The DSF Namespaces team would like to know more about how you use DFSDiag.exe.
We'd like to hear your current experience with it:
1. How widely do you use it.
2. How do you think we can improve the current features the tool has.
3. What are the features/test that you think should be incorporated.
4. What are the most common pain points in the tool when you are using it.
5. What are the nice things about the tool.
6. Anything else you want to share with us!
Let us know in the comments of this post, or send us email to SSDTalk@microsoft.com.
John Angel Diaz
Recently, Microsoft launched a Marketing experiment, taking 140 users who were afraid of Vista and showing them a new and unreleased Operating System, codename “Mojave”. The users were first asked to give a score from 1 to 10 for Vista, and the average score was 4.4. After seeing Mojave demo, customers rated Mojave an average of 8.5.
But Mojave was in fact, Vista!
http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/
The Mojave demo consisted in presenting 6 “cool Mojave features”:
· Backup and Restore Center
· Gadgets
· Media Center
· Index Function
· Compatibility
· Security
Backup and Restore Center is a feature included in Windows Vista that allows users to backup your files or even the entire System. If a disaster happens, you can perform a Restore Files or Restore Computer and easily have your data back. The demo also talks about Previous Versions, aka Shadow Copies, a feature that allows you to restore accidentally deleted or modified files to a previous point in time.
To see the Backup and Restore Center demo, go to the Mojave Experiment page, and click “What demos did we show them?”.
Resources:
Explore the features: Windows Backup and Restore Center
Explore the features: Shadow Copy
Some customers might look at their staging folders with several GB, and wonder if this is normal. I guess normal depends on how many GBs is several GBs, and how big you
configured your staging folders to be :)
You may have a few GB in your staging folder even with nothing backlogged. The reason is, staging cleanup is only called when the size of a staging folder is over 90 percent of the configured capacity. If the size of a staging folder is below 90 percent of configured capacity (the high watermark), then staged files are kept in the folder and can be used in case new members are added.
So if your configured your staging folder to be 10 GB, staging cleanup will be called after the staging folder size exceeds 9 GB. With several staging folders, you can have each of them at 90% capacity and it can consume considerable space.
If free disk space is a concern, you might need to configure the staging quota to be lower than the default quota when several replicated folders share staging space on the same volume. This ensures that staging cleanup is triggered.
Please read the following article for performance and other concerns when changing stating folder size:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/ac28a17f-a5ad-42f2-aa3c-d9150d0dbb151033.mspx?mfr=true
More resources:
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2006/03/20/422544.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/tags/DFS+Replication/default.aspx
--Malu Menezes
Some customers ask why the 15 minutes interval limit for DFS replication and bandwidth throttling. This is determined by the way that the operation system stores the information of DFS replication.
The DFS Replication schedule is stored as a binary attribute of size 336 bytes (2*24*7) which represents a schedule for a week. Each hour is represented in two bytes. Every hour is divided into four quarters, each of which occupies four bits, hence the 15 minutes interval:
[...] [...] [...] [...]
0 14 15 29 30 44 45 59
The four bits of a quarter takes 16 value ranges from 0X0, which indicates schedule is OFF, to 0xF, which indicates an ON schedule with full bandwidth. The levels in between defines an ON schedule with different levels of bandwidth.
David Shen
After requests to release a version of File Server Migration Toolkit (FSMT) compatible with Windows Server 2008, the Storage Solutions Division at Microsoft brings you FSMT 1.1 Beta!
Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit v 1.1 adds the possibility to migrate and consolidate data to file servers running Windows Server 2008. With that, FSMT aims to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase the efficiency of storage management and backup tasks. It covers two main features:
- File Server Migration Wizard which copy shared folders, files, and their security settings from a source file server to a target file server.
- DFS consolidation root wizard which maintain the original Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of files after they are migrated to a new server.
We are running a short beta for the tool. If you’d like to have first hand access to FSMT 1.1, follow the instructions below before August 8th:
- Go to http://connect.microsoft.com
- Sign in with your live ID. If it’s your first time at Connect, you might have to fill in a small profile.
- Under the Connection Directory session, look for “File Server Tools” program and click “Apply Now”.
- In the left menu, click the “Download” link to download FSRM 1.1 beta.
Instructions for download and submitting feedback can be found inside the program main page.
Some customers pointed out what they believe to be a bug in Robocopy.
