File Server Design

[cmpwat]

Hi all

 

Looking for some advise with regards to File Server Design.

 

We have Hyper-V running on 2 hosts with iSCSI SAN connected via Cluster Manager for HA. Looking for File Server to manage about 600Gb at the moment.

 

Do I just create 1 File Server with 600Gb of space or

 

Do I create 2 new servers to act as Cluster Hosts, with an iSCSI Connection to a SAN LUN and then create a File Server Role in that new cluster? i.e. cluster within a HA Cluster?

 

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[mukz]

I would create the file server within the current cluster. Also look into setting up DFS

[Oaktech]

yeah, as above. install hyperv, create a cluster, configure a highly available file serve on the cluster. I'm managing about 6TB total, of which 3TB is just one server. I thought about DFS but as the single server is HA with seperate VHDs for each type of thing it does and changing everything to another server takes about 30 minutes of GPO editing, I felt it was just overcomplicating things.

[cmpwat]

So with DFS, I am assuming i need the same amount of storage on 2 file servers (one on each host)?

 

Also, how does migrating existing shares and permissions from the old server work? I do not want to have to setup all the shares and permissions again

[Oaktech]

So with DFS, I am assuming i need the same amount of storage on 2 file servers (one on each host)?

 

Also, how does migrating existing shares and permissions from the old server work? I do not want to have to setup all the shares and permissions again

 

File server migration toolkit

https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/114259-migrate-file-server-using-the-file-server-migration-toolkit-within-server-2012-r2

 

or Robocopy and export/import the lanman registry key containing the shares...

[cmpwat]

File server migration toolkit

https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/114259-migrate-file-server-using-the-file-server-migration-toolkit-within-server-2012-r2

 

or Robocopy and export/import the lanman registry key containing the shares...

 

Thanks for the heads up about fsmt. I know about the lanman key, but didn't know if it would work on dfs..... Do I copy the data first, then key and then dfs?