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I would like make a symbolic link in Windows (7 or 208 between 2 locations on a file server (Netapp):

mklink /D \server\share\some\link \server\share\some\target\path

Is this possible? I can't get it to work and the only examples I have found are created a link locally and targeting UNC location. That does work, but I need a link that to work for any number of computers that access this network share.

The error I get is "The Parameter is Incorrect"

If this is not possible, how does one replicate this functionality using some other method?

Ruben Perez
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  • Can you go into why you want a network share to become part of the local file system, I can think of a whole host or reasons why this is a really bad idea but maybe you have a reason worth dealing with those headaches – Jim B Dec 06 '11 at 03:02
  • Nevermind the comment I misread the question. – Jim B Dec 06 '11 at 03:10

2 Answers2

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On a NetApp you could use a CIFS widelink (which does a bit more than asked and is more flexible and the target can be on any UNC path) and acts like a DFS redirect to the client. See this NetApp blog about CIFS widelinks.

pfo
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  • Interesting (from that blog): "So widelinks expands on symlinks. Don't get too excited because at the moment 'mklink' from Windows 7/2008 isn't the same thing, and it won't work on NetApp share" ... We are migrating to an Isilon cluster very soon, I'm wondering if there's something like this under their operating system? – Ruben Perez Dec 06 '11 at 01:14
  • no on Isilon you don't have anything like that, but EMC will give you an appliance which you can put in your data path to transparently do something similar. I wonder anyone is getting Isilons now ;) – pfo Dec 06 '11 at 01:27
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If these are on the same server you could link both paths to the same directory then share that. You could also consider dfs to consolidate the netbios namespaces

Jim B
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