DFS related question

[Mulbagal]

Hello Everybody (particularly the MSFT team, who give wonderful tips
and solutions), I wanted to replicate a folder on server1 to server2
using DFS but this replication should happen with a difference of 24
hours - for example: my master share is on server1 and its replica is
set to a share on server2. File A on server1 is changed to A+ but this
file A+ should get replicated to server2 ONLY after 24 hours. I was
able to acheive this by changing the schedule under the advanced view
of AD users and Computers\domain.com\System\FRS as mentioned in
another post.

All users are connected to \\server1\share and \\server2\share is used
only by the admin and no user uses this share.

My question is: will this kind of setup cause any problems to the data
as such or in answering the requests from network users?

In total, my need is to have a day's backup of a shared drive
\\server1\share at any given time for immediate recovery from the disk
(\\server2\share) using dfs and avoid any third party software.

Also, I read in one of the posts here that any one of the replicas
will respond to the file request from the network user. Is this true?
and if yes, what will happen in cases like above? where two replicas
are different (actually they are not 'real' replicas)

One suggestion was "why not take a real disk copy every day?". But,
that will confuse my backup software which does a daily incremental
tape backup and apparently will take more time also.

Any repsonse is highly appreciated.
TIA,
DK

 

[Daniel Billingsley]

Your backup software won't be "confused" - it will just try to back up the
backup files, just like it would try to back up the replica, unless you tell
it otherwise. It should be fairly easy to exclude a folder or .bak files
with your backup software.

Why are you looking for a $100 solution to a $.25 problem?

 

[Mulbagal]

Daniel, thanks for the response. "confused" I meant was, when I do the
disk copy, it will change the archive bits and when my backup software
runs, it will not backup the files whose archive bits are changed.

Thanks !

 

[Daniel Billingsley]

Ah, ok.

I take it from your DFS 24-hour question that you have lots of cases where
users want to recover a file from the previous day but not many cases where
they need to recover older than that. Seems like a weird situation to me.

I guess I'd probably take the approach of excluding the "live" files from
the tape backup and putting the disk backup files on the tape for long-term
archiving. Yes, a restore from a week ago would be a two-step process, but
I don't see many alternatives.

 

[Mulbagal]

my question here is, can I use DFS as my one day backup tool? or will
it cause any problems?

DK

 

[Daniel Billingsley]

It just doesn't work that way.