DFS Improvements in Windows 2008 R2

Windows 2008 R2 will feature some major DFS improvements, following is an explanation of them:

1. Support for Windows Failover Clusters

In Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Failover clusters can be configured to be part of a replication group. Windows Failover clustering technology enables administrators to configure services and applications to be highly available.

Busy hub servers located in the datacenter that replicate with many branch office servers are perfect candidates for clustered DFS Replication. These servers are critical to the replication infrastructure and administrators expect high availability from these servers. A failure (hardware/software) on such crucial servers has the potential to bring all replication activity to a standstill.

2. Read-only Replicated Folders

Often, customers use the DFS Replication service to publish data from a central server out to many branch office servers. A typical characteristic of this data is that it is created/modified at one location (typically the hub/datacenter server) and changes aren’t expected to occur on any of the other member servers. Usually, administrators configure strict ACLs for the replicated data to ensure that changes aren’t made by end-users in branch offices.

Configuring and maintaining strict ACLs to block accidental modifications or recovering data that has been accidentally deleted entail high administrative overheads. A new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 called ‘Read-only replicated folders’, offers an easy to manage…

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