DFS Replication

It's great to find tools that Windows 2003 Server R2 has built-in to help you do your job. I'm by no means a Windows expert and usually have to do a bit of digging to figure out how to get something done. I'm usually at least successful at that. Google is my friend.

Recently I've been trying to figure out a way to replicate data from one server to another. Our call application by a 3rd party vendor has it's own "backup". It backs up the entire call app every night to a "standby" server into CAB files with an MSI. Which is good, but what if I need the server off site? We don't use tape backups and sending 30gb of data off site to our DR location is a bit of a chore. But with DFS Replication built into Windows 2003 Server R2, I can easily setup replication between the two boxes and - "fingers crossed", in the event of a failure or disaster, a few manual server name changes, I should be back up and running. Now, I'm still testing this all out but I will update this and let you know how it turns out. So, what I've done is:

1. Installed DFS on both servers.
2. Ran the call app MSI and installed the app on the backup server.
3. Setup one-way replication on the primary box to the backup.

I've also used DFS Replication to manage the content on our web servers..it's a great thing. Speaking of IIS. Windows Server 2008 has all kinds of cool ways to manage IIS 7 and your web data. My favorite is the shared configuration.