The situation is: suppose that you copy your files using Robocopy in Windows Server 2003 or XP. Then, file or folder permissions (ACLs) are changed wither on source or destination. You want to use the /MIR switch to mirror the permissions:
> ROBOCOPY source destination /MIR /SEC
Robocopy fails to mirror file permissions – but works for folder permissions.
This behaviour is by design. Robocopy focuses on copying just files that have changed (in size or modified date, by default). If a file looks like it has changed, Robocopy copies its data and, if you specified copying security as well, copies NTFS ACL from source to target after copying the data. If a file looks like it has NOT changed, Robocopy by default skips it, and copies nothing for the file, not even its security info.
When I wrote the “security copy” part of Robocopy on 22 May 1997, I chose to do this for performance reasons, to keep Robocopy times for large trees down. This was an adequate implementation for most peoples’ needs at the time. Also, another reason I chose to do things the way I did, is that setting security on directories is sufficient for most people. Setting security on a file-by-file basis is a more granular approach, for sure, but incurs a larger maintenance overhead, perhaps too much for many users.
Therefore, the solution listed as a workaround posted by Martin Zugec (MVP) is precisely what needs to be done in this situation, and this behaviour is expected:
> ROBOCOPY /Mir <Source> <Target>
> ROBOCOPY /E /Copy:S /IS /IT <Source> <Target>
The first Robocopy command above will copy data and security for files that have been updated, and the second Robocopy command will refresh file security for all files, without copying any file data.
If using a Resource Kit version of Robocopy, and wanting to keep security synced between two trees where the data is fairly static, but security is updated now and then. In fact, the “Copying NTFS Security Information” section of Robocopy.doc (from the Resource Kits) states:
“To refresh security information for existing destination files and directories without copying file data, use the /IS switch together with the /COPY switch without the D flag. For example /IS /COPY:SOU would refresh all security information for all selected files, without copying any file data.”
Things have moved on a bit in the past 11 years, security-wise, so I changed the way things work in this area slightly for the version of Robocopy that ended up in Vista, in that if you specify /SECFIX on the command line, Robocopy will copy security for skipped files that exist in both the source and the target trees.
So, to maintain two trees in sync, including their security, using Vista’s Robocopy, you can use the following as your regular Robocopy command:
> ROBOCOPY <source> <target> /MIR /SEC /SECFIX
/MIR will replicate data and security (as /SEC is specified) for changed files, and /SECFIX will update just the security for unchanged files. Add /V to the command line if you want to see which files are having their security “fixed” without having their data copied.
Kevin Allen
For those who missed Drew McDaniel’s Live webcast “Deep Dive into Windows Server 2008 File Services”, you now can now view the recording:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032381104&role=attend&pw=3B160CB1
Enjoy!
--Malu Menezes
IT Manager Webcast: Deep Dive into Windows Server 2008 File Services (Level 300)
Thursday, July 17, 2008 9:30 AM Pacific Time
The Windows Server 2008 operating system contains many changes to core file services components that dramatically increase availability, scalability, and performance. This webcast will provide an overview of the changes in Distributed File System (DFS), Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), and storage management in Windows Server 2008.
Brandon M. Baker
When we shipped Windows Server 2003 R2, many customers requested a way to enable and disable referrals for a link target using command line. Neither dfscmd.exe nor dfsutil.exe back then provided a way to do this.
In response to those requests, Dan Lovinger published Modlink, command-line method to enable and disable referrals for a link target. Until today, we provided the source code for Modlink in the blog. But compiling the code can be a hassle, so in order to make it available for more people, we opened our first SSD open code project in Codeplex. Now you can download Modlink compiled!
Modlink Open Source project page: http://codeplex.com/modlink
Download Modlink binaries here: http://www.codeplex.com/modlink/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx
And source code here: http://www.codeplex.com/modlink/SourceControl/ListDownloadableCommits.aspx
Windows Server 2008 users, please note:
Due to many requests, feedback and user adoption we had for Modlink, the DFS Namespaces team decided to make Modlink functionality in-box for Windows Server 2008. So, if you are a Server 2008 administrator, you don’t need Modlink anymore.
To enable and disable referrals using DFSUtil in Windows Server 2008, from an elevated command prompt, use
dfsutil property state <DfsPath> [<\\server\share>]
------ STATE Commands Supported ------
Online Set state of folder or folder target to Online.
Offline Set state of folder or folder target to Offline.
Example:
> DFSUtil property state offline \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace\Link \\Server\Share
We hope that helps some people! And don’t forget to keep sending us your feedback.
