On a Windows 2003 IIS 6 webserver, with a virtual directory, pointing to a Windows 2003 DFS folder (2 DFS server nodes) I get 401 access error for the Anonymous user. prompting to enter user name, password.
If on the web server I open up the DFS folder (\production.domain.com\share) and check properties, under the DFS tab I can see listed both DFS file servers (dfs1.production.domain.com\share and dfs2.production.domain.com\share).
When I check status, both of them are OK, dfs2.production.domain.com\share is marked as Active.
If I switch Active to dfs1.production.domain.com\share the IIS access starts working fine.
On the web server the Anonymous IIS user can access the share on both DFS file server. The rest of the web site is also mapped to a DFS share hosted on both DFS file server, there is no issue - only with this virtual directory.
If I reboot the web server, the virtual directory will default to dfs2.production.domain.com\share as Active - and produces 401 error. If I manually set Active to dfs1.production.domain.com\share, the error disappears.
Folder permissions on dfs2.production.domain.com\share and dfs1.production.domain.com\share are identical.
Interestingly, after rebooting the web server, all other folders and virtual directories are set to Active on dfs1.production.domain.com\share Active, except this one.
I wonder why this particular virtual directory is set to Active by default on the other file server: dfs2.production.domain.com\share?
This seems to cause the IIS 401 error for that particular virtual directory and manually setting Active to the same file server node solves the IIS 401 error.
