Is the File Server Dead?

SharePointKicks.com — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:20:28 GMT

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re: Is the File Server Dead?

Bob Mixon — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 06:05:48 GMT

Nice post Joel and much more detail than I went into last week.

Moving Files from the File Server.

http://www.sharesquared.com/blogs/bobmixon/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=36

Bob Mixon

Microsoft SharePoint MVP

http://www.ShareSquared.com

re: Is the File Server Dead?

alspeirs — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 06:27:27 GMT

Cleaning up a fileshare is like an archeological dig, the purpose of a lot of documents are lost in the depths of time :)

A danger is that teams will try to create a identical folder structure in the sharepoint document library. I think it is important to stress the benefits of tagging content while this migration is going on too.

re: Is the File Server Dead?

Luke — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:54:37 GMT

In my view a fundamental problem that needs to be solved before WSS can replace SMB as the preferred collaborative file store is to support the existing access metaphor that most users are familiar with and that techies use to manage access to files.

The metaphor of drive letters that users have been working with for at least 20 years can not reasonably be emulated with WSS. As a simple test to prove this try doing a net use to a WSS document library and xcopy /s/e a local folder to it – in most cases it will just break xcopy no engineer that I know will use WSS for mapped drives until something as simple as a file copy with an native Windows command line tool works reliably.

With a developers hat on it’s easy to understand the complexity of the problem in solving this (SMB is so much richer than WebDAV) but users simply don’t care about the nuts and bolts and will resist change unless there is a some benefit that they can see.

Over the years (since DOS / MSNet, thru NetWare, Lan Manager, NT, W2K, W2K3) infrastructure engineers have tried to find a better solution than drive letters. We all know 26 simply isn’t enough and have wasted plenty of time trying to come up with strategies for assigning them.

DNS abstraction of shared file services service (rather than server) names and UNC paths was one such glimmer of hope in NT4 days but the redirector didn’t play well all the time.

DFS (the NT 4.0 option pack flavour or W2K) also offered a possible solution but this created a whole new bunch of problems (W2K version needed FQDN which kind of breaks the abstraction model) and didn’t fully support new server services (e.g. offline files).

Sharing public folders via the BackOffice IFS namespace (Exchange 2000 M: drive) was another possible that didn’t quite do it.

W2K with IIS WebDAV and the Windows XP WebDAV redirector was then next thing I remember trying but that didn’t work very well.

In short for WSS to replace SMB as the default choice for sharing files it must support mapping drive letters reliably. Then the process of weaning users onto the new interfaces can start and one day we will be able to kill off drive mappings.