What dfs for the domain to put?

Question

Debian

Hello. To be honest, I'm too lazy to read about all dfs, analyze and disassemble. For this reason, I ask you not to swear much, this is the first time I do this :)
And the question is this. There is an enterprise network on a windows 2003 domain. There are 3 servers on the network with MSWS 2008 r2 and debian for mail and apache. And over 200 slave seats. I want to make dfs so that files are stored not only on servers, but also on slave stations. with replication. But to network drive (ball) was a single space. As I see it. The user enters the server, sees the share park, enters, and so a bunch of folders from all departments. And it just works. But in fact, the information is stored distributed. He takes 200 mb from one machine, another ter from another, 500 from the third, who has a suolko and so runs 10 ter. Plus, somewhere in the same network there are n more computers with which replication is configured for safety. As I understand it, dfs on ws will not help me, because. The disk space for replications must be the same as on the master, but in my case this is not possible.
P.s. Please do not advise to buy nas, more disks in the server, put everything in the cloud, etc. I want to solve the issue with dfs + practice in this direction.
Thanks

Answer 1

I think this idea is not viable.

Answer 2

Look towards openafs, coda and intermezo. Openafs is installed on Windows and not only - https://www.openafs.org/windows.html

Answer 3

As far as I understood from the description, you want to "cut" the place on client computers and make them some kind of distributed storage with a common entry point? It's unlikely out of the box. But you also want (if I understand correctly again) that the client simply sees the department folders in the shared folder, but the folders themselves are not located on the same server - I think this is possible. I'm not a big dfs specialist, but I did something similar for quick access of branches to a design base scattered across cities. You need to create a dfs-name, say "Documents", in it namespaces, say "Development Department", "Finance" and already in them define the final folders themselves for physical storage - these can be both servers and employees' PCs themselves ( regular shared folders). Without replication by default - then configure between servers / computers as you wish. For the client, it will look like this - by opening the folder "\\firma.ru\documents\finances" he actually and transparently opens the folder from the server/pc closest (with replication configured) to him. You can also attach branchcache here if the clients are not older than vista.
Besides - if I correctly understood the task.