Hello

Am planning a network redesign, I want to have a single domain powered by two domain controllers, am just wondering whether it's possible or if anyone has decided to use DFS to load balance the request for data over two servers.

Basically from my understanding of DFS (yet to set-up one) I can have users' data on both servers and then have DFS sync data over at set intervals, so when a user logs on and requests their files it will automatically choose the best server to obtain the data from, therefore load balancing. Am I correct in thinking this?

I plan to use folder redirection alone with no roaming profile, in the hope to speed up logging on, so I am just after speed to access files and of course should a domain controller go down users can still access their files from the remaining DC.

So if anyone has any views on this whether it's possible or am using DFS incorrectly..

Thanks

DFS is pretty nice, and it's not that hard to setup. The key to your scenario is setting up your AD sites correctly. The feature that grabs the data from the closest location is based off that.

Hopefully you have R2, it's got the latest version of DFS.

I've set up something very similar where I work:

3 domain controllers (staff, student and shared data split across them - eg some on servers 1 & 3, 1 & 2, 2 & 3)

the domain controllers have two 1GB NICs that are teamed

User profiles have folder redirection, but not roaming

Seems to be working fine so far