I'm having some DFS access issues.  Articles like

"How to configure DFS to use fully qualified domain names in referrals" Article ID: 244380

talk about using Get-DfsnRoot in Powershell to switch to DNS FQDN name types.  And the article says it applies to Windows 2008 SP2 and above.  So, I upgraded my Powershell to 3.0 on my W08R2SP1 box but Get-DfsnRoot is not there.  What do I have to do to get this functionality in Powershell?

Thanks!

We have found that if processes on multiple machines attempt to open a networked structured storage file forreading they will occasionally report ‘A lock violation has occurred’ (STG_E_LOCKVIOLATION). 

FYI: We use the flags according tohttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa380341(v=vs.85).aspx to ensure we only deny writers on reading the file. 

I have created a very simple C# test app and can reliably reproduce the error.

The API under test is simply:

    private static void PerformTheTest(string filename)
    {
      NativeMethods.IStorage stgOpen;
      // Use interop to open the structured storage file.
      // According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa380341(v=vs.85).aspx:
      //
      //  To support the single-writer, multireader, direct mode, the first flag combination is the valid grfMode parameter for the writer. The second flag combination is valid for readers.
      //    STGM_DIRECT_SWMR | STGM_READWRITE | STGM_SHARE_DENY_WRITE
      //    STGM_DIRECT_SWMR | STGM_READ | STGM_SHARE_DENY_NONE
      //
      //  In direct mode, one of the following three combinations are valid.
      //    STGM_DIRECT | STGM_READWRITE | STGM_SHARE_EXCLUSIVE
      //    STGM_DIRECT | STGM_READ | STGM_SHARE_DENY_WRITE
      //    STGM_DIRECT | STGM_READ | STGM_SHARE_EXCLUSIVE
      var errorCode = NativeMethods.StgOpenStorage(filename,
        null,
        NativeMethods.STGM.DIRECT | NativeMethods.STGM.SHARE_DENY_WRITE | NativeMethods.STGM.READ,
        IntPtr.Zero,
        0,
        out stgOpen);
      if (errorCode != 0) Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHR(errorCode);
      // Release the storage.
      // NOTE: If we don't do this we run out of memory
      // e.g. There is insufficient memory available to complete operation. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80030008 (STG_E_INSUFFICIENTMEMORY))
      Marshal.ReleaseComObject(stgOpen);
    }

This has been tested in a Windows Server 2008 R2 environment and can be reproduced within minutes – often within seconds – using just three machines.

Regards

Andy

I am testing Server 2012 and connecting to a volume on a SAN.

I select New Volume and select the disk it finds on our SAN, take the remaining defaults.  The new volume is created ok and appears in the Volumes Pane.  However, this is where I seem to run into later difficulties.

I might add I can use and add shares etc etc, but when I look at the disks section, then I now have two new disks appearing, both with the correct capacity.  One is shown as unallocated with 0.00B and partition GPT, and the other is set as 3.64TB in the unallocated column, but has partition Unknown and set to Read-Only.

I thought this odd when I first set up, but as I was able to use for testing with shares etc, I didn't follow up.

Trouble is, now I'm trying to set a cluster up and when I run the validate configuration, it fails indicating it is seeing two identical disks (which I assume is the result of the problems above).

Actual error:

Two disks have been found on node xxx.domain that cannot be
distinguished from one another. The disks involved have disk signature
{4ab77445-ecc9-497e-b5eb-70cdefa2ddaf}, SCSI page 83h VPD descriptor
600C0FF00014181E2418715101000000, SCSI page 80h VPD Serial Number
00c0ff14181e00002418715101000000. Please verify the storage configuration. You
must either mask (unpresent, detach) one of these LUNs at this node, or, run
validation and specify a disk list that includes only one of these disks, for
example by using the Test-Cluster cmdlet in Windows PowerShell.

There is only one lun that I've attached to, so not sure why this is happening and displaying the two disks mentioned previously.

Any help much appreciated.

