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DFSR replication of Revit files does not occur RRS feed

  • Question

  • I have two sites with Server 2012 R2 at both sites. I have setup dfs to replicate working folders. All file type are being replicated except anything that has an extension of rvt. Does anyone know why Revit files cannot be replicated? I Created a revittest file with a txt entension and it replicated. Changed the extention to .rvt and it does not replicate.

    Wade Harris

    Monday, December 21, 2015 9:14 PM

Answers

  • Hi Wade Harris,

    Thanks for your post.

    I did some tests and turns out that *.rvt will not work. It will not be recognized by dfs replication.

    And I haven't found the related documentation from microsoft to describe dfs replication and rvt  entension type file.

    There's the article show the problem:

    Even though users open Revit files from a network drive letter, Revit uses a UNC (universal naming convention) path. DFS servers have different names, thus Revit thought the cloned projects were different.

    https://www.augi.com/library/revit-collaboration-then-and-now

    Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.

    Best Regards,

    Mary Dong


    Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

    • Marked as answer by Wade128 Tuesday, December 22, 2015 2:14 PM
    Tuesday, December 22, 2015 6:09 AM
    Moderator

All replies

  • Hi Wade Harris,

    Thanks for your post.

    I did some tests and turns out that *.rvt will not work. It will not be recognized by dfs replication.

    And I haven't found the related documentation from microsoft to describe dfs replication and rvt  entension type file.

    There's the article show the problem:

    Even though users open Revit files from a network drive letter, Revit uses a UNC (universal naming convention) path. DFS servers have different names, thus Revit thought the cloned projects were different.

    https://www.augi.com/library/revit-collaboration-then-and-now

    Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.

    Best Regards,

    Mary Dong


    Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

    • Marked as answer by Wade128 Tuesday, December 22, 2015 2:14 PM
    Tuesday, December 22, 2015 6:09 AM
    Moderator
  • I have two sites with Server 2012 R2 at both sites. I have setup dfs to replicate working folders. All file type are being replicated except anything that has an extension of rvt. Does anyone know why Revit files cannot be replicated? I Created a revittest file with a txt entension and it replicated. Changed the extention to .rvt and it does not replicate.

    Doable but not exactly straight-forward. So either a) follow step-by-step guide and recommendation from forum thread below or b) re-work your setup to use other replication (volume-based) or built a clustered file server (recommended because of performance reasons). See:

    Running Revit with DFS

    http://www.revitforum.org/architecture-general-revit-questions/11810-running-revit-dfs.html

    Good luck :)


    Cheers,

    Anton Kolomyeytsev [MVP]

    StarWind Software Chief Architect

    Profile:   Blog:   Twitter:   LinkedIn:  

    Note: Posts are provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

    • Proposed as answer by James_Welsh Wednesday, December 23, 2015 2:31 AM
    Tuesday, December 22, 2015 1:39 PM
  • From my experience using DFS would inevitably lead to a lot of issues, among them:

    -split brain issues, in case the sync channel goes down

    -the failover for DFS has quite a lot of problems (there's a pretty good rundown on when the failover does and does not occure here: http://help.globalscape.com/help/wafs3/using_microsoft_dfs_for_failover.htm)

    - Lack of distributed file locking ( if you will have several users perfrom changes to the same file it will apply a "last user wins policy", which is very suboptimal) more about it here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2009/02/20/understanding-the-lack-of-distributed-file-locking-in-dfsr.aspx

    They can be worked around with 3rd party software and redundant links in the case of the split brain, however you need to consider, the time it will take to set everything straight vs going with volume based replication (not flawless either, but in your scenario seems preferable, imo).


    • Edited by James_Welsh Wednesday, December 23, 2015 3:03 AM
    Wednesday, December 23, 2015 3:03 AM
  • DFS has some issues, among them:
    - split brain issues, in case the sync channel is interrupted
    - the failover for DFS has conditions when it does not occur and this inconsistency is very problematic 
    - lack of distributed file locking (if several users perform changes to the same file on different servers, only the last modified copy will be replicated) 
    Most issues can be resolved using 3rd party software and redundant links. However, a different replication method is also an option.
    You could use a virtual SAN to create a “shared nothing” SMB3 file server to avoid the common issues of DFS. With StarWind VirtualSAN for example, you could do it even with the free license. Here’s a tech paper giving an overview of how it would look like https://www.starwindsoftware.com/whitepapers/starwind-virtual-san-and-hyper-v-over-smb-3-0.pdf

    • Edited by Taras Shved Wednesday, December 23, 2015 9:36 AM
    Wednesday, December 23, 2015 9:35 AM