Windows Server

MCScrapE · Guest

I have been attempting to setup DFS but have a couple of issues and
questions. I have the root of course. The root has root targets.
Under the root share I have Links
for each location (including the local one)and each of the links has
a target.

So my thinking goes like this. Each site has a server with a share for
that location's employees. I want each site to be able to see the
shares from the other sites in a single share. Thus, I enable a DFS
domain root on the server at the Hub site and call the root name Files.
I select the folder to share and Finish. By default that share is the
first Root Target.

Now I add links to pull in shares from the Remote sites and the one
from the Hub site. I first create a link to the Hub site with a share
on the same server as the root and naturally creates a Target. I then
go through the same process with each Remote site such that there is a
link for each Remote site with a target. The shares for each of the
targets are shared with their respective Site name (ex.
\\site2server\site2). Each of the target shares I have enabled the
Share and Security permissions with Full for Domain Admins and System
and Change for Domain Users.

What I want to happen at this point but I don't think is how DFS works
is to have all the data in the Link Targets replicate to the existing
Root Share. The problem I have at this point is that a user machine
can map a network drive to the root share and see all the site folders
but can only see the contents of the local folder. This leads me to
believe that the Link Targets are not acutually replicating but simply
redirecting me across the WAN to that site's server which ACLs prevent.

So my first issue is how to get the Link Targets to replicate to the
Root Share if possible. I then subsequently want to create Root
Shares at each of the Remote Sites and have the Hub Root share
replicate to the Remote Root shares. There are two goals out of this
setup. One, have all data from all sites be replicated to each server
such that when a user connects to a local Root Share all the files of
the local Root Share are on that server. I don't want users to have to
connect across the WAN to get to files. Two, only the Hub site server
gets backed up so when each of the Remote site servers replicate to the
Hub server, I am thus backing up the critical data for each site.

The volume of data is not all that great so I am not worried about that
and can schedule replication to happen before the nightly backups kick
off if need be. I think I am missing a key component here but am
drawing blanks. Thank you in advance for any feedback or suggestions.

Paul Williams [MVP] · Guest

Getting all of the remote shares to replicate into the central one is going
to be tough unless you have 2003 in which case you can choose the direction
of the replication. What I would do is create a new folder on the remote
sites and share those and make the links point to those. I would then copy
all of the data from the remote sites into the central folder and then
enable replication. This way all of the remote sites will pull the data
from the 'root' server.

The way you are doing it is going to mean that one folder will be morphed
and only the data on the upstream server is going to come down.

Hope that makes sense, I've been posting for over an hour and am starting to
see two screens!

--
Paul Williams
Microsoft MVP - Windows Server - Directory Services
http://www.msresource.net | http://forums.msresource.net

	Windows Server Forum Index -> DFS and FRS	All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1