Single share across multiple locations Windows Server 2019

Question

I would like to create a share that appears to the user as a single share, however it is actually a combination of two separate targets.

I have a server with a D: drive that is backed up daily and is going to have recent projects, and the same server has a E: drive with older projects that are archived, read-only backed up to tape. There are several departments that have similar structures so I would like this to be more seamless than just creating shortcuts for all the folders. Also, there are cases as well where only specific files within a folder will be moved to the archive server, unknown to the user other than the read-only permissions.

Eg.
D:\Projects\2021\ActiveProject
D:\Projects\fileA.txt
E:\Projects\1999\ArchiveProject
E:\Projects\fileB.txt

My Share would look like this:
\\ServerA\Projects\
2021\
1999\
fileA.txt
fileB.txt

Basically the share would be a combination of the two locations.

I have tried a DFS namespace however it only shows shares from one of the two targets and not both...

Benjamin Hastings · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-22T20:43:44.493

The problem is that your are trying to present files from different folders in the same folder on a file share. Like so.

\\ServerA\Projects\
----fileA.txt at D:\Projects\
----fileB.txt at E:\Projects\

I don't see how this could be done. You can do this locally with symbolic links but I think these will not work remotely on the workstation that accesses the file share.

What you can do is present folders from different locations within the same folder on a file share. Like this

\\ServerA\Projects\
----2021 at D:\Projects\2021
----1999 at E:\Projects\1999

The solution with NTFS junctions would look like this:

Create a file share

\\ServerA\projects at D:\Projects

Create a junction in command prompt

mklink /J D:\Projects\1999 E:\Projects\1999

The solution with DFS would look like this:

Create file shares

\\ServerA\ProjectsRecent$ at D:\Projects
\\ServerA\ProjectsArchive$ at E:\Projects

I'm hiding these shares with $ as you don't want users to access them directly.

Create a namespace

\\yourdomain.local\projects

Within the namespace, create folders

\\yourdomain.local\projects\2021\ with folder target \\ServerA\ProjectsRecent$\2021
\\yourdomain.local\projects\1999\ with folder target \\ServerA\ProjectsArchive$\1999

Single share across multiple locations Windows Server 2019

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