"We" are still making some efforts to improve our office network, both in terms of infrastucture, and


At the moment we have the majority of our network (Domain, exchange, tape backup, library, storage etc) hosted on hardware in our London office, and a secondary server (local-exchange (?) and storage) in our Newcastle office.

The London office benefits from local-speed access to the majority of the network, where Newcastle suffer quite a lag. This is complicated further by the fact the "storage" volumes (essentially our live project folders) are not mirrors, that act quite independantly. So over time the London-hosted library has found itself slowly being copied to (unmanaged) Newcastle locations, whilst being added to there also (and not fed back to London).

So all in all a QA nightmare.

I have long been championing a simplification (from the frontend) of our public folders so that we all (London & Newcastle) see the "same thing". Our staff have backed this call. But our "IT guys" are being soft on overhauling everything, and I fear the two new SAN arrays just ordered are just going to get a straight migration of the current "system" dumped onto them - with no thought to how they mirror/duplicate.

I've challenged this, and it's been tested that it's not feasible. That data replication can't happen on the fly. That nightly mirrors are problematic. That dual-accessed-files cause lost work. And that clouds are dangerous. I don't buy it. We're two offices, there must be some (practical) way to ensure both locations "see" and work with the "same thing"?

Just setup DFS, DFS-R is designed to do what you want.

Set it to replicate and it'll do what you want.

Although you should be able to do the same thing on a SAN (but it'll cost a lot more)

It has been mentioned - but was argued as "laggy" - although my contention is that of the Tortoise and Hare, (better to do something correctly, slower). But now I think look into it a bit more...

DFS works well (the 2008 version is a vast improvement on the older version).

The only way to get instant replication would be with fibre SAN replication, but I'd hate to see the cost of that.

Well since we don't seem to invest money where we should IT wise, I think it'll have to be a soft, rather than hard, solution.


EDIT Sharepoint? I still no nothing about it. 10 years on.

What sort of files are you sharing?

If it is "just" or mainly office and not CAD stuff, why not consider using RDP/Citrix in Newcastle and having a terminal server in London?

Obviously, if you need to share a lot of CAD drawings, this isn't going to work, as TS wouldn't be able to cope with the GL load.

As Sas says, DFS sounds like the best solution.

EVERYTHING!?
Word docs, complicated Excel spreadsheets, massive Photoshop composites, even bigger InDesign documents, pdfs of all sizes, umpteen bajillion Autocad drawings that range from 100kb to 10mb, and Revit model files that start around 10mb and can be anything up to 2-300mb.
We kind of do this already for some things - but even with a pretty decent line, (that's getting upgraded soon as well) it's sketchy - and even if we weren't having to share large files, I don't like how Newcastle have to play second fiddle to London, (and nor do they, which is where the problems start QA wise).
Well I forwarded it on Friday for further consideration, and called a meeting for tomorrow afternoon, because I'm sick and tired of inaction - and getting told I'm "upsetting and unsettling" people with my efforts to change (improve) things.