DFS seems to be acting odd. Is it set up correctly?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris Coates
  • Start date Start date
C

Chris Coates

I have a Win 2003 file server, on my Win 200 domain, and there are 2
directories on it that I want available through DFS.
I want these to be available at all remote locations and the only servers in
most of those places are Win 2000 Domain Controllers.
I set up Domain Based DFS. Created my root, and added the target shares. I
also added all remote DCs to the list of root targets. Everything looks
good, but I wanted to be sure so I went to several machines in different
sites and did a \\domain_name\DFS_share name and it always seems to resolve
correctly. I also did a \\Domain_Controler_name\DFS_Share_name, and it also
seems to resolve correctly.
All looks good. However if I go to any of the involved DCs and do a
\\DC_Name\D$ and connect to the admin share and located the DFS Share there
is nothing in it.

Why does that directory appear populated when viewing the share but empty
when looking at the file system?

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

ccoates
 
This is normal. The filesystem only has a virtual placeholder for the
links. The share has nothing to do with the contents of the domain root
share, like I said it is really only a placeholder.
 
Am I correct that this means that a remote user hitting the DFS share on a
remote DC will still have to come across the WAN to actually access it?
If so, using DFS does not speed up remote users accessing data across the
WAN, and does not provide redundancy in the event that the primary source is
unavailable.

Thanks for your help

ccoates
 
DFS does help in accessing data for remote users....

You want the data to be available at multiple sites (or locations) some of
which are across WAN, right? That means that data should be replicated to
these multiple locations from your primary data-share.

What you have to do is - create a DFS link with multiple targets. When you
add multiple targets in a DFS link using DFS GUI, it also offer the option
of enabling replication on these link targets. You can enable replication
telling the 'master' share as the share which currently has the data. So if
your master share is the one which actually has the data, and then it will
replicate to all other target shares as well.
So all you need to do is - to add targets in the sites where you want data
to be available locally to the DFS link and enable replication on it.

Now when a user in a remote site accesses the share
\\domain-name\rootname\dfslink, he will go to the nearest root server which
will be a DC in his site as you have added DCs to list of root-replicas,
this root server (DC) will redirect users to local target (one in the site
of user) which will have replicated data from the primary target instead of
going across WAN. So user will end up accessing data on the local replica of
DFS link target.
Note: Understand the replication concept first before enabling it - you need
to tell 'master' of replication (from where replication starts). It may take
some time to replicate. Replication enabled via DFS GUI is actually not part
of DFS component - it is called FRS (another component).

DFS provides mechanism for users to create logical namespace spread across
sites with one or more targets and it redirects users to targets in their
local sites first before sending them to targets in remote sites. Whether
these targets have replicated data or not - it is beyond scope of DFS. You
can use FRS (via DFSGUI) or any other 3rd party replication or even 'xcopy'
type of commands to replicate data among target shares. DFS will bring any
user in any site accessing \\domain\root\name\... to shares local to their
own site.

--
Thanks
Mukul [MSFT]

PS: Please post DFS related queries in newsgroup
microsoft.public.server.dfs_frs. Please use "DFS" in subject to make it
immediately noticeable.

PS: Please find latest dfsutil.exe for Win2003 (updated) at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...C3-C7A3-4B5B-9FF1-FD01B0203DC1&displaylang=en

Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers
no rights
 
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