sharepoint and DFS

[francisdela]

Hi all

Don't know much about sharepoint at the moment but i need to set up a branch office with low bandwidth to be able to access files from the main site. I was going to use DFS on 2003R2 but there is a worry about multiple users accessing files at the same time and changes being lost. I know sharepoint allows you to check files out which would do the trick but how would this work with the branch office, if sharepoint is on the main site, does it work with DFS shares?

Any help much appreciated.

 

[Thomas2000]

Hi,

Just a lite note, sharepoint stores all it's contents in SQL databases and not in a folder structure. Basically everyting that is put into sharepoint goes into the SharePoint content database.

I do not know much about DFS, but to me it does not sound likely that you will be able to use it with SharePoint.

Cheers,
Thomas

http://www.thompa.se

 

[francisdela]

Thanks Thomas

Do you know if sharepoint can be replicated in real time to another server? I need a solution that will allow 2 offices linked by slow wan connections to access the same files. DFS would have created a share on each site with the same data and replicated changes when they were saved back. The problem is it does not alert a user at the other site if it is already open which means the last person to save it back keeps the changes and any changes made by the other user are lost.

Cheers

 

[Thomas2000]

Out of the box I do not think this is possible, not with the WSS v2 or SPS2003. SharePoint Server 2007 might have some other possibilities. I have also been looking into the Microsoft Groove, which I think might help you out more in this case, since it is built to handle communication within a team of "mobility" workers, and it can be setup and configured in environments that have slow WAN connections.

Cheers,
Thomas

http://www.thompa.se

 

[francisdela]

Much appreciated, looks like i still have a fair bit of digging about to do before i have a solid answer to this problem but microsoft groove looks interesting and i see there's a beta so i might give that a go first.