How does FRS with DFS compare to PeerSync?
There are a lot of Microsoft products that we firmly believe in, so we're not anti-Microsoft in any way. The major distinction between the two is that PeerSync is responsible for file synchronization between servers. Major distinguishing features include:
- Byte-Level Synchronization
- Real-Time Detection
- File Locking (with PeerLock)
- Revisioning
- Deletion Management
- Email/Admin Reporting
DFS on the other hand attempts to make multiple locations appear as one--this is not the goal of PeerSync. DFS does not provide synchronization, so at the very least you will need to manage DFS and File Replication Services. Within File Replication Services, if we compare the same features:
- It does not support Byte-Level Synchronization. The Real-Time can be delayed up to 15 minutes (similar to Active Directory Synchronization), so there is latency involved regardless of bandwidth availability.
- It does not support file locking. This means that users can be opening the same file at multiple locations and making changes without knowing it.
- It does not support revisioning.
- It does not support storage of files that have been deleted by users but later found out that was a mistake.
Limitations
- A maximum file size of 20 gigabytes (GB).
- A maximum of 64 GB of data.
- A maximum of 500,000 files under the replica root.
- A maximum of 1,000,000 simultaneous change orders.
Other issues
Microsoft recommends that you evaluate your FRS configuration with caution. As the number of files and data size increase, you may experience scenarios that affect computer and network performance.
For data sets of more than 500,000 files or 64 GB of disk space, Microsoft recommends that you use the Robocopy.exe Resource Kit tool to copy data.