Microsoft DFS - slow to access share(s) 1

[ghosking]

Hi,

We have a standalone (non AD) DFS structure in place consisting of one DFS root hosted on one server (win2k) linking to other roots on other 2k servers which then contain the shares. This provides us with one drive letter, five subfolders (provided by five DFS servers) and shares within. It works very well considering the amount of shares and data that we have.

However recently it has become very slow to access. There is a 5 to 6 second delay when accessing the drive letter and then subsequent folders below. Once it is cached it is fine. This occurs within the LAN and WAN.

Anyone seen this before, are there any known ways to improve speed performance?

Many thanks

G Hosking

 

[mjbianco15]

Are you doing any anti-virus checking on the DFS Share? Some anti-virus programs treat the DFS share as a kinda virus causing freezing and/or slowness. Disabling AV checking in our environment cleared up this problem.

 

[ghosking]

Hi,

Thanks for the advice, what type of AV programs were you running?

 

[mjbianco15]

Trend Server Protect for our servers and Trend OfficeScan for the desktops.

 

[ghosking]

We have since discovered that some of our DFS servers are fast, some are slow in terms of mapping to from PC's. All the slow ones have been upgraded to (WIN2K) SP4. All the fast ones are SP3 or below.

We feel that maybe there is a link between SP4 and DFS? Anyone seen this too?

 

[mjbianco15]

Take a look at this MS article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=810418

 

[xmsre]

Sounds like you're in an NT 4 domain. If so, disable site awareness.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810418

 

[ghosking]

Many thanks, this was the problem, mapping is now working fast!!