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Nicholas Xerri

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Windows Server DFS priority

Good Afternoon,

Would appreciate some feedback (still new to the DFS technology). I would like to make use of DFS to replicate a number of shared folders between two servers located at the same site. Is there a way to force clients to always use serverA when accessing the domain-based namespace (as in no load balancing). I would like the second server to only be used in case of failover, basically avoiding the possibility of split brain when two users open the same file at the same time.
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Cliff Galiher
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DFS is not a good replacement for a cluster which is basically what you are describing. Trying to use it koke that inevitably always leads to conflict issues and data loss.

The only way to do what you want is to have only one server as a target in DFS-N, and then manually change the target in the event you want to switch. This has no impact on DFS-R, which operates independently of DFS-N.
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Nicholas Xerri

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Thanks for your feedback, yes that would be ideal but unfortunately, budgetary constraints prevent the deployment of shared storage and hence clustering & shares are stored on a DC due to budget, so the failover role is not supported.

Unless I am misunderstanding the guides would setting the Target priority on Server A as First among all targets and Server B as Last achieve something similar since nodes will point to the primary constantly?
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Cliff Galiher
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That makes a lot of sense, I will configure DFS-R without the namespaces, since the project just aims to reduce downtime in case of failure. Manual failover to the replica node will be triggered in such a case,

It is my understanding that DFS-R without the namespaces should avoid split brain issues, is this correct?
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Thank you for your time and feedback, much appreciated