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After looking at How to Configure Windows Machine to Allow File Sharing with DNS Alias I was trying to understand if there was a way you could actually alias the shares directly rather than just the server

We have currently got 1 server hosting a number of shares that we will ultimately distribute to different servers and our shares will just update, but was hoping that instead of needing to enter the share name. Because presently if a user goes to the \PHYSICALSERVER\ they still see all the other shares that are available, because they are really just an alias of the other server.


\\AliasNameShare1\ -- Which is aliased to \\PHYSICALSERVER\Share1 via a CNAME record in DNS.

Is this possible?

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You should look into DFS to do this properly. –  Dan Apr 19 '13 at 11:12
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You can't do \\Share1 and \\Share2 but you can use DFS Namespaces to get a functionally equivalent situation. You could have:


And all of these shares can reside on different servers. Windows Server 2008 and later allow for access-based enumeration on DFS Namespaces, meaning that users can only see shares in a namespace that they have access to.

DFS Namespaces are the standard answer to your type of problem.

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Paul, After 12 years of Windows experience, i dont think it is possible. unless you spin up a linux box with SMB share, this allows you to redirect CIFS shares to any other share.

DNS alias wont work in this case since you want to access it in "\aliasname" format. Windows DFS feature wont work either.

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i thought as much, and thanks for clarifying –  Paul Farry Apr 22 '13 at 0:51
Can you clarify why you don't think that DFSN isn't a good solution here? –  MDMarra Apr 22 '13 at 2:49
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