text: We currently have a file server that is Windows Server 2008 (using basic Windows shared folders for the sharing), that I will be replacing with a new Windows Server 2016 box in the near future. All the shared folders and files are backed up nightly to external locations (using a 3rd party backup software - BackupAssist) and I am planning on using this same backup software for nightly backups of the new server.
  I would like to implement some sort of hourly file replication for the recently modified or added files on these shares. I have users that actively use the file shares throughout the day, and we want an additional layer of protection (in addition to the nightly backups) to protect the newly added or changed files from accidental deletion or modification. The replication would be done locally to another hard drive on the same server that is not publicly accessible to my users.
  Our current server uses an older file sync application to do something similar to his hourly replication, but it needs to scan all the shared folders to detect the changed files to replicate. The software is slow, not very stable, and I can only imagine that the scanning process adds a lot of unnecessary load (and wear) to the hard drives. Our backup software doesn't seem to have this type of frequent replication functionality and I would prefer a solution where I didn't have to replace the primary backup software - I'm looking more for software I can augment into our existing backup structure.
  Does anyone have any software recommendations to perform this hourly new/modified file replication, or has anyone setup a solution like this before? I've done some Google searching and there looks to be a few different software solutions out there, but it always hard to tell if they will work in practice without actually purchasing or setting something up..
  7 Replies
  Apr 16, 2018 at 7:08 UTC
  Sounds like you want DFS replication and shadow copies.
  Apr 16, 2018 at 7:17 UTC
  Mike has this right. That is exactly what I would setup to get the job done.
  Apr 16, 2018 at 7:49 UTC
  Sounds like you want DFS replication and shadow copies.
  Thanks for the quick reply! I've read about these features previously, but haven't used either in a production environment. I wasn't sure if the built-in tools from Microsoft were the best option in this case (as sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't). We have maybe 4-5 TB of user data on the current server (which needs to be pruned ... lots of old data there, but that's another story), and not a lot of it changes day to day. I understand a lot of factors go into overall performance, but have you experienced decent performance with this feature enabled with a large amount of files/data?
  Also, if I am already performing file backups on a nightly basis (we have backups stored both locally and off-site), would I need to use the DFS replication? Based on my understanding, if I were to setup shadow copies for every 1-2 hours during our normal business hours, this should give my users the ability to revert to previous versions or recover deleted files during the day before the backup is taken. I'm okay with going to the local backups in the event they need something from a day or more ago, I just need a near time solution for recently changed files. What advantages would I get by adding DFS replication to shadow copies (other than a secondary copy of all the files)?.
  Apr 16, 2018 at 9:20 UTC
  DFSr is replication for availability - so it's not a backup inherently, it's like the sysvol share on domain controllers, replicated between multiple sites using the same \\sharepath called a namespace. It's especially useful if you have multiple sites accessing the same shares, so you want local replication at each site (like you would want for domain controllers). It will work with large shares, the initial replication will just take a while depending on the bandwidth between servers.
  Shadow copies allow for point-in-time recovery using snapshots of your files, so if something gets corrupted or someone oops-deletes a folder, you can easily restore it to the most recent version you have a copy of.
  Apr 17, 2018 at 8:28 UTC
  Is your file server a VM or on a physical server ??
  Other than paying $$$ for the Server OSe, ever considered a NAS instead ?
  Shadow copy is the easiest and safest for file servers (Windows Svr or NAS), you can set to run it every 15 min from 8am to 8pm the have backup to run at 10pm as an illustration. All you need to do is set the spare space for the shadow copy (usually about 0.5% to 1% of the space, you can adjust the size depending on the number of copies you want to retain, max 64 versions).
  Apr 17, 2018 at 11:41 UTC
  Set shadow copies to take a snapshot every hour.These are point-in-time snapshots, not backups. If you really want backups you can run incremental backups but that's likely going to affect performance.