Spreading roaming profiles over multiple servers with the Distributed File System in Windows Server 2003

Problem:

Set up a network with multiple servers and roaming profiles for the users in such a way that they can log into the domain if any of the servers are up and running.

Solution:

We set up two Win2K3 servers, and one Win2K Pro client computer. Connected them all to a hub, and made a single domain.

To establish roaming profiles we had to create a shared folder on one of the servers. This folder was included in the path in the in the profiles tab of properties for a particular user. At this point we could use our roaming profiles to log into the domain, however this was dependent on the server with the shared folder being up and running.

In order to make the login process independent of which server was running we used the Distributed File System or DFS. The steps to do this were first, create a new domain DFS root. Next we choose the server with the shared folder to be the host server. We choose the shared folder with the profiles to be the DFS root. We added a link to the root. This is just basically a new name for the shared folder in its new incarnation as DFS folder. To enable replication we right-clicked on the link and choose Create Replica. Then we specified another share as the target on the second server. We used automatic replication which is only available for a domain DFS, and specified ring topology for file replication. File Replication service must be running on all target servers for this to work. Finally we had to change the path specified in the user properties profile tab to reflect the change from the original shared folder to the new DFS link.

Reference:

Tech Forum: Distributed File System (DFS)

By Dr Nitin Paranjape