I've just started working on a 2012 server , it has been a while the last time I worked with clustering I think it was 2003 ! In those days you might set up a cluster ( simple active-passive) create a cluster name with its own ip address separate from the nodes. As I recall you could then created a clustered file share and users would access it using the cluster name as the server name in the share , nice and simple ( or maybe I'm misremembering ). Now it seems we create a cluster name , as before , but we also add a file server role and it has its own virtual name and ip address which is separate from the physical nodes and the clustername/ip.
I'm not really seeing the point in this , would it not make sense to add a file server role but hook it to the clustername ? What , in simple terms are we getting out of creating another virtual name and ip just for the role??