If you simply make an alias in DNS from the new name to the old server name, the share request would be rejected unless you also added a registry hack that permits secondary names in NetBIOS.. Not every organization has/uses DFS, and I've worked in some very large (40+ regional data centers, 60K+ users) that did not employ DFS. We did have five deployment servers, though - one in each region of the country. Each synchronized certain folders with the master server depending on what was to be available to install in that region. This selective replication made DFS impractical.
Granted, the drive letter may not exist at all times, but a drive letter can be mapped to any UNC path before running an update. We generally don't permit dynamic update or "install on first use" crap - either it's there and installed, or someone from IT will install it so it's done in a controlled and defined manner.
I do agree about reboots - I always suppress the reboot and check the exit status to see if a reboot is needed. (That's tricky, as not all result codes are consistent for this.) Then I reboot under control of the install script, never the installed app. This lets the script log the result of the install before the reboot, among other things.
Glenn
_________________________
Actually I
am a Rocket Scientist!
