Server 2012 RTM. I have two physical servers, in two separate data centers 35 miles apart, with a GbE link over metro fibre between them. Both have a large (10TB+) local RAID storage arrays, but given the physical separation there is no physical shared storage. The hosts need to be in a Windows failover cluster (WSFC), so that I can run high-availability VMs and SQL Availability Groups across these two hosts for HA and DR. VM and SQL app data storage is using a SOFS (scale out file server) network share on separate servers.
I need to be able to use DFSR to replicate multi-TB user data file folders between the two local storage arrays on these two hosts for HA and DR. But when I try to add the second server to a DFSR replication group, I get the error:
The specified member is part of a failover cluster that is already a member of the replication group. You cannot add multiple members for the same cluster to a replication group.
I'm not clear why this has to be a restriction. I need to be able to replicate files somehow for HA & DR of the 10TB+ of file storage. I can't use a clustered file server for file storage, as I don't have any shared storage on these two servers. Likewise I can't run a HA single DFSR target for the same reason (no shared storage) - and in any case, this doesn't solve the problem of replicating files between the two hosts for HA & DR. DFSR is the solution for replicating files storage across servers with non-shared storage.
Why would there be a restriction against using DFSR between multiple hosts in a cluster, so long as you are not trying to replicate folders in a shared storage target accessible to both hosts (which would obviously be a problem)? So long as you are not replicating folders in c:\ClusterStorage, there should be no conflict.
Is there a workaround or alternative solution?