Instead of installing the full set of QMF for Windows files on each machine, you can instead install them once on a central file server, and configure other machines to run QMF for Windows using those shared files.
The primary advantage to using a file server installation is that is makes it easier to maintain QMF for Windows for a large number of end users. With a full installation, if you need to apply a DB2 QMF for Windows fix pack, you must run the fix pack installation wizard to apply the fix pack to every machine. With a file server installation, you only need to apply the fix pack one time. Note that even with a file server installation, the initial installation wizard must be run on each machine (as described below); it is only when applying fix packs that it needs to be run only one time.
There are three steps to performing file server installations: installing on the file server, preparing for client installations, and installing on clients.