DFSR WIndows 2012 R2, preexisting cleanup

Question

_{Thursday, October 22, 2015 8:00 AM}

Hi,

I have two Windows 2012R2 fileservers, one in each site (LIVE and DR).  The LIVE site uses DFSR to replicate various shared folders to the DR site.  Site to site link is 500Mb

Specifically there are 10 shared folders (10TB total size) where DFSR eventually seemed to give up on replicating them.  In fact it seems to have moved a lot of files into the Preexisting folder on the DR server and if you look at the shares on the DR server there's almost no data in them.  Data on the LIVE server is fine.

Effectively I want to re-sync these 10 folders to the DR site.  I was thinking that perhaps doing all 10 at the same time was asking too much, so I'm happy to do the first folder, and then add the second etc. until all are back in sync.

I have removed the 10 folders from the DFSR replication group.

The disk drive that holds these 10 folders on the DR server still has 10TB of space used up by the DFSR Preexisting folders, even though (1) I can see the new DFSR config has successfully replicated to the DR site and (2) I've left the server overnight to see if it would clean itself up.

So ideally I want to clear down this disk drive to make space for me to perform the re-replication of the first shared folder.

From what I've read I thought I might have to call the CleanUpConflictDirectory method

But I fall at the first hurdle:

WMIC.EXE /namespace:\root\microsoftdfs path dfsrreplicatedfolderconfig get replicatedfolderguid,replicatedfoldername

Because the replicated folder no longer exists in the DFSR config.

I think I want to delete the shared folders, delete the DFSR content and that will leave me with 10TB of free space.  Then re-create the shared folders and re-enable replication (one folder at a time)

I know I can delete the shared folders, but how do I best go about clearing down the DFSR Preexisting folders?

Thanks,

Rob.

All replies (1)

_{Sunday, October 25, 2015 8:07 AM ✅Answered}

Hi Rob,

You can stop DFSR service and manually clear/reset the preexisting folder. Here are the steps:

1.       Stop and ALSO disable the DFSR service on <DR> server (don't just simply stop it)

2.       In Windows Explorer open the specific drive

3.       Right click on the "System Volume Information" directory and select Properties\Security

Note: You might need to select the option for "Show hidden files, folders or drives" and also uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" in the folders view options to be able to even see the "System Volume Information" directory.

4.       Grant your user account that you're logged in with (if a member of Administrators group this will also suffice) "Full Control" to the "System Volume Information" directory.

Note: You may get an error on setting security on some files - this is expected.

5.       Open an elevated/Administrative command prompt. Switch to the "<drive letter>:\System Volume Information" directory

6.       Type the command "rmdir DFSR /s"

7.       Enable and re-start the DFSR service on <DR> server

8.       We will then set the <ServerA> server as the Primary member with dfsradmin.exe utility –

Dfsradmin Membership Set /RGName:<RG Name> /RFName:<RF Name> /MemName:<Member Name> /IsPrimary:True

Note: Files will be replicated from ServerA to all other targets. So if there is any newer file on other target servers, backup before starting replication.

Now you should able to recreate the DFS replication group.

Note: To avoiding waiting for a long time as your first try, you can use robocopy to copy data to your DR server before creating the replication group. It could help reduce the time to do the initial replication. Prestaging is always recommended.

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