--Malu and John
1. New Command Line Interface (CLI)
DFSUtil.exe in Windows Server 2008 comes with a new CLI, which is based on Keywords, Required Parameters and Optional parameters instead of Switches and Arguments. With this change, we intend to make the usage of the commands clearer and easier.
Navigation through Keywords is more friendly, giving the information needed to execute a task.
An example of this:
To create the new Domain-Based Namespace Projects which is going to have a Root Target at the Server NewYork, with the old CLI the user had to type
DFSUtil.exe /AddFtRoot /Server:\\NewYork /Share:Projects /Comment:”Projects in New York”
With the new CLI
DFSUtil.exe Root AddDom \\NewYork\Projects “Projects in New York”
The new CLI not only gives the necessary information for the task to be executed, but display hints to help resolve tasks related as in when you are creating a namespace you would like to add root targets to it.
2. New features in DFSUtil.exe
Creation of Windows 2008 mode Domain-based namespaces.
DFSUtil.exe Root AddDom \\Server\Share <Version> <Comment>
For Version you can choose:
V1: Windows 2000, Windows 2003 mode namespace.
V2: Windows 2008 mode namespace.
DFSUtil.exe Root AddDom \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace “This is a V2 Namespace!!”
Add and remove Links
DFSUtil.exe Link Add <DFSPath> \\Server\Share [Restore] <Comment>
DFSUtil.exe Link Remove <DFSPath>
DFSUtil.exe Link Add \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace\Link \\Server\Share “This a new link”
Display and/or change the state of Roots and Links
DFSUtil.exe Property State <DFSPath> \\Server\Share
State commands:
Online: Set state of link or link target to Online
Offline: Set state of link or link target to Offline
DFSUtil.exe Property State \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace\Link
DFSUtil.exe Property State Online \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace\Link
Display and/or change TTL
DFSUtil.exe Property TTL <DFSPath>
TTL commands:
Set: Set the Timeout value of a DFS namespace or DFS link.
DFSUtil.exe Property TTL Set <DFSPath> <Value in ms>
DFSUtil.exe Property TTL Set \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace 3000
Resolve DFS path to a destination UNC path
DFSUtil.exe ViewDFSPath <DFSPath>
DFSUtil.exe ViewDFSPath \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace
Display and/or Set Registry Configuration Parameters in Server and Clients
For Server
DFSUtil.exe Server Registry
Registry commands:
DFSDNSConfig: Set/Reset/View DFSDNSConfig key
LDAPTimeoutValue: Set/Reset/View LDAPTimeoutValueInSeconds key
SyncInterval: Set/Reset/View SyncIntervalinSeconds key
SiteCostedReferrals: Set/Reset/View SiteCostedReferrals key.
InsiteReferrals: Set/Reset/View InsiteReferrals key.
PreferLogonDC: Set/Reset/View PreferLogonDC key
For Client:
DFSUtil.exe Client Registry
Registry commands:
ProviderCacheTimeout: Set/View the ProviderCacheTimeoutInMinutes key.
DFSDCNameDelay: Set/Reset/View the DFSDCNameDelay key.
Enable/Disable Access Based Directory Enumeration (ABDE) in the Domain-based/Standalone namespace.
DFSUtil.exe Property ABDE<DFSPath>
DFSUtil.exe Property ABDE \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace
Manage Security attributes on DFS Links
DFSUtil.exe Property ACL <DFSPath>
ACL commands:
Grant: Grant permissions for a user or group.
Deny: Deny permissions for a user or group.
Revoke: Revoke granted permissions for a user or group.
Set: Set Security Information on the folder from SDDL input
Reset: Remove the Security Descriptor associated with the link.
Control: Set Security control information on the link.
John Angel Diaz
Dilip Naik, File Systems and Storage MVP, just released 3 new white papers:
enjoy the reading,
--Malu Menezes
-- As published in The Storage Blog at Microsoft
Four times per year, each and every product within Microsoft awards the title of “Most Valuable Professional” (MVP) to outside folks who have a passion for those products and technologies within their communities. Some started asking questions in the newsgroups, and now, years later spend more time answering questions for others than asking their own. Others run user groups or evangelize Microsoft technologies along with their own. Often, they are also actively involved in our beta programs to find the things we need to fix before release. And many are services oriented folks who have developed so much expertise that the product groups might even ask them for assistance. :-)
But for whatever their involvement, they have chosen to invest part of their passions in various Microsoft products and their communities of users – so Microsoft recognizes them as “MVP’s” for one year as thanks for all that they’ve done. There are some cool perks (some of which we can’t share here), not the least of which is an even stronger and direct bridge from these passionate folks outside of Microsoft to the passionate engineering and product management folks in Microsoft that share their passion.
