Hi forumites,
Recently our biggest client experienced a power outage in their office building which shut down both of their sites - JHB and CPT, because all of the file servers, domain controllers and the VoIP box are in CPT. I need to remedy this fairly urgently because without CPT, JHB cannot do anything. Their laptops don't have DHCP, they can't authenticate to the network, can't make phone calls, can't access files etc.
I would like to hear from someone who may have setup something similar to this and maybe get some advice on how to implement this in a live system.
Here's some background:
There are two sites - one in JHB and one in CPT. They are each connected to the internet via a 4Mbps Neotel line, with the CPT office currently running the main file server for both sites - ZASRV001. There's also ZASRV002 (JHB), ZASRV003 (CPT), ZAADS001 (CPT), ZAADS002 (CPT) and (ZAVOIP001). The sites are currently connected via a VPN, and all JHB users access services on CPT servers.
What I'm planning on doing:
- Adding ZASRV004 to the loop as the JHB main file server with DFS (is DFS a good idea?), for data redundancy.
- Adding ZAVOIP002 to the loop, somehow making sure that I am able to split Neotel channels between the two sites (Have yet to figure this one out).
- Adding ZAADS003 to the loop, as a backup domain controller for JHB if CPT goes down again.
My main question is that of DFS. Has anyone had any good experience with DFS? I've Google'd around and found tons of articles on DFS, but wanted to hear from someone who may have actually implemented it in a scenario similar to mine. I am terrified of losing client data while implementing DFS, as I need to get all of the data over to ZASRV004 while it's still in CPT, then fly it up to JHB, and hope it works fine.
One of the things I've also noticed about DFS is that there are different sites - ZASITE01. Both of these servers are currently on the same site. Would I be able to change that once the server is in CPT? Or would DFS detect a different IP range and automagically change it to ZASITE02?
Recently our biggest client experienced a power outage in their office building which shut down both of their sites - JHB and CPT, because all of the file servers, domain controllers and the VoIP box are in CPT. I need to remedy this fairly urgently because without CPT, JHB cannot do anything. Their laptops don't have DHCP, they can't authenticate to the network, can't make phone calls, can't access files etc.
I would like to hear from someone who may have setup something similar to this and maybe get some advice on how to implement this in a live system.
Here's some background:
There are two sites - one in JHB and one in CPT. They are each connected to the internet via a 4Mbps Neotel line, with the CPT office currently running the main file server for both sites - ZASRV001. There's also ZASRV002 (JHB), ZASRV003 (CPT), ZAADS001 (CPT), ZAADS002 (CPT) and (ZAVOIP001). The sites are currently connected via a VPN, and all JHB users access services on CPT servers.
What I'm planning on doing:
- Adding ZASRV004 to the loop as the JHB main file server with DFS (is DFS a good idea?), for data redundancy.
- Adding ZAVOIP002 to the loop, somehow making sure that I am able to split Neotel channels between the two sites (Have yet to figure this one out).
- Adding ZAADS003 to the loop, as a backup domain controller for JHB if CPT goes down again.
My main question is that of DFS. Has anyone had any good experience with DFS? I've Google'd around and found tons of articles on DFS, but wanted to hear from someone who may have actually implemented it in a scenario similar to mine. I am terrified of losing client data while implementing DFS, as I need to get all of the data over to ZASRV004 while it's still in CPT, then fly it up to JHB, and hope it works fine.
One of the things I've also noticed about DFS is that there are different sites - ZASITE01. Both of these servers are currently on the same site. Would I be able to change that once the server is in CPT? Or would DFS detect a different IP range and automagically change it to ZASITE02?
