So, this type of conversation has been covered before, but I haven't really seen it presented in the way I'm considering right now.
I currently have one file server, we'll call it FS-old, and it is running on Server 2003 with DFS installed but not configured in any way. I have a new 2012 R2 VM set up to be a new file server, we'll call this FS01, and I have installed the DFS role on here as well. Now, here is what I'm considering,and correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
Set up a namespace using FS01 as the namespace server
Setup all the folders in DFS MGMT that are currently setup as shares on FS-old
Setup replication from FS-old to FS01
Update all GPO mappings to point to \\namespace\share instead of the current \\server\share or worse, logon script
Turn off FS-old
Remove FS-old from replication
add a new, secondary file server to the domain, install DFS, add to the namespace server and setup replication to it.
I have solid backups for all servers and would do this over the weekend when no one is accessing anything. I only have maybe 300GB worth of data to move, so replication should be accomplished friday night/saturday and I can run both FSs for a week, then I can test and remove the old server the following weekend. I'm not a big fan of using robocopy or a nightly backup to move the data, I'd rather have the namespace setup and replicating for a week or so.
Thoughts?
