Multiple-office file server

ddrueding

ddrueding

Fixture
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I think I need to investigate setting some kind of distributed file system. I need a single drive letter at every desk in every office that points to the same share. Unfortunatly, the files in question (mostly Quickbooks) are too big to simply transfer over the VPN on demand. Therefore I need some kind of caching thing, or a file system that can handle the syncs and file lockings to make sure two users aren't editing the same file at the same time.

There are hardware "black boxes" that do this kind of thing, but the mostly cost $10k or more. I was thinking of using JungleDisk (which uses Amazon's S3 for a backend), but that is an added cost and no local caching.

There are existing Windows Server 2003 boxes on each end, so if there is an implementation that can use that it would be great.

Hopefully someone here has done this kind of thing before.


Thanks in advance,
David
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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NFS sometimes has issues with file locking when it's used in a distributed fashion, though those issues may have been specific to some implementations I've used. It certainly does work - and you don't need Solaris; Microsoft has been offering Services for UNIX as a free download for quite a while now, which includes an NFS server (I remember having to pay $100/client to get Windows 98 to talk to NFS...). NFS is also a mainstay tool for Linux.

Windows Server also offers dfs, distributed file system, which uses the Active Directory replication system and some hacks to Windows' DNS implementation to create a "universal" network share. It has headaches of its own, but it works for most things. I have a client doing fairly complex replication of Autodesk stuff at offices in three states through dfs, and it's working OK for them.

Solaris DOES have something called ZFS, which is an even distibuted-er file system, which is only available for it and OSX, but I've only read about it, never used it.
 
LiamC

LiamC

Storage Is My Life
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Feb 7, 2002
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Mercutio said:
Solaris DOES have something called ZFS, which is an even distibuted-er file system, which is only available for it and OSX, but I've only read about it, never used it.
Click to expand...

We use zfs at work, but correct me if I'm wrong, zfs isn't cacheable.
 
ddrueding

ddrueding

Fixture
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Sweet guys. I had them just order three smoothwalls and three whitebox 1TB servers to handle this. I'll have a while to play with it before it goes live.

The smoothwalls are going to be fun; each office has 2 internet connections (T-1 and Cable/DSL) that should be tied in somehow. One of the locations also gets a blue interface.
 
ddrueding

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,671
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Some background on my progress (for the record) and then more questions.

Thanks to information here, I switched to pfsense for the firewalls and it is working great. I may begin using it for all my firewalls in the future.

I have the new servers in place. They are all running 2003 R2 SP2 because of the better dfs namespace management tools. They are all domain controllers as well. Sites and Services has been configured to identify which servers and workstations are at each site, and connections between the offices are priced appropriately. Permissions and file changes are replicating as desired; everything is looking great EXCEPT:

dfs with replication does not support file locking across sites. There is no way to tell if someone at another location is in the same file you are making changes, and the last person to save wins.

This is a pretty significant drawback to this implementation, and I was hoping for some insight into how to manage it. If there is a technical solution, that would be great; worst case is I build something into the client's work flow to minimize data loss.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

~D
 
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