Re: [Networker] Windows DFS Junction warning messages

In regard to: Re: [Networker] Windows DFS Junction warning messages,...:

We haven't (yet) implemented DFS yet, but my understanding is:

I'm not a Windows guy, so I have to believe there's something going on
here that I don't understand.  Why is it warning me about DFS

mountpoints

on the Windows system?  Is it that

- DFS mountpoints work more like a symlink, in that the data actually
   resides elsewhere on the system but it's presented to the user or
   client system as if it was under K:?


Yes. You define a DFS namespace, and then mount the volume into that name
space. And the volume can come from non-local machines.

Hence you can have a DFS namespace "Users", which does *not* have to be
defined on one server; multiple servers can see it.

And you can mount volumes from multiple non-local servers under it.

So you define a DFS namespace "Users". And in there you mount drive H:
from Server-#1, and drive G: from Server-#2, etc.

And it all shows up as "\Users", for whatever clients have access to that
namespace ...

or

- DFS mountpoints are considered non-local volumes, akin to an NFS mount
   on UNIX/Linux?


AFAIK, yes. From NW's point of view, apparently.


Thanks Michael (and others!), that helps a lot.

After talking with our Windows administrators and with Michael's
explanation, I now have a better understanding of what's going on.  Our
Windows admins also explained that, just as Michael mentioned, some of
the storage that's mounted under there would be local to (one of) the
servers, but there will also potentially be some storage that's not
local to the system.

We have two systems that have the DFS (directory) namespace loaded.  Based
on what's been explained to me, it seems like these two servers are
therefore acting like a proxy, or perhaps a failover/HA system, to help
clients find where the storage actually is.

NetWorker's warning about the DFS Junction/Mountpoint is essentially
telling me that NetWorker considers anything in that "namespace" to be
non-local.  In our case a lot of the storage *will* be local to the same
system, but NetWorker doesn't know that (or care).

The good news for my environment is that I can essentially ignore the
warnings, because any storage that we would mount under the DFS Junction,
whether the storage is actually local to the system or not, would be
getting backed up via its true path, since we're backing up all the
Windows servers that would be exporting storage.  This might not be
true for all environments, but it is for our environment.

The caveat is that when a customer needs a file restored, although they
may know the file as \\AD.NDSU.EDU\Users\username\myfile.txt, that's
the "DFS path", not the actual location that the file resides in.  To
perform the recovery, our admins will need to know what actual server
and path would be mapped to the DFS path.

Thanks again,

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT 
edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure                  701-231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building                             701-231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164

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