Hi,
We are using Windows Server Backup (2008 R2) to send system state backups to a remote management server for about 36 domain controllers. The backups are staggered between 6-9 PM and they all finish with a few minutes as we are doing incremental backups. The resultant remote backup folder is around 600 GB.
These files are backed up to NAS storage and transerred to tape starting at 10PM.
We setup DFS replication between two (brannd new servers 12 RAM GB, multi core cpu, Windows 2008 R2 Ent) member servers with a GB connection so that one way replication can send these files to an alternate management server for additional protection.
Read only replication was setup to the 2nd server, all files were pre-staged using robo copy and the hashes were checked and initial sync finished between backups so no files were changed before the initial sync completed and verified in DFS Health Check report.
We had many issues with 4208 errors and the staging quotas were set to 200 GB on each side to help. Also checked the box to not send deleted or conflicting folders to temp folders as we would never need to recover these, also using one way rep.
The issue is that the replication backup does not clear up until 3-4 PM the next day. The initial sync also seemed to take an extreme amount of time based on the pre-seeding of the files.
Is there some other setting that could speed this up, I do not have the resources to expand the staging folders any larger.
I went thorugh Ned's article on pre-seeding that was extremely helpful:
blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/09/07/replacing-dfsr-member-hardware-or-os-part-2-pre-seeding.aspx
I was reluctant to try these tuning options as they were dated 2010:
blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/03/31/tuning-replication-performance-in-dfsr-especially-on-win2008-r2.aspx
We are running SP1 and there are no other DFS hot fixes related to this issue.
Is there anything else I can do to speed this up? CPU utilization is under 10%, Network Bandwidth is 13%, servers are new, all firmware and drivers updated.
If anyone has tried to use Windows 2008 R2 image backups and DFS in this way please share.
Thanks,
John Z.