Most admins have seen the “Hey Dummy” message when setting up a Group Policy for software installation.  You know, it asks for the path to the .msi, and without thinking you point it at a local drive.

You very quickly recover, and find a UNC path to point it to.  You choose \\server14\installs.  Your network share is configured properly and that brand new installation of Office begins its deployment to your 5000 workstations. 

After about 6 months, your department decides to retire a few servers.  One of them is providing file services, including the install point for Office, and a dozen other products you are now installing since Office went so well.  In fact it went so well that you now have underlings to boss around.  You assign one of them to move the install points for these products.  You now have a bigger, faster server that can handle a much bigger load, and think that he should have this finished by lunch.  Several hours later, he comes back flustered, and tells you that he can’t figure out where to change the Group Policy.  You calmly explain to him that it is very easy, and try to show him.  What’s this?  The kid is right….  Well after the day is supposed to be over, you find that the only way to change the UNC path is to blow away the package and recreate it.  Every single computer on the network uninstalls the package from the previous location and installs it from the new one.  The network bogs down, the computers take forever to boot, and after some reshuffling in your department, that underling is your boss.

To future-proof Group Policy software installs, use a DFS share as your distribution point.  Instead of pointing the policy at \\server14\installs, point it at \\yourdomain.com\installs.  You can put the distribution point on one server, DFS replication can move it to several more, and it will reduce the load by spreading it across multiple servers.  More importantly, if you need to retire servers, you can pull them out of DFS, and you won’t need to recreate your policies.  Even if you just need one server to host the install points, use DFS with only one target.  This will greatly simplify moving it in the future.

For more information about setting up Group Policy software installs, see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314934/

For more information about setting up a DFS namespace, see
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/howto/dfsguide.mspx