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Shared drives access during an outage

Copper Contributor

Hi, I've been looking for a solution to a problem that occurred a few weeks ago: 

 

During an Internet outage the shared drives on the local Windows file server works perfectly until: 

a) client reboots its computer

or

b) server is rebooted

or

c) clients go home, and the next day they come back to the office the shared drives authentication is no longer available

 

We use AD authentication and during the Internet outage no DC is available, so we rely on cached credentials (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/172931/cached-domain-logon-information), but it is not a good solution for us if a), b) or c) occurs or if cached info is overwritten with other cached stuff or if client #51, #52, #53 tries to connect since some offices have more than 50 staff connecting to the server through shared drives. 

 

I found "offline files" option here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/folder-redirection/folder-redirection-rup-ov..., but the data on server is usually larger than the users' hard drives space, and MS recommends using "offline files" when "server is not available", but in this scenario the server is available, the local resource (shared drive) is available, but the authentication is not available. 

 

Besides creating local accounts on my file servers and keep user/password in a safe central place and initiate access to them with a DR plan, do you know a better way to enable shared folders access during a long Internet outage with no Domain Controller access at all? 

 

Thanks!

2 Replies

Better solution is to maintain a domain controller at each site.

 

 

Thanks Dave, that's an option, and we have considered it before, but due to security concerns it's not been approved (yet).