Hello,
I ran into a problem I'm hoping you will be able to help me with.
Next year we will be installing 2 servers in 2 offices. Those servers will replace our current file servers. Our current file servers run Windows Server 2003, and the new ones will run Server 2012 R2.
With the current setup, the data on Server-2003-A is backed up to Server-2003-B each evening using the following Robocopy command (initiated on Server 2003-B):
robocopy \\Server-2003-A IP Address\homedir d:\homedir /SEC /MIR /LOG:something.txt /W:3 /R:2 /NDL /NP
With the new servers we want to implement DFS Replication, the current servers do not have DFS installed.
And this is where it gets tricky.
The recommended way, which I know works fine, is to pre-seed the data by copying from one of the servers to another, with both of those servers eventually ending up in the same replication group. What we want to do is different. We want to copy:
- from Server-2003-A to Server-2012-A
- from Server-2003-B to Server-20012-B
And use Server-2012-A and Server-2012-B in the replication.
I ran a test. I used this Robocopy command on both Server-2003 machines:
Robocopy.exe "D:\Homedir\something" \\Server-2012\E$\Homedir\something /E /B /COPYALL /R:6 /W:5 /XD DfsrPrivate /TEE
(I know the /XD parameter is not needed but at this point I believe it's irrelevant).
Afterwards I compared the file hashes on both Server-2012 machines. As I have feared, the file hashes are different. So at this point pre-seeding the data seems actually pointless.
Is copying the data over the WAN link really the only way to get this working? Or is there a workaround for this?
Kind regards,
Wojciech