As the various storage solutions from Microsoft continue to grow, we’ve seen some significant growth in our communities – across file systems, storage technologies and data protection. So, we are very excited to announce are largest crop of MVP awardees date – with 9 new MVPs plus one annual renewal who continues year-after-year to add value to our products and the storage community.
Announcing the Storage MVP awardees for July 2008:
David Chernicoff
David Chernicoff is a technology consultant with a focus on the mid-market space; Windows IT Pro Magazine Senior Contributing Editor; founding Technical Director for PC Week Labs (now eWeek); former Lab Director for Windows NT/Windows 2000 Magazine (now Windows IT Pro); and formerly Chief Technology Officer for a network management tools ISV.
David has been writing computer-related feature and product reviews for more than 20 years and is the author of more than a dozen eBooks and a contributor or co-author to an equal number of printed books.
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find David Chernicoff: Windows IT Pro
Stephen Foskett
Stephen Foskett has provided vendor-independent end user consulting on storage topics for over 10 years, including work managing and delivering consulting services at Contoural, GlassHouse Technologies, StorageNetworks, and Sprint Paranet. He has been a storage columnist and has authored numerous articles for industry publications, and is a popular presenter at industry events.
As the director of Contoural's data practice, Foskett oversees the group that provides strategic consulting to assist Fortune 500 companies in aligning their storage and computing infrastructures with their business objectives. He holds a bachelor of science in Society/Technology Studies, from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find Steven Foskett: Search Storage, Conferences and Seminars.
Joachim Nässlander
Joachim Nässlander is a very active Forum answerer and became a Moderator during the Windows Server 2008 beta stages. He is also constant presence in Microsoft events: Microsoft TechNet Live, Microsoft TechNet Update, Ask the Experts, Longhorn tour, among many others. He also authors a column for Microsoft TechNet in Sweden, and presents IT Pro webcasts.
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find Joachim Nässlander: Technet Forums, Blogs, Technet Extended Expert, Conferences, Events and Roadshows.
Vincent Pang
Vincent is an active answerer in the Data Protection Manager newsgroups. He participates in events such as System Center booth at TechEd, helping customers to better understand Microsoft products and Data Protection Manager. He delivered more than 30 trainings on System Center products. Vincent Pang also participated in Data Protection Manager 2006 and 2007 betas, providing valuable feedback that helped the DPM team to improve the product.
Competency: Data Protection Manager
Where you can find Vincent Pang: Microsoft Newsgroups, Conferences, Presentations and Events
Brien M. Posey
Brien Posey is a freelance technical writer who writes regular columns for CNET, TechTarget, and MSD2D. He has also written for Windows magazine, ZDNET, Smart Computing, Windows Networking, and many others. He has published over 3,000 technical articles and written or contributed material to 27 books. He also serves the IT community through his own Web.
Prior to being a freelance author, Brien served as CIO for a chain of hospitals. He was also previously in charge of IT security for Fort Knox.
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find Brien M. Posey: Brien Posey Website, Windows Networking, Tech Republic, and others
Lutfie Royan
Luftie is one of the most active community contributors in Indonesia. He is an avid writer, speaker and user group participant.
Lutfie actively introduces Windows Server latest technologies to community, especially Windows Server Storage, Powershell and Deploying file system. Currently, he is involved in learning about the next generation of Windows Server- Windows Server 2008 and is very interested to know-in depth about Windows Server 2008 Core and Powershell.
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find Lutfie Royan: Blogs, Conferences and Seminars.
Derek Schauland
Derek is a network administrator for a specialty malting company in Wisconsin. He is a regular writer for TechRepublic.com and help out the IT community at Experts-Exchange.com. He contributed with a very interesting series of articles about Windows Storage Server.
Derek, Jill and Scott from the Storage Server team say hello :)
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find Derek Schauland: Tech Republic, ZDNet, Experts Exchange
András Székács
András is an active trainer, consultant, speaker and technical writer based in Hungary. He is teaches HP Proliant, Storage and Itegrity courses in the TrainerC education centre, and Microsoft MOC courses in Szamalk CPLS, the largest IT training institute in Hungary.
