DFS is great, but it has a serious limitation: If one user opens a document or file at one location it is not locked for all locations. If two users modify the same document from two different locations you will experience data loss.
Check out Globalscape's WAFS (Wide Area File Services previously known as Availl): http://www.globalscape.com/wafs One other solution is Peerlock, which integrates with DFS. We tested it for a client and when we ran into scalability issues their support department just shrugged their shoulders so we had to walk away from it: http://www.dfsfilelocking.com/ Peter -----Original Message----- From: Angus Scott-Fleming [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 7:02 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Multiple engineering offices and sharing large files Anybody here running a small-business network with multiple geographically- remote (e.g. Arizona, Wyoming, Maine, Florida) offices for which the main office and the remote office both need access to the same large files (e.g. CAD drawings, large scientific datasets, GIS data)? The files are way too large to process over a VPN as Internet latency would clobber processing performance, but the home office needs to have the same data that the field office has so they can both work on the data, if not simultaneously, then on the same day. I don't think a TS setup would be reliable enough for this situation as the main=office's Internet connectivity isn't the most reliable. Servers will probably be Windows SBS servers as I think SBS can handle the number of users they have for Exchange (up to 250 users, right?). I'm thinking some sort of 'rsync'. but I'd be interested in how others have dealt with this. Related to this, how do you deal with email in a situation like this? I'm showing my ignrance about Exchange here, but is it possible to have a primary Exchange server in the main office and have each satellite office with its own mail server that draws from the main office but stores mail locally so local users can continue to have access to their email when the main office's lines are down, or is this something that the SBS-version of Exchange can't handle? ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
