DFS questions relating to SIS, VSS, Quotas and more

I will be deploying two servers at two different offices (80 Mbps dedicated
connectivity between offices). Both server builds are identical (Dell head
servers and DAS enclosures) and will be installed with "Storage Server 2003
R2 SP2 64-bit". These will be used purely for storing user folders (~1500
users) which will be configured in Active Directory (Home Folder drive
letter) for each user. The directory structure on the server will be simple:

E:\USERS\username\ (USERS will be the shared folder with each username
restricted by NTFS so only the user, SYSTEM and administrator accounts have
access to his/her own folder).

The plan is for "Server_A" to be the main server and "Server_B" to be the
backup server in the event of a primary failure. We plan to use the updated
DFS included with R2 to replicate the Users folder data to Server_B. In the
event of a failure users would fail over to Server_B (using DFS namespaces).

Some questions I hope you folks may be able to answer for me regarding
DFS-R:

1) Are there any issues with using VSS and DFS together? Will the VSS data
be replicated across to "Server_B" as well and would VSS need to be enabled
on this server also?

2) Is it possible to use Single Instance Storage (SIS -natively available in
Storage Server 2003 R2) with DFS? If it does the common store (in the root
dir) need to get replicated across or do you simply enable SIS on the second
server as well?

3) Would it be better to configure DFS to replicate the "Users" folder or
the actual root drive "E:\" as it will only be used for the users folders?

4) Do the NTFS and share settings get replicated across also (I assume so)?

5) I will be implementing quotas on the user folders using the "File Server
Resource Manager" in R2. How would these Quotas be affected with DFS at the
target server? Would they get carried over or would they need to be manually
set on Server_B?

6) All clients will be Windows XP SP2, so is it recommended to use the
"Client failback" hotfix [WindowsXP-KB898900-v2-x86-ENU.exe
(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=53202)] so that user computers can
revert back to the original server once it is back online?

7) In the event that Server_A is down and users are accessing and editing
their files on Server_B, what happens when Server_A comes back online and
clients revert back to it? The files they have edited on Server_B would not
be available on Server_A since it was down when the files were changed My
initial plan was for DFS to replicate one way, from Server_A to Server_B but
taking this situation into consideration I realize this strategy is not
sufficent. What is the recommended way to implement DFS Replication in this
case?

8) If I add Server_A and Server_B to the same namespace, can I ensure that
users only go to "Server_A" to access files (given that it is up and
available)?

*note: our DCs are running Server 2003 SP1but I made the necessary AD schema
update (adprep.exe /forestprep) to support the update R2 version of DFS

Appreciate any feedback or advice that any of you may be able to offer on
the above questions. Thanks very much.

1) VSS data will only affect the current server you are connected to. However as the data are synced, VSS will pick this up at
both servers.
2) dunno
3) I would recommend to sync using folders. E.g. E:\DFS\Users
4) NTFS settings are replicated. Shares are generated during setup of DFS Management (Use wizard) and is a one-time job. Future
Shares needs to be implemented manually on both servers (as far as I know)
5) dunno
6) I think I would recommend a logoff/logon if it's a home folder, since home folders are handled specially in Windows. They are
mounted as homedir and can sometimes be locked by system files, thus it can be impossible to unmount and remount on-the-fly.
7) DFS replication should be both ways.
8) You should only publish the replication group name for BOTH servers. The Windows DFS client will automatically choose the
closest server.

--
-- HAL07, Engineering Services, Norway

Barkley Bees wrote:
> I will be deploying two servers at two different offices (80 Mbps dedicated
> connectivity between offices). Both server builds are identical (Dell head
> servers and DAS enclosures) and will be installed with "Storage Server 2003
> R2 SP2 64-bit". These will be used purely for storing user folders (~1500
> users) which will be configured in Active Directory (Home Folder drive
> letter) for each user. The directory structure on the server will be simple:
>
> E:\USERS\username\ (USERS will be the shared folder with each username
> restricted by NTFS so only the user, SYSTEM and administrator accounts have
> access to his/her own folder).
>
> The plan is for "Server_A" to be the main server and "Server_B" to be the
> backup server in the event of a primary failure. We plan to use the updated
> DFS included with R2 to replicate the Users folder data to Server_B. In the
> event of a failure users would fail over to Server_B (using DFS namespaces).
>
> Some questions I hope you folks may be able to answer for me regarding
> DFS-R:
>
> 1) Are there any issues with using VSS and DFS together? Will the VSS data
> be replicated across to "Server_B" as well and would VSS need to be enabled
> on this server also?
>
> 2) Is it possible to use Single Instance Storage (SIS -natively available in
> Storage Server 2003 R2) with DFS? If it does the common store (in the root
> dir) need to get replicated across or do you simply enable SIS on the second
> server as well?
>
> 3) Would it be better to configure DFS to replicate the "Users" folder or
> the actual root drive "E:\" as it will only be used for the users folders?
>
> 4) Do the NTFS and share settings get replicated across also (I assume so)?
>
> 5) I will be implementing quotas on the user folders using the "File Server
> Resource Manager" in R2. How would these Quotas be affected with DFS at the
> target server? Would they get carried over or would they need to be manually
> set on Server_B?
>
> 6) All clients will be Windows XP SP2, so is it recommended to use the
> "Client failback" hotfix [WindowsXP-KB898900-v2-x86-ENU.exe
> (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=53202)] so that user computers can
> revert back to the original server once it is back online?
>
> 7) In the event that Server_A is down and users are accessing and editing
> their files on Server_B, what happens when Server_A comes back online and
> clients revert back to it? The files they have edited on Server_B would not
> be available on Server_A since it was down when the files were changed My
> initial plan was for DFS to replicate one way, from Server_A to Server_B but
> taking this situation into consideration I realize this strategy is not
> sufficent. What is the recommended way to implement DFS Replication in this
> case?
>
> 8) If I add Server_A and Server_B to the same namespace, can I ensure that
> users only go to "Server_A" to access files (given that it is up and
> available)?
>
> *note: our DCs are running Server 2003 SP1but I made the necessary AD schema
> update (adprep.exe /forestprep) to support the update R2 version of DFS
>
> Appreciate any feedback or advice that any of you may be able to offer on
> the above questions. Thanks very much.

