Siemens PLM Software provides Product Lifecycle Management software. As a
company it has a huge development team spread around the globe that develops
various PLM products. Most of the software being developed involves the
participation of more than 2-5 development offices spread geographically within
a country or sites between countries. Prior to in-house built DFS (Distributed
File System), software distribution across sites was a big challenge, as all
sites had non uniform, & non-integrated methods of data & software distribution
primarily using ancient methods of xcopy, robocopy etc. This implementation has
provided extreme flexibility in managing all shared data repositories with
extended uptime, inspite of sudden failures or problems. DFS is an enhancement
to the earlier File Replication Service (FRS) offered by Windows. It helps in
provisioning locally or remotely stored data to clients with unique namespace
conventions through which data can be accessed with common access information
anywhere irrespective of from where the data is being requested.