Regards

Ian

Hello,

When I run a DFS health report I get a couple hundred errors on Excel temp files. (named random characters)

I guess this makes since and is not a problem, but I'm wondering if there is a way to either ignore or aknoledge these so they report shows there are no errors when everthing is otherwise working.

Thank you.

We have a problem while saving Excel files that are "shared" (multiple user editing) in DFS replicated network folder.

Environment:
2 x Server 2008 R2 (hosting shared Excel files in a network share, with two-way DFS replication between them)
The files are being edited on a single primary server ONLY, secondary server is a passive backup and does not accept connections if primary is available.
Users use mainly Excel 2010 on Windows 7, and also some use Excel 2007 on Vista.

The issue sometimes occurs when the users are saving a shared Excel file - the original file is deleted, and the TEMP file is not renamed to the original name, and remains like "2BE72000". I haven't been able to reproduce the issue myself, but apparently this is happening quite often (we have several thousand excel files open at a time, and we get a few cases per day).

The change that clearly triggers this is the DFSR replication. If the DFSR replication is turned on for server folder containing the shared excel files, then the issues start, and go away if DFSR is turned off. We have no problems at all with ordinary, not "shared" Excel files.

Also, no event (no sharing violation, no conflict resolution or other) is logged in DFS log when the original file is deleted and temp not renamed.

Why is Excel sometimes not renaming its temp files? As far as I understand, DFSR does not try to replicate a file if it's still in use (we get quite a few sharing violations). Therefore if Excel still has a lock on file, DFSR will not intervene and wait for Excel to finish what it was doing. Or am I wrong?

We have a changing backlog size. Usually 0-20 items, and at peak times somedays it rises for short periods to 1000 or more items. I have not noticed any correlation between the backlog size and the frequency of shared excel issues. Backlog size and replication delay does not cause a problem for us, as long as no data is lost.

The things I have already tried after searching and not finding anything that fits on the net:
Tuned up DFSR: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/03/31/tuning-replication-performance-in-dfsr-especially-on-win2008-r2.aspx
Started a thread on Excel TechNet: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/excel/thread/4e7bd78b-dc72-4dbd-a459-edabc44acbfd

Thank You for Your help!
Sincerely
Vince

I have Server Storage 2008 and setup iSCSi Target but I can't connect from any computer in network. I have other iscsi device works fine.

Event ID 10 and 113 generated:  "Login request failed. The login response packet is given in the dump data."

We have implemented Windows 2008r2 DFS. I have a question on replication folders.

We have a folder/share that has several (but not all) of its sub folders currently replicating to a remote server. 

Now we would like to replicate the entire share and all of the subfolder to a different server at a newly added remote site. This site would have the complete share which of course includes all of the subfolders that are replicated to the other smaller remote sites.

I've created a new multipurpose replication group, but when I try to create the replication folder of the complete share to the newly added remote site I get an error.

The path entered (e:\completeshare) conflicts with another replicated folder path (e:\completeshare\test) for the replication group (test)

Is there anyway to enable this type of replication, I'm having trouble understanding what the problem is, I've been googling but so far no luck.

We have a windows server 2008 R2 machine and this server is acting as a domain controller as well. And all of our client machines are using Windows 7 professional and connected to this domain.

There is one shared folder named “softwares”  on one of our server machine within the domain wherein we have put all our licensed softwares and have shared this folder with only IT administrators(for security purpose).

Now, whenever we connect to this folder in any of the client machines using \\appliationserver\softwares we are getting the error message as shown below

“ you do not have permission to access \\applicationserver\softwares. Contact your network administrator to request access”

Now we want the client machines to ask for user name and password instead of showing this error msg, so that our IT administrator can enter their name user name and password and access it on client machine.

Please note that we can map this folder using the option “ connect using different credential” but we don’t want to map it. We want to access it from “RUN” only. 

Any help will be appreciated. 

Thanks in advance.

