DFS and User Profiles

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul Hadfield
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Paul Hadfield

All,

Should you use a DFS with a replication policy to store user romaing
profiles and redirected folder?

I have set-up a Windows 2003 domain for a small customer using 2 Windows
2003 Servers and 8 Windows XP Pro clients. I'm trying to make the whole
set-up as potentialy redundant as possible.

At the moment, both servers are domain controllers with AD integrated DNS
servers. However, server No1 hosts all of the local file shares which store
each users romaing profile, each users redirected 'My Documents' folder
share and genral shares used by all users.

If I were to set-up the same shares on the second server and use DFS to
replicate them, could I then just point each users profile/shares to the
\\domain.local\share name instead of \\server01\share name?

Are there any fall backs with this? Does replication fall over if two people
were to open the same file on each server? Is DFS designed to cope with a
set-up like this?

Thanks in advance,
Paul.
 
DFS replication is very clearly not recommended for highly dynamic
content. I would say that redirected folders fall into this category,
so it wouldn't be an appropriate use for DFS replication.

You can use DFS share names to point each users profile to, but you
shouldn't use replication to replicate them. If you must replicate
them, you should look at a 3rd party synchronous file replication
product.

Hope that answers your question.

Regards,
Rick Gouin, MCSE
 
Rick - thanks for this but I have a few more questions:

When would you use DFS replication?

What goes to say that a share is highly dynamic? For example, a user profile
(in this example) is only read once in the morning at logon and over-written
once I the evening at log-off.

Would shared folders that are access by more than one person to store/edit
MS office documents be classed as highly dynamic?

Cheers,
Paul.
 
I would use DFS replication when the data that I want to make available
is sufficiently static that the "last writer wins" algorithm for file
contention is sufficient for me, and the risk of data loss as a result
of that is acceptable. I would not use replication for files that
spend long periods of time open, or that multiple people access from
multiple servers throughout the day.

You are the only one who can say how dynamic your data is, and whether
the risks associated are acceptable.

I have definitely seen DFS designs running with no trouble that located
user profiles on DFS shares. I have also seen designs where users My
Documents folders where redirected to a DFS share, and they were
constanly having files disappear becuase they were being renamed and
moved by the FRS because of conflict.

A popular use for DFS in the enterprise is application installation
points - such as an administrative install location for Office where
you want to load balance the associated traffic.

Regards,
Rick Gouin, MCSE
 
Thanks for your comments Rick.

I think what I may do is use DFS to replicate user profiles and
shared/redirected folders across both servers, but continue to point each
profile/shortcut to the 1st server directly. That way there will be no
conflicts with DFS as every user is using the same server, plus there is a
copy of all data on the second server that is fully up-to-date should the
first server fail.

Thanks again,
Paul.
 
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