Is it correct to use a separate server for DFS role?

Question

System administration

I want to understand how it would be correct to use a separate hardware (or virtual machine) for the DFS role?
Let's say there is a server for a file role. Over time, more pieces of iron will be bought in order to avoid confusion among users and links to folders do not break, it is planned to immediately raise DFS. Yes, you can immediately raise DFS on the first server, but then the risks of failure of the entire scheme increase when the first server with files that had the DFS role falls. The following questions follow from here:
1. Whether it will be correct to allocate a separate system under a role of DFS where there will be only DFS?
2. Is it possible to do this on a simple virtual machine? Or will the main load go to this server?
3. Will the DFS server act as an intermediary in file transfer (ie all files will be pulled through it)? Or will it just be like a kind of dns server for file links, and it will simply forward requests to the necessary servers and the files will load the network interface of the already specified server?

Answer 1

You didn't quite understand DFS-R/N. DFS itself doesn't exist (since server 2008, before that it was one role, maybe the old articles confused you a bit). There are 2 separate roles DFS-R (replication) and DFS-N (namespaces). Both of them are already present on your network, as soon as you raised the domain controller, and they sync and provide access to the SYSVOL and NETLOGON folders.
You need to decide where and what roles you want to move - under namespaces (DFS-N) we mean roles that configure access to shares, i.e. user links are configured. In your description, these are "relays", the client goes to them for a link, and they redirect to a specific share that is hosted anywhere on the network (not necessarily on a replica - a replica is needed for fault tolerance, no more). And replicas (DFS-R) are, respectively, servers that sync the balls configured for this business with other replicas included in the same replication group for the desired folder.
These roles can be combined, or spread across different servers as you wish. Namespaces can also be used by the domain controllers themselves, and under the replicas, file wasomers can already be allocated. If you don’t have thousands of users constantly working with shared docks and roaming the balls, then there won’t be much load from namespaces, and I wouldn’t give a separate server for this business - dear.) You can also give namespaces to the replicas themselves, they are there as well they won’t interfere much, you’ll just lose 2 roles at once in which case.

Answer 2

The role of DFS-N is perfectly combined with DC, DNS, DHCP. It makes no sense to allocate a separate server for it. DFS-R should be installed on FS servers.