Syncing 2 servers shares on 2 diff sites

Diakatarnis

Diakatarnis

Diakatarnis

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Joined
30 Jul 2003
Posts
442
Hello Gang,

I've got a customer who wants to have identical files on 2 servers in 2 different locations, now i though woop Branchcache would probably do the job, but they have XP machines in the mix so thats a no go :(

Basically theres going to be a server at site A and one at site B, they have some shared folders with stuff in them (orly?) the workers travel between sites quite a lot and want to be able to access their files on both sites and get updated files when workers at the opposing sites alter them.

I thought hmm offline the shares? but that may end up being masses of data travelling all over the place on each workstation and take up most of the space on the statsions hard drives.

How would I go about this?

Only thing i can think of at the moment, is creating a share on the head office server, mapping it on the branch office server setting it to offline and then sharing it, but i dont think thats the best way to go... is it?

Any other suggestions :)
 
There are proper WAN optimisation products from Bluecoat, Cisco, Expand Networks and Riverbed. We currently use a product called Tacit from Packeteer (who were taken over by Bluecoat) which just does on semi-intelligent on demand replication of data between a group of servers over a WAN.

THis is now EOL with no natural replacement product in the pipeling and we're now trialing solutions from other vendors.

Proper WAN optimisation solutions are expensive so if it's only a small user base then it might not be worth the investment.
 
Another vote for DFSr.
Failing that one of my clients uses sync-back pro to achieve similar results on there non R2 servers. It works quite well imo.
 
Yamahahahahaha said:
I would say DFS.
1) Both servers must be at least 2k3 R2
2) You must (of course) have the room to store the files you want to replicate

Bandwidth can be throttled based on time period, so in-hours transfers can impact less on internet use.
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Hmm this is of interest as it will come with the OS's will be sbs 2011 most likely on main box then server 2011 on the other.

Does DFS work with exchange as well? im probably not looking at having an exchange server on both sites but, would be interested to know if exchange can also be replicated accross both sites?

Oh also does DFS offer Locking file replication, so 2 people on diff sites arnt editing the same file at the same time?
 
Diakatarnis said:
Hmm this is of interest as it will come with the OS's will be sbs 2011 most likely on main box then server 2011 on the other.

Does DFS work with exchange as well? im probably not looking at having an exchange server on both sites but, would be interested to know if exchange can also be replicated accross both sites?

Oh also does DFS offer Locking file replication, so 2 people on diff sites arnt editing the same file at the same time?
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I don't know about SBS editions of Windows Server, but all the editions since 2003 R2 have had DFSr installed with them.

Public folders can be replicated between sites, mailboxes not so - at least without getting into DAGs and such. Even then you would need Enterprise edition (or above) to access the necessary replication services.
I'd say they should stick with DFS for moving files around, and avoid using email as a filing system.

DFS does not offer file locking, this is one of it's weaknesses. You will need to look at a third party solution for that aspect.
 
You wouldn't use DFS with exchange, you'd use Exchange Mailbox DAGs, however I'm not sure if SBS 2011 supports DAGs (not saying it won't just I've never looked into it).

EDIT: Of course DAGs won't work as SBS is based on Server 2008 Standard, and you need Enterprise.
 
paradigm said:
You wouldn't use DFS with exchange, you'd use Exchange Mailbox DAGs, however I'm not sure if SBS 2011 supports DAGs (not saying it won't just I've never looked into it).

EDIT: Of course DAGs won't work as SBS is based on Server 2008 Standard, and you need Enterprise.
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I thought exchange had built in replication services? (i could be imaginig mind :S)
 
The "Database Availability Group" (DAG) is Exchange 2010's replication service, but it relies on Windows Failover Clustering, which is a key service offered to Enterprise (and above) versions of Windows only.

SBS and multiple sites isn't really catered for.

SBS is a nasty beast once you start needing more than the basics.
 
Diakatarnis said:
Exchange comes as part of the package, other than that not much, its just it works out cheaper to get sbs than server 2008 + excahnge 2010
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Cheaper, yes, but only if you are 100% certain that you are able to function as a basic one-site entity without any of the advanced features that standalone licensing brings.

To be honest, the cheapest way is to get two MCPs in the company and to register as a Silver partner.

Hence why we have datacenter licensing in a company that is currently only 60+ employees large.
 
paradigm said:
Cheaper, yes, but only if you are 100% certain that you are able to function as a basic one-site entity without any of the advanced features that standalone licensing brings.

To be honest, the cheapest way is to get two MCPs in the company and to register as a Silver partner.

Hence why we have datacenter licensing in a company that is currently only 60+ employees large.
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you would only neeed to pay for action pack to get that as well, not even silver partner. But still thats elaborating on what Microsoft had in mind.
 
It's not exactly what the clients are asking for, but have you considered terminal services? What sort of scale are we looking at? Is it two sites of the same size or a big one and a little one.
 
SBS doesn't support DFSr, but you probably wouldn't one box doing SBS/Exchange and DFSr anyway. It would work well with an SBS Box and separate DFSr file server at one end (or both virtualised on one box) and a DFSr file server at the other.
 
K.C. Leblanc said:
It's not exactly what the clients are asking for, but have you considered terminal services? What sort of scale are we looking at? Is it two sites of the same size or a big one and a little one.
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Yea i've thought of this, theres aone large site and nother smaller one but still has 10 people working there, dont think the broadband would have enough grunt to support that many sessions.
 
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