DFS control

[Dmitry Akselrod]

Hello everyone,

I am working in a Windows 2003 forest with a single domain. I have two
hardware-identical serves involved in DFS replication. SERVER1 is a DC.
There is another DC in the domain that is NOT involved in DFS replication
(besides holding the DFS root). The other, SERVER2 is a member server.
Both machines are Windows 2003 Enterprise SP1 servers.

I have configured a DFS root and a DFS Link, that is replicated between the
two servers. I chose mesh topology for replication. SERVER1 is the primary
file server in the domain. SERVER2 is designed to be a warm backup for
SERVER1. I would like SERVER1 shares to be used for all referrals if it is
online. I do not want SERVER2 receiving any referrals unless SERVER1 is
unavailable. I would like both server to function in a multi-master
replication fashion, however. I would like SERVER1 to replicate all changes
to SERVER2. I would also SERVER2 to replicate back to SERVER1, but only if
SERVER1 is down.

When I configured replication, I did configure SERVER1 to be the initial
replication master. From a few tests, I did notice that it appears as the
preferred server in the share's DFS properties. Is this always going to
happen, or do I need to disable the SERVER2 referral? If I disable the
referral for SERVER2, DFS shares will not automatically fail over to
SERVER1, right? How can I ensure that users will only be directed to
SERVER2 when SERVER1 is down?

Also, how can I control the quota for the staging directories? How can I
limit the amount of disk space staging directories can use?

Finally, am I correct to assume that as long as one DC in the domain is
available, DFS roots will also be avaiable?

thanks!

dmitry

[Drew McDaniel [MSFT]]

On servers running Win2k3 SP1 and above there is a feature called "Target
Priority" which allows you to designate a specific target of a Root or Link
to have an override priority level. In your scenario you will want to
configure SERVER2 to have the priority of "GlobalLow" to make it always be
the last referral.

Here is how you will do this:
1. Download and install the SP1 version of the support tools which includes
dfsutil.exe from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6EC50B78-8BE1-4E81-B3BE-4E7AC4F0912D&displaylang=en

2. From the command line run: "dfsutil /path:<DFSLinkPath> /TargetPriority
/Server:SERVER2 /Share:<ShareName> /Set /PriorityClass:GlobalLow"

If you have Win2k3 R2 installed then you can do the above using the new DFS
Management MMC Snap-in as well.

--------
A second option would be to place SERVER2 in a separate AD site with a high
site link cost, then enable site costed referrals. By putting SERVER2 in a
separate site with a high cost it will cause the server to always be last in
the referral list when namespaces are set to use site costing.

Please note that by default in Win2k3 namespaces are not set to use site
costed referrals by default. You will need to use dfsutil.exe to enable
site costing on a namespace or an individual link in the namespace.
Namespaces that are created with the new R2 DFS Management MMC snap-in will
create namespaces that use site costed referrals by default.

--
Drew McDaniel
Microsoft Branch Office PM
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Dmitry Akselrod" <dmi...@nospam.com> wrote in message
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[Dmitry Akselrod]

Drew, thank you! This is exactly the information I needed!

dmitry

"Drew McDaniel [MSFT]" <dr...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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