I'm trying to figure out the best method to in terms of a Disaster Recovery Plan should our main site go down in the event of a major fire or other disaster.
This is a simplified version of our setup:
Site A houses our main file server which runs Windows 2008 Standard (x64) as a DC with DFSR enabled
Site B houses another DC (offsite) running Windows 2008 R2 with DFSR replicating the 2 folders I care about restoring in this process.
I understand if we had server 2012 there is a new feature called DFSR database cloning which would cut down the time needed for a newly recreated server to process the initial sync creating its database but we do not have any 2012 servers in the company.
The only thing I can think of would to be to build a new server out at Site B (or possibly a virtual machine within Site B server), join it to the domain as a fresh DC Site A2, robocopy the 2 folders from Site B to Site A2, rejoin Site A2 to the DFSR group, allow it to create its database and allow DFSR to initially sync at its naturally slow rate the first time. But the problem here is this would probably take over a week in time to sync 500,000+ files (3TB currently) and we would need Site A2 to be back up and running asap at a new location. Is there a way to clone the DFSR database safely using 2008 servers?
I guess one other option is just to create another replicated server at another offsite location and have it running with replication at all times, so Site A blows up, we just shutdown the server at Site C and move to Site A2 and bam server and files back up immediately (after physically moving the server through LA traffic)