Quotas do not sit nicely with DFSR. You can run into real problems when one
folder is out of space and the other is not. Remember that tmp files etc. are
not replicated. This means that ServerA will have more data in each folder than
ServerB. After Failure ServerA restarts and it will replicate all changed files
from B to A but where somebody hits their quota on B the DFSR will fail because
if cannot replicate the data back to A due to the presence of the additional TMP
files.

I am considering how to implement this next year and at the moment my plan it
to have quotas on A and not B and also to have the referrals to B disabled. In a
failure I can enable the referrals to B. When server A is fixed I can switch the
quotas from Hard to Soft and allow replication to bring B up to date. Then
disable referrals to B and finally return the quotas from Soft to Hard. Of
course I have not tried this yet but it is a plan arising out of the failure I
saw at my previous employment.

Another point is that you must make sure the staging folder are outside the
quota space. This is going to be much easier if you replicate "users" but only
have quotas on the users\%username% folders.






On Mon, 1 Dec 2008 17:54:13 +0900, "Barkley Bees" <> wrote:

>I will be deploying two servers at two different offices (80 Mbps dedicated
>connectivity between offices). Both server builds are identical (Dell head
>servers and DAS enclosures) and will be installed with "Storage Server 2003
>R2 SP2 64-bit". These will be used purely for storing user folders (~1500
>users) which will be configured in Active Directory (Home Folder drive
>letter) for each user. The directory structure on the server will be simple:
>
>E:\USERS\username\ (USERS will be the shared folder with each username
>restricted by NTFS so only the user, SYSTEM and administrator accounts have
>access to his/her own folder).
>
>The plan is for "Server_A" to be the main server and "Server_B" to be the
>backup server in the event of a primary failure. We plan to use the updated
>DFS included with R2 to replicate the Users folder data to Server_B. In the
>event of a failure users would fail over to Server_B (using DFS namespaces).
>
>Some questions I hope you folks may be able to answer for me regarding
>DFS-R:
>
>1) Are there any issues with using VSS and DFS together? Will the VSS data
>be replicated across to "Server_B" as well and would VSS need to be enabled
>on this server also?
>
>2) Is it possible to use Single Instance Storage (SIS -natively available in
>Storage Server 2003 R2) with DFS? If it does the common store (in the root
>dir) need to get replicated across or do you simply enable SIS on the second
>server as well?
>
>3) Would it be better to configure DFS to replicate the "Users" folder or
>the actual root drive "E:\" as it will only be used for the users folders?
>
>4) Do the NTFS and share settings get replicated across also (I assume so)?
>
>5) I will be implementing quotas on the user folders using the "File Server
>Resource Manager" in R2. How would these Quotas be affected with DFS at the
>target server? Would they get carried over or would they need to be manually
>set on Server_B?
>
>6) All clients will be Windows XP SP2, so is it recommended to use the
>"Client failback" hotfix [WindowsXP-KB898900-v2-x86-ENU.exe
>(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=53202)] so that user computers can
>revert back to the original server once it is back online?
>
>7) In the event that Server_A is down and users are accessing and editing
>their files on Server_B, what happens when Server_A comes back online and
>clients revert back to it? The files they have edited on Server_B would not
>be available on Server_A since it was down when the files were changed My
>initial plan was for DFS to replicate one way, from Server_A to Server_B but
>taking this situation into consideration I realize this strategy is not
>sufficent. What is the recommended way to implement DFS Replication in this
>case?
>
>8) If I add Server_A and Server_B to the same namespace, can I ensure that
>users only go to "Server_A" to access files (given that it is up and
>available)?
>
>*note: our DCs are running Server 2003 SP1but I made the necessary AD schema
>update (adprep.exe /forestprep) to support the update R2 version of DFS
>
>Appreciate any feedback or advice that any of you may be able to offer on
>the above questions. Thanks very much.
>
>
>
>
--
Dave Mills
There are 10 types of people, those that understand binary and those that don't.