Hello, Cloud Gurus,
and welcome back for this lesson.
We're going to take a look
at some of the common scenarios
we might use both Distributed File System
together with Azure File Sync,
either permanently or to migrate from DFS replication
to Azure File Sync.
It's an exam objective
and a fairly common on-the-job scenario.
Let's take a look what we're going to cover.
First up, we'll take a look at using Azure File Sync
with DFS namespaces.
Then we'll take a look
at how you can use both Azure File Sync
and DFS replication together.
And finally, we'll take a look at the steps required
to migrate from DFS replication to Azure File Sync.
Let's get started.
From our previous lessons on Distributed File System,
we can see that both Azure File Sync
and DFS offer some overlapping features.
But can they be used together?
The answer is yes.
And there are some benefits to doing this,
so let's take a look.
Let's firstly take a look at how you can use DFS namespaces
with Azure File Sync.
Let's say that you have an Azure File Sync deployment
with some server endpoints
and an Azure File Share Cloud endpoint.
And they're all part of the same sync group.
You can use a DFS namespace
to provide access to all of these endpoints
by creating either a domain-based
or standalone namespace
and then creating a namespace target
for each of the server endpoints.
This allows DFS to handle the redirection
for clients to the most appropriate target based
on the availability, and Active Directory sites,
and allows Azure File Sync
to handle the synchronization.
And you can still back up the data locally
or used Azure Storage snapshots to back it up in the cloud.
And you can grant read-only access to the data
in the cloud endpoint,
or you can deploy a server endpoint
on a Windows File Server using an Azure VM.
And this really is the best of both worlds.
You can also use DFS replication
and Azure File Sync together.
Let's say you have 2 file servers deployed,
one in the Brisbane office
and another in the Perth office.
And you're using DFS replication
to replicate files between these 2 servers.
You can install the Azure File Sync Agent
on one of these servers
and add it to a sync group
and easily replicate the data to an Azure File Share.
And you can also do this with multiple servers
in or out of Azure.
What's important to remember here
is that the first cloud endpoint is not billable,
but any additional servers are billable from Microsoft.
And data outbound from Azure is also billable.
So it might make sense if you have a lot
of servers performing DFS replication
to replicate locally with DFS replication
and replicate to and from the cloud
with only a couple of servers.
There are some limitations to be aware of though.
The first is that you cannot use cloud tiering
with DFSR replicated folders.
And the second is that you cannot use Azure File Sync
with DFS-replicated read-only replication folders.
You can also migrate from DFS replication
to Azure File Sync if you want to,
and there are only 97 steps in the process.
I kid, it's actually really straightforward,
provided you avoid the limitations we mentioned previously.
Let's say again that you have some servers replicating data
with DFS replication.
You can migrate from DFS replication to Azure File Sync
by first applying an Azure Storage account
and creating a file share.
Then you can create a storage sync service
and sync group using the file share as a cloud endpoint.
Then you can install and register the Azure File Sync Agent
on one of the servers in the DFS replication group
and add it to the sync group as a server endpoint.
And if you have a server where most of the updates occur,
this is a good candidate
for your first Azure File Sync Agent.
It's important not to enable cloud tiering.
Then you wait for all the data to replicate,
and then you install and register the Azure File Sync Agent
on the remaining servers in the replication group.
And finally, you wait for replication to complete
and then you can decommission your DFS replication
and enable cloud tiering on one or more of the endpoints
if you want to.
All right, let's wrap up with a bit of a summary
of what we've covered in this lesson.
You can use DFS namespaces
with Azure File Sync server endpoints.
And you can use a combination of DFS replication
and Azure File Sync
to synchronize on-premises data to and from the cloud
and within your on-premises sites.
It's important to remember though
that you should not use DFS replication with cloud tiering.
And you also should not use Azure File Sync
with read-only DFS replication targets.
All right, that concludes this lesson.
Thanks for being with me.
I hope you found it useful
and I look forward to seeing you on the next lesson.