Farhan Ziya

Hi,

we have a situation, two Hyper-v hosts if failover cluster with mpio to a single iSCSI target, all servers (guests) are running from the iSCSI target using the iSCSI as a clustered shared volume.

problem is we also need to implement a clustered shared volume for file services, I cant see any obvious way this can be accomplished without re-provisioning the iSCSI storage into multiple luns, some for hyper-v cluster, one for file services

is there a way to do this without re-provisioning the iSCSI SAN?

I have a server connected to two raid arrays. 

Each raid array is configured as RAID5.

After bringing up Windows 2012 with the raid arrays attached; I went to Server Manager and found one of the arrays under disks and was able to configure it as a GPT partition.

However; the other RAID5 array was not in the list of disks.  I found it under Storage Pools.

Why is Windows 2012 not showing this as a disk that I can configure as a disk?  I don't want to use this RAID5 array as a storage pool.

How can I get this RAID5 array to show up under disks...where it should have been in the first place?

I have 6 DFS servers – 2 each in 3 locations.  Each server has 4 DFSRoots. The configuration started on a Windows2008 Std virtual Hyper-V server. Currently the servers are at Windows2008 SP2 Std. 

About a month ago I upgraded the OS on one server to Windows2008 R2 SP1 Std. This server (Server2) is marked as the “last among equals”.  As such users rarely connect to it.  Shortly after this when the “first among equals” server (Server1) was down for maintenance, we noticed a pronounced delay (90+ seconds) when users were connected to Server2 and trying to open Excel& Word documents, but not for WordPerfect (yes we still use this) and PDF documents.

In researching this I found the article “How to configure DFS to use fully qualified domain names in referrals” at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/cc732006(d=printer).aspx which would be helpful, no doubt.  Preparing to make this change I noticed the problem server - Server2 the W08R2SP1 server - returned a Site name of “No Site Association” when running:

Dfsutil /Root \\<DomainName>\<ShareName> against all four DFS share names.

Even though the DFS GUI shows the proper site information.  Also the other 5 servers all show the correct site info for Server2.

So I found an article suggesting running:

dfsutil /RemFtRoot /Server:<TargetServer> /Share:<TargetShare> &

dfsutil /addFtRoot /Server:<TargetServer> /Share:<TargetShare>

would correct this.  The remove completed successfully. The “add” failed with the message “Could not execute the command successfully. SYSTEM ERROR - Cannot complete this function.”

In the end I had to use the DFS GUI to add the server back into the system and the site info still indicates: “No site association”. Any suggestions as to how I can fix the Site situation?

Thanks!

Hello,

  We get the following error on our DFS Replication.

The DFS Replication version vector size has exceeded configured limits, which could cause reduced replication or server performance.  A large version vector size could cause degraded DFS replication performance, poor responsiveness of DFS replication management operations,  and excessive memory and CPU resource consumption. Contact Customer Support Services to analyze the overall health of your DFS Replication deployment.

Any idea what this vector size is, and how to increase it?

I've found an article at a forum talking about a quota issue - we have no quota activated. What we have are lots (milions) of files and lots of folders.

About six to eight months ago we instituted a DFS plan for my location. I have no control of the configuration of DFS since the central office IT configures and monitors our servers, but we are using disk quota's on our DFS disks. The DFS is being used to store user directories, user desktops, and soon user favorites. We hope to store the entire user profile once we are all on Win7 and we are currently enforcing folder size disk quotas so users don't go over there storage allowance.

Our WAN team contacted us because during the day the traffic between the two servers is averaging 12 to 17 MBs. Though not causing any major bandwidth issues it is causing our costs for our circuit between the two buildings to go up.

DFS-R was configured like so
Installed on two file servers in our location they are in two seperate subnets and located in two seperate buildings.
The DFS structure was defined like so across both servers

4 shares UsersL1, UsersL2, UsersL3, and UsersL4
   these DFS shares are sperated on to 4 drive partitions plus a staging drive. Defined as T, U, V, W, and X drive is the staging drive. The size and share structure is duplicated across both servers.

