New File Sharing System - What's my best option?

Hi all!
Please help me devise the best file sharing system for the following
scenario:

The company:
1 central office and 2 branch offices (both connected back to the
central office via 512/kbps satellite)

The idea:
Provide a file sharing system that does NOT use mapped drives but
still provides the users a list of short-cuts to available shares.
Mapped drives create a problem when employees from the central office
login at the branch offices (maps over the satcom connection are
sloooooow and unstable). Furthermore, inconsistent drive letters
assigned to different shares always causes confusion. From a data
perspective, it would be nice to have the branch office drives
available to the central office (and vise versa), but again I don't
think the satcom connection can support the replication traffic (but I
could be wrong). Also this requirement is not a core requirement, but
like I said, it would be nice. I've thought about DFS and I'm open to
learning more.

I greatly appreciate and feedback and first hand experience.

Thanks,

Lanwench
Thu Jun 19 09:44:54 PDT 2008

wideye <dstubbs@meterskid.com> wrote:
> Hi all!
> Please help me devise the best file sharing system for the following
> scenario:
>
> The company:
> 1 central office and 2 branch offices (both connected back to the
> central office via 512/kbps satellite)
>
> The idea:
> Provide a file sharing system that does NOT use mapped drives but
> still provides the users a list of short-cuts to available shares.
> Mapped drives create a problem when employees from the central office
> login at the branch offices (maps over the satcom connection are
> sloooooow and unstable). Furthermore, inconsistent drive letters
> assigned to different shares always causes confusion. From a data
> perspective, it would be nice to have the branch office drives
> available to the central office (and vise versa), but again I don't
> think the satcom connection can support the replication traffic (but I
> could be wrong). Also this requirement is not a core requirement, but
> like I said, it would be nice. I've thought about DFS and I'm open to
> learning more.
>
> I greatly appreciate and feedback and first hand experience.
>
> Thanks,

Maybe OT, but I think your best bet will be a W2003 or 2008 terminal
services box in the main office instead of relying on direct file sharing
access over a slow/latent link. You could then centralize all your data in
the main office (much better for backups, etc) and your remote users could
use Remote Desktop to get to the main office, which is a huge performance
improvement over trying to access network drives over VPN (even without the
added problems of satellite).

John
Thu Jun 19 10:22:46 PDT 2008

Something nice I will point out and I don't know if it will help but with
the CSE (Client Side Extensions) that were just released are very handy.

The targeting features of the CSE are very nice, for instance I have users
that log in at our main site and then also travel to a remote site...to keep
things consistent and fast one targeting option example is that you can put
conditions in your drive mappings, not only based on group but based on the
site they are logging in from, the computer, the ou, the user all kinds of
stuff.

Map drive x to \\server1\share when the site is main office and the user is
member of x group

and then

map drive x to \\server2\share when the site is remote office and the user
is member of x group



"wideye" <dstubbs@meterskid.com> wrote in message
news:809cf559-0b8d-4d45-948a-44bde2ee7202@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> Hi all!
> Please help me devise the best file sharing system for the following
> scenario:
>
> The company:
> 1 central office and 2 branch offices (both connected back to the
> central office via 512/kbps satellite)
>
> The idea:
> Provide a file sharing system that does NOT use mapped drives but
> still provides the users a list of short-cuts to available shares.
> Mapped drives create a problem when employees from the central office
> login at the branch offices (maps over the satcom connection are
> sloooooow and unstable). Furthermore, inconsistent drive letters
> assigned to different shares always causes confusion. From a data
> perspective, it would be nice to have the branch office drives
> available to the central office (and vise versa), but again I don't
> think the satcom connection can support the replication traffic (but I
> could be wrong). Also this requirement is not a core requirement, but
> like I said, it would be nice. I've thought about DFS and I'm open to
> learning more.
>
> I greatly appreciate and feedback and first hand experience.
>
> Thanks,

DP133091
Thu Jun 19 12:08:01 PDT 2008

One option you mentioned is DFS. If you have R2 then this would work well for
you. You could create DFS shares on the CO and branch offices. Then using the
DFSR technology set up a custom replication schedule. For instance have it
replicate at night. Also because it uses differential copies you only get the
updated content replicated. If that was not enough then the compression is
pretty good. In my environment we see a 30% compression rate. now this rate
will vary but it helps a lot. The initial replication was 60GBs of data and
it took about 2 hours to replicate it over. Of course this was over a DS3
line. I think this would solve your problem, plus if one DFS server were to
become unusable one of the other two could be used.

"wideye" wrote:

> Hi all!
> Please help me devise the best file sharing system for the following
> scenario:
>
> The company:
> 1 central office and 2 branch offices (both connected back to the
> central office via 512/kbps satellite)
>
> The idea:
> Provide a file sharing system that does NOT use mapped drives but
> still provides the users a list of short-cuts to available shares.
> Mapped drives create a problem when employees from the central office
> login at the branch offices (maps over the satcom connection are
> sloooooow and unstable). Furthermore, inconsistent drive letters
> assigned to different shares always causes confusion. From a data
> perspective, it would be nice to have the branch office drives
> available to the central office (and vise versa), but again I don't
> think the satcom connection can support the replication traffic (but I
> could be wrong). Also this requirement is not a core requirement, but
> like I said, it would be nice. I've thought about DFS and I'm open to
> learning more.
>
> I greatly appreciate and feedback and first hand experience.
>
> Thanks,
>