Windows 10: How to recreate Fileserver running DFS replication and DFS namespaces

I am currently having issues with our fileserver which is a VM running Windows server 2016 and hosts the DFS replication and namespace of our company. I am having issues with the WinSxs folder and no type of cleanup helps resolve the issue of this folder eating up disk space. I asked here on the Microsoft community and Microsoft advised if all else fails the server will need to be rebuilt. Our namespace data is hosted on a separate VHD therefore I was wondering if it would be possible to migrate the dfs configuration to a new VM and then attach the VHD with the already existing data to it? Wil

:)

 

Correct way to permanently decommission FS1 without effecting the DFS namespace and replication?

Hi, we are looking to decommission our old DFS file server (FS1). FS1 was the original file server where we setup the DFS and replicated to FS2 and FS3. We had all three servers replicating the correctly
for the past few months. Now we have decided it’s time to decommission FS1. We shutdown FS1 to see if the everything would still function. With FS1 offline, FS2 and FS3 are still replicating without issue.

Can you tell me the correct way to permanently decommission FS1 without effecting the DFS namespace and replication? When I open DFS Management on FS2 I see an error on our namespace. “The namespace cannot
be queried. The specified domain either does not exist or could not be connected”.

Environment: 3 File servers, 1 namespace, 3 replications

FS1 – Server 2008 R2 (Need to decommission but original creator of DFS namespace)

FS2 – Server 2012

FS3 – Server 2012

1 Namespace

\\domain.com\dfs

3 Replications

\\domain.com\dfs\profiles

\\domain.com\dfs\smfiles

\\domain.com\dfs\test

 

DFS Namespace issue

I've got an issue with network shares containing shortcuts of themselves. This creates and endless loop when searching, among other issues. When attempting to delete the shortcuts, I would receive errors. Using fsutil i was able to find that these shortcuts
are DFS Reparsepoints, and also was able to remove the reparsepoints and delete the folders (article). But they
kept coming back.

It took a really long time, but I finally figured out that each of the shares with this issue has a DFS Namespace set up, and I believe that the issue is how the targets were created. For instance the shares with this problem exist as such: \\Server1\Share1
and \\Server2\Share1 (these are replicated to each other). The namespace is listed as \\DomainName\Share but its namespace path is \\DomainName\Share1\Share1. I believe this is causing the namespace to create this reparsepoint INSIDE the share instead of
AS the share.

I hope this isn't coming across as gibberish. How do I fix this? I can't simply edit the namespace path, and I'm afraid deleting the namespace itself will break everything.

 

DFS Replication

I have 2 servers with DFS Replication only enabled. Unknown to me when one of the servers failed (couple of months?) but I noticed today that DFS was displaying a message that the connection was no longer replicating--both ends showing disabled. I re-enable
both sides and the topology test now passes. My question is, will all changes which occurred while they were disabled now "catch up" ? Also, did DFS automatically disable them because one side was down for too long ? I made a change to a test text file
and it did replicate but not sure about files which changed during the server down time.

Thanks