Dfs Recovery and Dfs links

[Fari Fuladi]

I am working on a procedure for Dfs recovery in the event
that there is a disk failure on any Dfs link replica or
any other event that results in data corruption on the
disk.

If I remember correctly from reading in the Dfs
documentation, it is suggested to use NT backup to
regularly back up you data, and use the latest backup copy
to recover the corrupt data from. But, using NT backup is
not an option for me.

I think there are two scenarios that I should consider:
- the failed replica is the one that was set as Primary
- the failed replica is non-primary replica

The scenario may even become more complicated if
replication happens to be lagging behing for any reason,
and the most update copy resides on a physical path that
was NOT configured as Primary, and the disk on which the
physical location that was configured as Primary (Master)
is the one that fails. One possible solution would be to
add a new disk that contains the same shared folders
configuration as the failed disk, and reboot the server
that hosts the Dfs root. I suppose as soon as the Dfs host
is up and running again, Dfs will be able to resolve the
Dfs link, and life will be as normal as before. Do you
think this Would work? or, I would have to do anything
special to have the existing file replicated
from the existing replicas to the new disk?

Perhaps, I should re-emphasize that I am trying to recover
from a failed Dfs link and NOT from a failed Dfs root
replica. So, Any suggestions.

Thanks,

 

[Brendon Rogers]

There is no primary replica in replication. Windows 2000 file replication is
multimaster.

There IS a primary master when you first setup the replication partners but
once replication kicks in there is no longer a primary master.