Windows 2012r2 Server DFS Questions

DFS-R isn't meant to provide high availability. If you try, you'll end up with conflicts where person A edited a copy on server A while person B was editing a file on server B. This is by far the biggest mistake and most misunderstood part of DFS-R. By orders of magnitude. it sounds like you want a file server cluster. That's still the way to provide HA for file shares.

Would we be able to do this with a server in each location?

That depends on your infrastructure.

Sorry, I don't know a lot about FIle Server Clustering specifically. But basically here's what we have:
Each Location has:
- 1 Domain Controller/DNS
- 1 SQL Server
- 1 Application Server


One location has a couple NAS. We thought we could consolidate the NAS' into one server at one location and then install and identical server in another location and use DFS. You seem to be saying that this is a bad idea, and that it does not give real redundancy or help with file conflicts. So I guess we need to look at a different strategy.

It *does* provide redundancy. But so do backups! Redundancy is not the same as high availability. And HA takes proper planning. Used properly, DFS-R can help in centralizing data for later backup or for making access to large files in a remote location much easier. But it does not replace clustered file servers and attempting to use it *that* way will cause version conflicts. So whether DFS-R is a good fit depends on the task and the usage patterns.

Based on your description, I still don't thin DFS-R is what you want. DFS-N can certainly help you consolidate your NAS (you may not even need DFS-N)), but the "identical server in another location" is a new addition, not a replacement or consolidation, and doesn't sound like a good fit for DFS-R. Since I doubt your NAS boxes were highly available, you may not need a cluster either. A simple replacement file server would meet your goals of consolidation.

Ok. Just for clarification, what WOULD happen if the main file share went down and we were using DFS? would the other one still be available?

That depends entirely on how you set it up. DFS-R and DFS-N have no inherent codependence. You can deploy either one without the other. You can replicate data without the namespace being shared and thus no, if server A went down, any shares it hosted would be inaccessible until you brought it up.

So to sum up
DFS-R = Replication with no redundancy
DFS-N = Replication of Namespace only
Both = Replication of both, resulting in redundancy, but versioning conflicts.

Two more questions and then I'll start a new topic because you've been so helpful:
1) If there is LIGHT traffic, but the need for redundancy just in case, would DFS N+R work well? I guess I am trying to figure out when to use it at all.
2) Any good articles on setting up file clusters?

You have been EXTREMELY helpful to a networking guy trying to understand the way this MS OS thing works. :)