Hello,
Since upgrading our DFS member servers (one is a physical DC, other is a VM dedicated to DFS role only) to 2012 R2 I keep getting caught in a weird replication problem. I finally found out when the problem starts, it's the change of Folder access permissions,
e.g. removing or adding a user account or group and I don't get it why exactly contents of such folder end up completely mismatched between DFS member servers.
To start from beginning, an example
Both DFS servers have a dedicated NTFS volume Y: with only 1 folder in it named Folder1 which is shared and added as Folder target on both DFS member servers. Replication group exists for that Folder1 and data is in perfect sync. New/altered content is properly
replicated to other members server in no time (<1s), everything works perfectly well.
Now, Folder 1 contains a dozen sub-folders with permission inheritance enabled, data de-duplication is enabled as well as FSRM file screening to avoid temporary files, thumbs.db and other junk of that sort. Let's say Subfolder1 requires admin to change permissions
so certain group of users get a read-only access to files stored inside while others can retain modification permission to put new files or so.
The moment I do that change it triggers a problem with DFS-R and I end up with proper copy of that sub-folder on DFS1 (physical server acting as DC) and maybe around 5-10% of content on DFS2 ... why is that so that a simple permission change operation breaks
the DFS-R every time? When that happens the DFS2 never gets those missing files, just like it didn't know it should have those.
DFS Health Report shows file count mismatch and regular File Sharing Violations from some opened files, but there is no mention of why the darn DFS2 is missing 90% of files in certain sub-folders ... it's so annoying ...
I found only 1 workaround for this problem so far, that is to manually pull out all files from affected sub-folder and get them out of shared Folder1 (simple cut and paste to new temporary folder on same volume works) on DFS1, so DFS2 clears that problematic
Subfolder1, and then manually dropping the files back in place on DFS1, later all is good on both servers ... pretty weird if you ask me.
I don't recall seeing this problem on "slow" 2008 R2 DFS-R ... Also I tested if maybe FSRM screening rules or data de-duplication has anything to do with problem, but they don't.
Does anybody else see this behavior between 2012 R2 DFS members?