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I have a folder on my Windows 2003 Server AD machine that is shared out to clients at Location A.

The people in Location B are currently mounting this folder across a network link. The problem is of course if the network link goes down, they loose access to the share.

In Location B there is another Windows 2003 Server AD machine that is already set up to do DNS, AD delegation.

How can I specify that a folder on the server at Location A is to be synchronized (replicated?) with the folder at Location B (or what do I need to read up on) so that the users at Location B can mount the folder locally?

Update:

So between the link provided below and this one: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727150.aspx , I was able to get a basic DFS share working. Now, from Location A or B, I can type \mydomain\myroot\myshare and it pulls up the share from server A. So the alias is working. In the instructions at my link it says to click the juncture to set up replication. I can not see any options for new replication or the word replication or anything similar to it anywhere. Is there something addition to turn on replication ability?

Scott Szretter
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2 Answers2

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DFS (Distributed File System) is probably the best solution in your scenario. Here's a primer on the subject:

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/windows2003-distributed-file-system.html

joeqwerty
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  • So between that link and this one: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727150.aspx , I was able to get a basic DFS share working. Now, from Location A or B, I can type \\mydomain\myroot\myshare and it pulls up the share from server A. So the alias is working. In the instructions at my link it says to click the juncture to set up replication. I can not see any options for new replication or the word replication or anything similar to it anywhere. Is there something addition to turn on replication ability? – Scott Szretter Aug 17 '11 at 13:55
  • So the difference in documentation was that I just had to right click on the DFS main node I created and click 'new link', put in the path to the second server's share (an empty folder I shared) and then it asks me if I want to set up replication! Easy, and it works great. – Scott Szretter Sep 09 '11 at 12:24
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If you really want, you could set up an rsync / xcopy / robocopy job to periodically sync files back and forth, but honestly, I would recommend DFS (as per joequerty's suggestion.)

gWaldo
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