Is it ok to manually copy files to non-primary DFS Replication partner

[d***@hotmail.com]

When I say manually copy.. I mean NTBackup on Primary member. Restore
into folders on non-primary. Check security settings. Reset up shares
to be identical. Kick off replication between the 2 x servers.

I am talking restoring 298GB and pre-populating the non-primary
member.

If this is not recommended. How else is one suppose to try speed up
this replication process. Copying 298GB over a slow link will take
forever and a day.

I just want to be clear on wether this can be done or not.

Has anyone sucessfully done this??.

Thanks

Daz

[d***@hotmail.com]

Forgot to mention that both servers are Server 2003R2 :) and both DC's

[Rudolf Meier]

Hi

Post by d***@hotmail.com
When I say manually copy.. I mean NTBackup on Primary member. Restore
into folders on non-primary. Check security settings. Reset up shares
to be identical. Kick off replication between the 2 x servers.
I am talking restoring 298GB and pre-populating the non-primary
member.
If this is not recommended. How else is one suppose to try speed up
this replication process. Copying 298GB over a slow link will take
forever and a day.
I just want to be clear on wether this can be done or not.
Has anyone sucessfully done this??.

Not exactly this. But I had a server that stopped replicating. And after I
got it online again, it started to resynchronize. And it worked perfectly.
So, I think the same thing would happen if you do this backup-story (because
that's the recommended way to do it).

Rudolf

[d***@hotmail.com]

OK bit of an update on this.
I started to worry as it was taking a while to sync up. Although as
long as you have your Primary data set to Primary on the sync there is
nothing to worry about, you just let it take its time. When snyc'ing
is finished, you will get event logs telling you that each namespace
is now fully sync'd. As soon as you get these events in the DFS
eventlog you are pretty safe to transfer users over to DFS.

Second day running and all files seem to be replicating in full mesh.
Users have not complained and are happily working away (a lot faster,
using local data).

So yes it did save me a lot of time running the backup / restore. DFS
still has to go through all these files and work out a bit of a
database, so this still takes time.

[Jeffrey Randow]

It still compares the files to see if there are any updates on the
primary... Still, it is faster than the old DFS-R implementations...
---
Jeffrey Randow
***@gmail.com
Windows Networking MVP 2001-2006
http://www.networkblog.net

Post by d***@hotmail.com
OK bit of an update on this.
I started to worry as it was taking a while to sync up. Although as
long as you have your Primary data set to Primary on the sync there is
nothing to worry about, you just let it take its time. When snyc'ing
is finished, you will get event logs telling you that each namespace
is now fully sync'd. As soon as you get these events in the DFS
eventlog you are pretty safe to transfer users over to DFS.
Second day running and all files seem to be replicating in full mesh.
Users have not complained and are happily working away (a lot faster,
using local data).
So yes it did save me a lot of time running the backup / restore. DFS
still has to go through all these files and work out a bit of a
database, so this still takes time.