Windows Server 2003 R2 file clustering options?

[Al_56]

l'm much more of a Linux admin than a Windows sys admin, and l'm learning my way around Server 2003 Standard 64 bit R2 and l'd appreciate some advice.

l have 2 web servers that serve content that is file system based (not DB sadly), that same content can be updated on either servers and l need to keep the servers content in sync as peers (updates to either server needed to be updated on the other server).

I've been poking around and have seen DFS (Distributed File System) and am wondering if:

A) It's a potential solution.
B) What other solutions there are.

If l was hosting the servers l would use our load balancers Layer 7 capabilities to guide all updates to the primary server (and then sync to the secondary), sadly the servers are being hosted and their LB only does round robin.

Thanks in advance for your advise.

Al

[Ivan Ferreira]

DFS with mirror could be an option, anotherone could be Veritas Cluster File System. You could place a pair of linux machines to do the LB job with LVS (ej. piranha).

Another option could be a HA cluster server providing the shares to these servers, this will become into another tier.

[Al_56]

Thanks for the input Ivan.

We're trying to avoid extra tiers, as the client has only 2 servers for the web layer.

We are using virtualization for the web servers, and l don't think our clients hosted servers will handle more VM's running on them (low end DL320 servers).

I seriously dislike hosted servers and apps as they severly limit your technology choices.

Does this mean that DFS is the best option? Any others?

[b heimbigner]

Keep in mind that DFS replication will ONLY replicate files that are not locked. You can use DFS namespace to force all of your users to use only one of the servers, that will help.

[Al_56]

Oops, just found out that we will not be using AD, so DFS will not work for this solution.

So we need some other software that will handle peer to peer (bi-directional) file syncronization between directories on 2 servers.

Any thoughts?

Al