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Trying to configure sites and services correctly for DFS/R namespaces and replication

Hey there experts;

I'm the sole administrator at a company of 35 people located in 7 geographically dispersed sites. Our main office has a file server and our remote office (across the country) has another file server. I've set up DFS and DFS/R to maintain a current list of the network shares the company uses. I also have log on scripts set up to manually map our user's logon drives to the appropriate share (i.e., S: maps to \\mydomain.com\shared\share).

Here's the problem. Ever since setting this up, the drives connect just fine, but I notice that it's connecting half of my network drives to the local file server, and half of them to the remote server. Highly annoying. Manually browsing the namespace, however, seems to always connect to the local server.

I suspect this has something to do with AD sites and services, but I've never set it up and really have no idea how to do so.

Any thoughts...?

Jay_Jay70

in sites and services, create a new site (right click - new site)

under subnets, create a subnet for the appropriate site - assign it to the site you just created - done and done :)

do they have local DC's? or are they just DFS file servers?

lamontc

ASKER

The remote site DOES have a DC. What's odd about it is that I went ahead and created a new site, created a new subnet, and linked the Intersite transports accordingly (default cost of 100). However, when I log into a workstation locally, half my drives still connect to the remote server while the other half connect to the local one.

Similarly, when I log into a remote workstation, half my drives connect to the local server, etc....there doesn't seem to be any logic to it. Any thoughts?

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Jay_Jay70

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lamontc

ASKER

Oddly, it's still hit or miss. I created the sites, assigned the appropriate subnets, and deleted all of the extra intersite transport links that I had created. I'm using only the default link, and it's assigned to all of the sites in my S&S snap in.

All of my sites have VPN connections through various WAN links; since they all have VPN connections (except for the LAN itself, of course), I've done no configuration of cost or replication schedule. I just left it there by default.

I'm not really sure how to proceed. I've logged into 4 different workstations and they all seem to connect some drives to the remote server and some to the local.

lamontc

ASKER

I also ran the dfsutil/...showwin2ktable command on the DC in my local site. Initially it showed a Blob command with 0 sites. I ran /updatewin2ktable.... and then ran the display command again. After that it showed 2 sites.

I then cleared the PKT and SPC cache on my local machine, rebooted, and logged back in. Now the network drives are all connecting locally except for one. It's a royal pain in the neck.

Any thoughts?

Jay_Jay70

none at all - the sites and services side of things i play with heavily, but DFS only a little :(

lamontc

ASKER

Hey bud...

It worked. I don't know what changed...I guess it might have had some sort of replication delay...but it's working like a champ.

Thanks for the help!

Jay_Jay70

woohoo! coz i was out of ideas! lol!

It would have been replication delay - Congrats man, nice work :)

James