Category Archives: DFSR

DFSR Troubleshooting and considerations

by in DFSR, Infrastructure Checks, Powershell, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

When you have a few DFS servers, everything seems fairly manageable. Add a few more…Yeah… All good… Get an issue, oh joy! Look at all these servers I need to examine in minute detail!

So I’ll start with an MS Blog that deals with config mistakes

Common DFSR Mistakes and Oversights

Might be a few banged heads on the desk (your own!) when you read some of that!

And put together by my own fair hand, some troubleshooting from the DFSR Management tool and some useful DFSR Diag commands

DFSR Management Tool

Verify topology simply checks the servers are contactable, which is useful, but does not verify replication.

DFS Management includes the ability to run a propagation test and generate two types of diagnostic reports—a propagation report and a general health report:

Propagation test    Tests replication progress by creating a test file in a replicated folder.

Propagation report    Generates a report that tracks the replication progress for the test file created during a propagation test.

Health report    Generates a report that shows the health of replication and replication efficiency.

To create a diagnostic report for DFS replication

Click Start , point to Administrative Tools , and then click DFS Management .

In the console tree, under the Replication node, right-click the replication group that you want to create a diagnostic report for, and then click Create Diagnostic Report .

Follow the instructions in the Diagnostic Report Wizard.

Perform all 3 tests and save the resulting xml/html report file.

DFSRdiag

This is the command line tool for DFSR – useful commands are:

dfsrdiag ReplicationState /all – verbose output

pollad – checks in with Active Directory

List DFS replication groups:

dfsradmin rg list

List replicated folders in a replication group:

dfsradmin rf list /rgname:<REPL_GROUP>

List members of a replication group:

dfsradmin mem list /rgname:<REPL_GROUP>

List the local folders that correspond to replicated folders of a replication group:

dfsradmin membership list /rgname:<REPL_GROUP> /attr:RfName,MemName,LocalPath

Show backlog between 2 members of a replication group:

dfsrdiag backlog /rgname:<REPL_GROUP> /rfname:<REPL_FOLDER> /smem:<SRV_A> /rmem:<SRV_B> [/v]

dfsrdiag backlog /rgname:<REPL_GROUP> /rfname:<REPL_FOLDER> /smem:<SRV_B> /rmem:<SRV_A> [/v]

Using the ‘Replicate Now’ command within the GUI or command line, kicks off replication again but is more used for when you have a schedule and want to replicate out of that schedule, whereas we can use it to tell it to start replication again.

Within the DFSR GUI – choose the Replication group, choose the ‘Connections’ tab and right click the Sending Server (usually you have a specific server that’s authoritative, but you can choose the sending member to be whichever you believe is most up to date and Microsofts black magic algorithm will attempt to resolve any file conflicts) and choose ‘Replicate Now’

A huge problem in DFSR is when you have an issue with Conflicted, Deleted and pre-existing files. Thankfully if you do get a conflict and file loss, they become Deleted…And you can get them back. This is the MS blog on this, but a few years ago when I had to do this, it took a great deal of work. It’s not just about getting the files back – who’s going to know which one they were working on? Or which is the most up to date? You do end up needing end user involvement and for me personally, that was making the data recovered available for a certain amount of time with the users expressly informed that they needed to check it themselves and there was just no way of doing that for them.

Restoring Conflicted, Deleted and PreExisting files with Windows PowerShell

DFSR Setup and considerations

by in Automation, DFSR, Infrastructure Checks, Microsoft Server, Powershell | Leave a comment

DFSR is actually relatively easy to setup.

There’s no need for me to re-invent the wheel or explain in tiny detail, as most of it has all been done before.

So, to start

MS blog about how it can work for you.

DFS Replication in Windows Server 2012 R2

How to set it up

DFSR Setup with screenshots

Another MS blog about how if you have a huge estate, you better use DFSRADMIN command line! (Yeah you’d better!)

DFS Replication and command line

 

DFSR Monitoring Script (with email!)

by in Automation, DFSR, Infrastructure Checks, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ah, good old DFSR, with it’s highly complex management algorithm that is at times, a Law Unto Itself. What do you mean that file is newer? I’m going to overwrite it with THIS one!

DFSR is also full of false truths and true lies. Event ID’s that don’t tell you what’s wrong. Logs that make out that everything is broken when it isn’t… Weeks of over written data that no one knew was happening… But sadly if you don’t have hardware replication, you probably use this. Don’t get me wrong, when it works properly, it’s great, but there’s sometimes quite a management overhead, plus a lot of time and experience involved when it needs to get fixed.

This link has an amazing script that was similar to part of my checks in a previous role, whereby I had a few scripts running as part of Daily Checks for the team, that reported on DFSR, Exchange and AD. It emailed pretty pictures and everything (you know how people love pretty pictures!) So as my first post towards Checks and DFSR management – the following link is fantastic.

DFSR Monitoring Script

I will say though, as part of any infrastructure related checks or notifications, it’s what works for you and your team. I had a great Project Manager once who said that if you get the process right, then everything works. If the process fails and a person followed the process, then the process needs changing. Which stands to reason – you need the process that people need to follow, that takes into consideration everything that needs to happen and there’s no point having a barrage of alerts sent to email, if the person involved doesn’t read them, understand them and put down somewhere he’s done all of the above.

Fix home drive permissions with powershell

by in DFSR, Microsoft Server, Powershell | Leave a comment

Honestly, there’s some times when…Ok, ALOT of times when you feel like cold water has been thrown over the burden on your shoulders and within a few minutes of googling, someone you’ve never met will save your life. This is one of those 😉

Hundreds of home drives under DFS…And everyone has access to everyone’s drives (thankfully said drives are empty). Then as you create more, you realise that even new ones are doing the same thing. Thankfully, this wonderful person already wrote a powershell script to fix it!

You can see from the comments a slight change needs to be made and if I remember rightly, I think you need to use powershell 2 (or a less modern version anyway)

Fix NTFS home drive permissions script

If you’re using DFS or folder redirection with home drives the following MS KB also helps!

How to dynamically create security-enhanced redirected folders or home folders