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Version: 2.15.0

Mixed DFS and Non-DFS Clients with Access Zone Failover

Introduction​

Microsoft DFS-type failover normally requires a second referral path for each DFS folder, and it gives you per-SyncIQ-policy failover granularity. If your environment has both DFS-mounted and non-DFS-mounted data, and DFS is already configured with a single referral path, you can use Access Zone failover to serve both types of client instead.

In this configuration, DFS clients keep their existing single referral path and still get automatic redirection during failover, while non-DFS clients fail over with the Access Zone using SmartConnect dual delegation. This simplifies environments that mix DFS and non-DFS access to the same data, at the cost of per-policy failover granularity, because the whole Access Zone fails over together.

Configure Access Zone Failover for Mixed-Mode Clients​

  1. Configure the Access Zone failover requirements exactly as you would for any Access Zone failover. The IP pool used by the clients must be mapped for failover, with SmartConnect zone aliases used as failover hints. See Access Zone Failover Configuration Procedures.
  2. Leave the DFS configuration unchanged. The DFS folder target uses a SmartConnect zone name in its UNC path and a single referral path.
  3. Point non-DFS clients at either the same SmartConnect name that the DFS clients use or a different SmartConnect name. Both options are supported.

Configure Eyeglass​

  1. In the Eyeglass Jobs page, enable DFS mode on every SyncIQ policy whose data is mounted through DFS.

    This ensures the SMB shares for those policies are renamed with the igls-dfs prefix on the target cluster during failover.

  2. Leave any policy that is not mounted through DFS in the default Configuration Replication job type.

What Happens During Failover​

  1. Eyeglass renames the SMB shares for the DFS-mode policies. The rename prompts DFS clients that use a single referral path to query DNS for the SmartConnect zone name again. Because of the dual delegation SmartConnect failover performed by Access Zone failover, DNS now returns an IP address from the target cluster.
  2. DFS clients resolve the new IP address, automatically remount the DFS referral path, and re-authenticate without user action.
  3. Non-DFS clients must manually remount their shares or exports after failover.
note

This configuration is supported for SMB clients that use DFS. NFS clients are not affected by DFS referrals, so they must always remount after failover. See Refresh NFS Mounts.

See Also​