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Configuring Windows Distributed File System

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26 views

Configuring Windows Distributed File System

Uploaded by

philipherndon991
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Configuring Windows Distributed File

System (DFS)
In this tutorial, we will go through the process of configuring Distributed File System (DFS)
between two files servers for file replication.

Requirements for this lab:

 Active Directory Domain.


 2 Windows Servers (Used as File Servers) joined to the domain.
o For the purpose of this lab, the File Server names are EITT-FS01 and EITT-FS02

Time for this lab:

 20 – 25 minutes

Installing the DFS Role


Go to Server Manager > Dashboard > Add roles and features

Click Next.
Select Role-based or feature-based installation and click Next.

Make sure the File Server is the selected one and click Next.
Expand File and Storage Services > File and iSCSI Services, and select both DFS
Namespace and DFS Replication. Click Next.

Click Next.
Click Install to begin the installation.
Once the installation has succeeded, click Close.
Repeat the same process for the second File Server.

Creating the File Shares


This section can be skipped if you simply want to create a DFS Share and want to
use default Share and NTFS permissions for users.

On the first File Server (EITT-FS01), I will create two folders on the root of the C Drive:
Human Resources and Finance.
Right click on the Human Resources folder > Properties > Sharing > Advanced
Sharing.

Select the Share this Folder box and give the share a name. It is recommended that share
names do not have a space, so in this case, we will make the share name
“HumanResources” without any spaces. Click on Permissions.
Since this share is for Human Resources users only, and other users should not have access
to it, we will remove the Everyone group and add the Human Resources Users group
with Change permissions. Click OK.

Click OK.
We can now see that the folder is now shared. Click on the Security tab and
click Advanced.
We will do the same as the share permissions and now give the Human Resources Users
group the necessary NTFS permissions within the folder.
Share and NTFS permissions will vary depending on the level of permissions that
you are trying to give your users.
When done, click OK.

Repeat the same steps for the Finance folder, and then for both folders on the
second File Server (EITT-FS02).

Creating the DFS Namespace


On either of the File Servers, go to Server Manager > Tools > DFS Management.
In the DFS Management console, right click on Namespace and select New
Namespace.
Enter or Browse for the first File Server (EITT-FS01). Click Next.
Enter the name for the Namespace. Click Edit Settings.
From the Edit Settings window, you can change default permissions for the Namespace (I
will change it to the fourth option), as well as change the default path for the DFSRoots
folder. When ready, click OK and Next.
We leave the default option to create a Domain-based namespace and click Next.

Click Create.
Once the Namespace has been created successfully, click Close.

We can now see that our EITTShares Namespace has been created.

If we select the Namespace and go to the Namespace Servers tab, we can see that it
currently only has one File Server in it (EITT-FS01). We need to add the second File
Server (EITT-FS02).
To add additional servers to the Namespace, right click the Namespace (EITTShares)
and select Add Namespace Server.

Type of browse the name of the second File Server (EITT-FS02). Edit Settings if
needed. Click OK when ready.
DFS will verify and validate the second server and add it if the validation completes
successfully.

The second File Server has now been added and we can see both File Servers in the
Namespace.

Creating the Namespace Folders


We will now create two Namespace folders, one for Finance and one for Human Resources.

Right click on the recently created Namespace and select New Folder.
Give the new folder a name. Click Add to add the Folder targets.

Click Browse.
Make sure the first File Server (EITT-FS01) is the server, select
the HumanResources folder, and click OK.

\\EITT-FS01\HumanResources should be the path shown. Click OK.

We should now see that \\EITT-FS01\HumanResources has been added.


Repeat the same steps to add the HumanResources folder for the second File Server (EITT-
FS02). Once both folders have been added, click OK.

When prompted if you want to create a replication group, select Yes. This will configure the
replication between the two folders on both servers.
Configuring the Replication
In the Replicate Folder Wizard, you can change the replication group and folder names.
I will leave them as default and click Next.

Make sure both folders show and click Next.


Select a Primary member server. In this case, I will make EITT-FS01 the Primary member.
Click Next.
Select the replication topology. Since we only have two servers, we will use the Full
Mesh topology. Click Next.
Select whether to replicate continuously or to set a replication schedule. Click Next.

When ready, click Create.

If everything was set correctly, you should see green check marks. Click Close.
A notice letting you know that replication will not begin until the configuration is picked up
by the members of the replication group will be shown. Click OK.

We can now see the newly replication group.

Repeat the same steps to now create the Finance Namespace folder and Replication Group.
Once done, it should all looks like this:
Testing the DFS Namespace and Replication
We now have DFS Namespaces and Replication for Finance and Human Resources.
To test replication, we can now add a test file and folder to the Finance folder in EITT-FS01

If we browse to EITT-FS02, we can see that the file and folder have been immediately
replicated.
Awesome, replication is now working through DFS!

The beauty about DFS though, is that you don’t need to specify the member servers
when using the folder shares. Instead, you can simply use the Namespace and DFS will
handle which server is used based on certain criteria.
So for the above example, we can simply go to \\EITT.com\EITTShares\Finance and DFS
will present either EITT-FS01 or EITT-FS02. If one of those servers goes down for any
reason, DFS will simply present the available one and shares will continue to work as normal.

In this tutorial, we have learned how to set up and configure DFS Namespace and
Replication between two servers.

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