Windows Server DFSR and File Replication Survey

I really wish we can hope for an DFS-R extension for WAC. I do much appreciate your honesty and clear words on the feedback (rant). We aren't getting younger, we have constraints to fill job roles with talents, not only in IT. Sometimes though the process of HR is too narrow minded not giving people a chance or require moving still in 2023.

You know better than me there are talents to fill the gap, even volunteers, but DFS, network file shares and everything needed, especially for WAC needs to be open source as it is mostly PowerShell anyway. Please release extensions on github to allow you to focus your valueable ressources on the job and let creative people contribute their needs to the solution. It works so well with Terminal, PowerShell, winget, Powertoys and I have zero idea why WAC and WAC extensions are closed source, even harming the product with slow fixes. 

This is not a complaint mainly on the unclear decision of the WAC PG. They even removed feedback from github.eIt's rather targeted to inspire you bringing up the case in MSFT Redmond that it would be necessary and helpful to joint forces on extensions for WAC on github that are related SMB, NedPyle. Then we finally can deprecate Windows XP GPO GPP (Client side extensions) with very slow WMIC under the hood, in mind WMIC is already on the list of "optional features" for a reason in Windows 11.

Good luck! 

Yom007 I can't talk details but I have been busy on this, yes 

Hi  NedPyle , any luck with your initiative ? It would be good to understand where DFSR is headed. 

JR_Tayschrenn I spend a ton of time and energy investing in on-prem products, as does my team (you will see this in SMB, File Server, Storage Migration Service, Storage Replica, etc. that I was the PM for over the past few years). The point of this survey was about me building a case for funding a modern replacement for DFSR, for instance, which has substantial architectural issues at this point in the modern network and storage environment after releasing in 2005. But I'm not given the resources to maintain everything forever or control of the budgets to do so, and when there are workarounds, it hurts the case for the limited sustainability team resources to make more substantial fixes. I know it's frustrating to hear - as someone who wants all of their products to be excellent, it's extremely frustrating for me personally (imagine owning an entire feature but no longer having developers) - but I'm not here to sugarcoat things. I tried to have that IE issue fixed years ago, I fought for it, I lost. Sometimes I fight and win. I'm sure you have many similar experiences within your role. 

Karl-WE Yeah, I'm done with Microsoft's 'work arounds' - if they don't have the simple intellect to identify "Oh hey, we have reports generating in our product that can't be used in a secure manner with our new Browser BY DEFAULT" then I am not going to go out of my way to work around and make it work.

Especially not when running it on an OS that doesn't even COME with IE (Server 2022)

I straight up would not accept that as an answer if I were you.  The correct resolution is for them to provide an updated reporting mechanism that generates an HTML report which can be opened in a modern browser. Period. 

I don't care if that's a Powershell script or Cmdlt they build or if it means they have to re-write the entire application - that's not on us as consumers who pay millions of dollars to Microsoft.  We need to - as Enterprise Engineers - stop letting Microsoft roll over us with their poor choices.  WE are the ones that have the actual voice they will listen to.  SMB companies don't spend enough to influence Microsoft.  My parent company?  They somewhat recently signed what is in essence billions of dollars worth of investment with Microsoft.  I have the ear of high level CSAM types and am leveraging those to make it understood that if they keep hamstringing development and half-assing products, we're going to stop using them.  

Not directly related, but instead of continuing with Hyper-V and SCVMM, we're budgeting now hundreds of thousands towards VMWare that Microsoft COULD have earned, if they hadn't shot themselves and in turn us in the foot at nearly every single turn when it comes to Enterprise On-Premise Virtualization time and time again.  This DFS/DFS-R is just another nail in the coffin of us moving away from Microsoft products and will instead invest in 3rd party solutions, because Microsoft can't be trusted to provide a reliable (non-azure) product anymore, in my opinion.  They invest all their R&D into the cloud, and even with their on premise solutions (i.e. WAC) try to force Azure down the throats of Enterprise and SMB alike.

That all having been said, I appreciate your reply for those out there who are comfortable with it, and don't have the ability to push back.  Thank you for your time!!

participated in the survey aswell, hope it is helpful. 

" I no longer have a dev team for it. That's the purpose of the survey. "
That's sad to hear. It is widely used and still important even for Azure Hybrid setups. Just recently learned about a customer from Nasuni, migrating a customer from local SMB file serves to a cloud based one, introducing DFS on the new cloud construction.

Hi NedPyle  JR_Tayschrenn I have had case with the App Assure Team.
Many MMC reports do rely on IE and today's Edge IE Mode.
The outcome of the SR was that you either set CSP policies or GPO, or local settings to change this setting from "Default" to "Allow". This allows you to render all content correctly. Not limited to DFS-R reports but also other MMC related reports.

JR_Tayschrenn DFSR has been in maintenance mode for years, it doesn't take fixes anymore except security bugs - I no longer have a dev team for it. That's the purpose of the survey. 

Edge with internet explorer mode enabled and the report trusted will load the page correctly (which I realize is a pain in the butt but does work). I just ran this one on a Win11 machine with Edge: 

This is about 4 years late.

Just a casual reminder - which is in my form I filled out - that DFS-R's built in health report in Server 2022 can't even be opened by the default browser.

In fact, I can't find a browser that WILL open the health report.  Why? Because it was clearly built for IE9, and in the past decade nobody thought "hey, we should maybe make our monitoring and reporting better in this principle technology".

I assume instead it went like this: "Oh it's fine they'll just have to buy SCOM, and two FTEs to run SCOM but what's money anyways, everyone can just crack open their cash vault to pay for something that should probably be built into the software itself and not rely on a cumbersome dinosaur monitoring platform that only people with PhDs and/or 10 years experience in running System Center software can run"


Criticism aside, thank you for posting this survey.