Install File Services Content Servers

Applies to: Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016

To deploy content servers that are running the File Services server role, you must install the BranchCache for network files role service of the File Services server role. In addition, you must enable BranchCache on file shares according to your requirements.

During the configuration of the content server, you can allow BranchCache publication of content for all file shares or you can select a subset of file shares to publish.

Note

When you deploy a BranchCache enabled file server or Web server as a content server, content information is now calculated offline, well before a BranchCache client requests a file. Because of this improvement, you do not need to configure hash publication for content servers, as you did in the previous version of BranchCache.

This automatic hash generation provides faster performance and more bandwidth savings, because content information is ready for the first client that requests the content, and calculations have already been performed.

See the following topics to deploy content servers.