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I'm looking into setting up a new domain for a client. There will be a small group of people with desktops in an office about 500 miles away from their hosted domain environment. The hosted domain environment will consist of a DC, Exchange server, and a file server. They will connect to the hosted environment using a router that does the VPN for them, so everything will appear to be in their office. The users want to share files on this file server, but the link will be quite slow - about 10Mbps. It won't be pretty. So I'm searching for solutions here. A possible solution that crossed my mind was that, if Microsoft supported something like this, a server could be positioned in their remote location that hosts a copy of the files and synchronizes changes automatically to the hosted environment file server. Does anyone know if this kind of solution is supported or does anyone have a better idea?

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  • This is arguably a product recommendation question which would be off-topic. Note "product, service, or learning material recommendations" are not good questions as noted in the help: serverfault.com/help/on-topic Jul 22, 2015 at 18:46

2 Answers 2

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Yup, check out Distributed File System, and specifically DFSR. DFSR allows you to replicate shares between multiple Windows servers.

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  • An answer that provides the important content from a linked site along with the link is usually considered better than just a link. Jul 22, 2015 at 18:34
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    @ToddWilcox Do you think that was really necessary to remind me? I've been around here for a while. Anyway, questions like this are often considered to be answered perfectly well by "why yes, a technology exists that does exactly what you want, and that technology is X". If more specific information is needed, OP will need to ask a specific question.
    – EEAA
    Jul 22, 2015 at 18:38
  • You have explained for me exactly why I commented instead of commenting and downvoting. Ideally an answer to this question would include both of the options in the two different answers, and any others that might exist, and the pros and cons of each, instead of merely some links. It would also or instead be good to have an answer from someone who has actually deployed DFS over a WAN and what pitfalls they encountered. An answer like this is basically "let me Google that for you". Jul 22, 2015 at 18:39
  • Since you've been around here for a while, I'm surprised you didn't vote to close instead of answering the question. Jul 22, 2015 at 18:48
  • Jesus. Chill out. Thanks EEAA. Just what I needed.
    – Charlie
    Jul 22, 2015 at 20:48
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It's called branchcache. You need a 2008 R2 server or higher at each location and branchcache will allow the users to work off of their on site server while a master copy is kept at the hosted server.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/Library/dd425028.aspx

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  • Actually it can be done without a server at the office with Branchcache distributed mode. It will use the PC's there to host the files with each other.
    – Brian
    Jul 22, 2015 at 18:37
  • It looks like the branch cache created by BranchCache is not a full working copy, which is an important distinction with DFS. In the case of BranchCache, if the original hosting server goes down, the cache will also stop working, unlike DFS. Jul 22, 2015 at 18:38
  • That is true, and i didn't take that into account. Charlie a couple of other things to consider is the overhead as DFS will pull down entire copies of all DFS data to the office. Branchcache will pull it down as needed so a little less overhead, but the initial access of data will be longer while it is first accessed. Branchcache will also work with more than just file shares. I dont remember what exactly, but one example is if anything is hosted on IIS on the hosted server will be cached as well. Do some research on DFS vs. Branchcache and see what will suit you best.
    – Brian
    Jul 22, 2015 at 18:55

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