[Samba] DFS in Production Environment

[Klaus Hartnegg]

On 22.12.2016 at 11:32 Vinicius Lehmann wrote:
> I wonder if they have had experience with DFS to provide high
> availability in file sharing.

If you simply point a DFS name to two shared directories with the same 
contents, different users can edit the same file simultaneously (because 
locking works only within the same server). Then when both close the 
file, the changes of the first saved version are overwritten by the 
later saved version.

You can give DFS targets different priorities. This will prevent the 
problem in most cases, but not in all. It can still happen if a PC at 
one time cannot reach the preferred server for whatever reason, for 
example network overload.

Alternatively you can disable all DFS targets but one. This does not 
completely prevent downtime, but at least it can make it a lot shorter 
(enabling a target is faster than restoring data from backup).

I do not know how to set priorities or disable targets in Samba, I'm 
only doing this in Windows.

Now we only need a way to replicate directories with Samba. Windows can 
do this with DFS-R, but samba apparently cannot. And Windows cannot 
replicate between Windows and Samba either, only between Windows and 
Windows.