VM File Servers advice

[Eben]

Hi

 

I have to files servers virtual

 

1 - Windows 2003 SP2 - public shares 300gb data (on san)

1 - Windows 2008 R2 SP1 - staff / student profiles and home directories 600gb (iscsi nas with xcopy to another server nightly)

 

I have been looking at DFRS but have been reading posts on here advising it is better for situations with less writes to files.

 

Will be looking at webdav for ipad access to home directories... (any ideas).

 

Would the best approach to be to move the 2003 server in to the 2008 R2 server and change drive mappings so we have a single VM to maintain and still continue with DPM backups (guest level) and xcopy nightly for peace of mind as this server will be to big for my datacore san.

 

Thanks

[zag]

We use Xcopy.

 

We have 2 identical 2008 R2 600GB SSD virtual file servers. Both have exactly the same structure. I use xcopy once a week to sync them.

 

robocopy c:\data \\rgf2\c$\data /MIR /s /e /XF file autorun.inf

 

This effectively gives us a complete file server mirror to swap over to at any time.

 

We also take Veeam backups every night for complete peace of mind. DFRS in my opinion is complete overkill for our kind of scenario.

Edited May 17, 2013 by zag

[k-strider]

I use DFRS on home drives but only allow 1 target so everyone always connects to one file server because of quotas really. but in the past i've failed it over manually to the other one and no one noticed whilst i repaired the other so it does work nicely (though you need to have everyone mapped via DFS not the actual server\share).

you can scheduled replication windows if you don't want it to replicate during the day that's no problem.