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find András Székács: TechNet Hungary, Events and Roadshows
Ted Vahey
Ted was a referral from Storage MVP Dan Stolts, and we were amazed to find more about his contribution. President of the Boston Area Windows Server User Group, he helped deliver more than 28 presentations about Windows technologies in 2008.
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find Ted Vahey: Boston Area Windows Server User Group
Reawarding…
Markus Sprungk
Markus Sprungk is a long time Storage MVP, and was awarded again in July. He is well-known in the community as an expert in Windows Server related topics, and one of the leaders on newsgroups: alt.pl.comp.os.windowsxp; alt.pl.comp.os.windowsvista; pl.comp.pecet; pl.comp.nowe-programy; ms-news.pl.windowsxp.
Competency: File Systems and Storage
Where you can find Markus Sprungk: PCLab, Microsoft Newsgroups
To all of the awardees, as well as the existing Storage MVP’s, we are looking forward to working closer with you than ever before – with some great stuff in beta and in the roadmap, and a lot of expert level folks that want to help you do what you do for our storage communities.
Resources:
See all current Storage MVPs.
Visit the MVP award website.
--Malu and Jason
In a previous blog post, Jose Barreto covered the storage options for Hyper-V and described the many choices between directly attached or SAN storage, fibre channel or iSCSI, passthrough or VHD, Virtual SCSI or Virtual IDE, etc.
If you missed that one, check it out at
http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/02/14/storage-options-for-windows-server-2008-s-hyper-v.aspx
However, he didn't mention at that time the option to store your VHD and ISO files in a CIFS/SMB file server share.
Now he outlines how to use this additional storage option for Hyper-V with step-by-step instructions, a few screenshots and some performance tips.
Check all the details at http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/06/24/storing-windows-server-2008-hyper-v-files-on-an-cifs-smb-file-share.aspx
DFS Namespaces or DFSN management command line tools are available on Windows Server 2008 and also on Windows Vista SP1 as part of the Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT). The three available tools are Dfsutil.exe, Dfscmd.exe and Dfsdiag.exe. In this posting I will show some exploratory uses of the Dfsutil tool.
If you are working on a Windows Server 2008 system you have Dfsutil already available. On a Windows vista SP1 system you need to install the RSAT pack. To install the RSAT pack you can refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941314 for simple installation guidelines. Once Dfsutil is installed we can start doing some simple experiments. First let's have a look at the help:
Dfsutil /?
This is the best way to start exploring the tool. The help shows you the nine main commands Dfsutil offers:
The commands are organized in a tree like structure. So if you issue Dfsutil cache the result is:
Then you can select one of the three cache commands. If you pick Referral, for instance, the full command line will be Dfsutil cache referral. This is the new Dfsutil interface. Dfsutil also supports the old interface. You can obtain the help for the old interface by doing Dfsutil /oldcli.
With Dfsutil you can create/modify/remove DFS namespaces roots and links, add/remove targets, modify/view site costing properties, modify/view DFS registry keys, etc. It's a powerful tool! But let's start with something simple. How about listing all the namespaces in a domain? For that use the Domain command:
Dfsutil domain DomainName
That will give you the list of namespaces roots for the domain DomainName. You can use the FQDN if you prefer. Also, you can list the namespaces roots hosted on a specific machine by doing:
Dfsutil server MachineName
MachineName is the root server. This command lists domain and standalone namespaces hosted in the root server. The root server can be a remote machine. Now to look at the individual namespaces, you can do:
Dfsutil root \\DomainName or MachineName\RootName
Here's an example:
Alright, so we have the standalone root myroot on the root server 432233e0630-79. By using Dfsutil root, we can see that this root has a link called link0 and the target for this link is the share dlink0. Doing net share dlink0 you find the directory the link \\432233e0630-79\myroot\link0 points to.
Using Dfsutil and these few commands you can map all namespaces in your domain.
Hope this helped you get started with Dfsutil.
More info:
Technet documentation: Dfsutil Overview
-------
Marcello Hasegawa
Our Storage colleague Jacob Buis just launched the blog "Various Thoughts About Software Testing".
If you are curious about how we test software at Microsoft, what are the pros and cons of Software Testing Automation, and discussion about testing techniques, stay tuned.
http://blogs.technet.com/Various_Thoughts_About_Software_testing/
--Malu Menezes
