Overview
GOAL: Facilitate collaboration among the branch office DFS users, by
providing true real-time file locking.
Customers of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 may decide to employ the native DFS Replication
capabilities for both branch office backup as well as inter-office file server mirroring.
When enabling inter-office file server mirroring, the company's goal is to provide
for employee file sharing. Generally this mechanism is far more efficient than emailing
files among the collaborative teams, especially if the files are large in size.
Though DFS R2 is a more reliable and "network friendly" replication tool in comparison
to its FRS predecessor, it is still incomplete and inadequate for today's more collaborative
environments where data needs to be shared in real-time, among the branch offices
and project teams operating in multiple locations.
Business Challenges
DFS lacks a central feature important for a collaborative environment where
inter-office file servers are mirrored and data is shared: File Locking.
Without integrated file locking, using DFS to mirror file servers exposes live documents
to version conflicts. That is, a colleague in Office A can open and edit a document
at the same time a colleague in Office B is working on the same document. In such
a scenario, DFS will only save the changes made by the person closing the file last.
Moreover, another version conflict potential arises even if these two colleagues
are not editing the file simultaneously. DFS Replication works on a single threaded,
"pull" process. As a result, synchronization tasks can easily "queue" up and create
a backlog whereby changes made from one location are not replicated to the other
side in an immediate manner. This time delay creates another opportunity for file
version conflicts
Solution
The surest and simplest way of eliminating version conflicts when using DFS is to
add a true file locking solution - one that offers, at a minimum, real-time detection
of file
use and immediate remote locking, such as PeerLock. This assures that when
a file is open at location A, all other versions - say local copies at various branch
offices - are locked down, preventing anyone from opening and revising it. When
the file closes, the file lock is immediately released and ready for synchronization.
Evaluate PeerLock today with your DFS installation.
While many customers enjoy the benefits of adding file locking to DFS, please bear
in mind the potential synchronization backlogs while using DFS.
For a true solution that offers both real-time file locking AND real-time replication,
thus eliminating version conflict and providing a fail-safe collaborative framework,
evaluate our complete PEER Collaboration Package.
Download a
15-day Trial of the PEER Collaboration Package (File Locking and Immediate Replication
Solution)
Benefits
- Transparent file locking among N number of geographical office branches/Servers
- Cross Domain File Locking
- Real-Time File Locking among Servers
- Multi-Threaded File Locking and Release
Requirements
- PeerLock should be installed on each file server participating in the collaboration group.
- The servers must be able to see each other via UNC Path.
- Please do not try to test using Wordpad/ Notepad. These file types cannot be locked due to the nature of the application.
- PeerLock by default is set to be optimized for file servers. As such, files should be opened from desktops connecting to the file server; not locally on the file server through the Windows Explorer.
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