to have to bring up command prompt. And again, we're going to have to do the GP update space forward slash force to make this happen. And just as before, once we launched this, the computer settings and the user settings that are up inside a group policy will be upgraded on this machine and will have that map drive available to it. Back in my file explorer, you can see that the group policy has updated and that chair for that DFS namespace is now available to the user on this machine. That's going to conclude this short video presentation on how we go about configuring Distributed File services on a Windows Server. Now if you have any questions or concerns about any of the material that was shown to you in this video or in the lab, please do not hesitate to reach out contact your instructor and I'll see you in my next video.