How to setup DFS in our DR environment

[wchull]

Currently we are running Microsoft DFS in our Windows Server 2003 environment.

We have only one DFS root (i.e. mycompany.com\DFS) and I'm pretty sure that the root is a DOMAIN ROOT where the DFS information is stored in AD and copy of the DFS is stored on local root targets that are not domain controllers.

When we conduct a disaster recover (DR) test we clone a production domain controller and use the cloned DR/DC in an isolated network environment which works great but we find that many of our member servers and applications reference file folder via DFS that are not available in the DR environment since we do not have any root target servers running DFS in that isolated environment.

So my question is this..... If my existing cloned domain controller stores the DFS data but is not a root target can you make the DC a Root target? If so what do you need to do on the DC to make DFS work? If this is not workable, is it possible to create/use another member server as a DFS root target? If so what steps are need to make this work as whatever we create from the clone will referene the many other root targets that are not available in the isolated environment?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[alfa2008]

You can put root target in whichever domain member server you like, just right click on mycompany.com\DFS, and choose New Root Target. We have root targets in 3 different servers/locations, and 2 of them are DC.

I hope I didn't misunderstood your question.

 

[wchull]

Alfa2008:

Thanks for the reply. I swore that I saw something in some Microsoft document that said that if you had domain controllers as root targets it changed something in the way DFS had to be managed as in DFS could only be managed by Domain Admins. In our production environment all of our root targets are member servers and we have delegated the rights to manage DFS to our Storage Management Team. I don't think that I want to make this change to our production DC that we clone from but I think it would be OK to make the clone itself a root target since the clone is nuked after a DR test anyway.

Another question.... When you make a member server a root target you need to create a directory to hold the DFS referrals but I'm assuming that on a DC you don't have to do this since DFS is stored in AD, correct or not?

Anything else you can think of that we should consider?


Thanks again.

 

[alfa2008]

As far I can see, you have to create a folder in DC, and sharing will be done by DFS itself. It'll ask which folder to share, you have to select, and that's all.

We now have Windows 2003 R2, and we use DFSR which is more advanced in configuration, and diagnostics reports.