T drive UsersL1 partition size 254 GB with 83 GB in use  Staging Quota 20GB, 496 users  disk quota 500 MB
U drive UsersL2 partition size 45 GB with 30 GB in use    Staging Quota 4 GB, 52 users    disk quota 750 MB
V drive UsersL3 partition size 129 GB with 27 GB in use  Staging Quota 8 GB, 58 users    disk quota 2 GB
W drive UsersL4 partition size 74 GB with 34 GB in use   Staging Quota 8 GB, 6 users     no quota unlimited
X drive DFS Root storage size 80 GB with 30 GB in use

I had found threads where the storage team from Microsoft prefers the staging drive on a seperate spindle. which is not an option, since our servers are raid configured and central office did it this way. It also states that the staging sizes and quota should be as large as possible, but the person who is configuring this does not agree and simply wants us to turn off quotas. Which is not an option locally, because our users tend to ignore requests for work data only.
We know for a fact the bandwidth issue is only DFS traffic.
We know for a fact that if we turn off disk quotas the traffic drops dramatically.
Why would disk quotas on the disk level be affecting band width I have one or two users that are at there disk quota storage limit but its not enough to warrant such bandwidth issues.

For some reason DFS reports the following error every couple of days at 4 AM on different drives, though at no point are any of the drives out of disk space.

The DFS Replication service encountered errors replicating one or more files because adequate free space was not available on volume T:. This volume contains the replicated folder, the staging folder, or both. Please make sure that enough free space is available on this volume for replication to proceed. The service will retry replication periodically. Additional Information: Staging Folder: X:\UsersL1DfsrPrivateStaging\ContentSet{94DFBE4F-F7E4-47E3-B924-9DA0B2E4ECAE}-{3C8F55D1-C0C6-4C4A-B88D-D4A917D93934} Replicated Folder Root: T:\usersL1 Replicated Folder Name: UsersL1 Replicated Folder ID: 94DFBE4F-F7E4-47E3-B924-9DA0B2E4ECAE Replication Group Name: ccccc.jjjjjjjjj.sssss.nn.uu\mmmmmmmmm\usersl1 Replication Group ID: 95DA0522-B032-48A5-9553-BFFC16D493A7 Member ID: 3C8F55D1-C0C6-4C4A-B88D-D4A917D93934 Volume: 82F47F73-C1E3-476C-A7EA-A56352EAB7E8

The analyst in charge at the central office blames our issue on Disk level quotas and says turn it off and our local IT Manager wants in on. I look up DFS-R configs and it seems we are not configured correctly for the size and level of usage we are using. And at no time have I found any indication that Disk Quotas can't be used or causes problems

Any suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated.

I created a shared folder on my server and in the Share Permissions, i have Everyone full control. And for the Security tab, i have added a domain group (lets call it group abc) with modify permission. However when i used an account which is part of the group abc to access the share, it returns with an error saying "you do not have permissions to access ........" 

what am i missing here? 

For all domain user accounts the home folder is assigned to a shared folder in storage server.

I can see the data of half the user accounts in our storage server but for the rest of the user account data is not in that shared folder. Please help me!

Hello

I am using FSRM on Windows Storage Server Standard Edition 2008. I wish to set up a file screen which will block certain files from being saved in selected folders located on the root of the drive and all their sub-folders.

When I configure a new file screen I can define a path. However, I need to apply the same file screen to many folders.

Do I have to create a separate file screen for each folder or is there a way to define multiple paths within a single file screen?

Thank you.

Hello experts,

I deployed two PCs with the Windows 7 via MDT 2012. Then I found that it could not connect to the samba network drive. I'm pretty sure the samba is fine, as the rest of our PCs don't have any problem. I disabled the firewall and without any anti-Virus software. I changed the LAN management and set the samba port 139 and 445 in smb.conf. 

Any of you have some ideas about this situation?

Thank you in advance!

BRs

Yumin