deleting a DFSR replication group and rejoining as a member

Step 1: Remove Membership from the Replication Group on all Servers in the DFS Management Console

Step 2: Delete the Replication Group

Step 3: Remove the DFS Replication from the File Services Role in Server Manager.

Step 4: From an elevated command prompt, delete the corrupted DFSR database:

• Run to Set Permissions –> icacls “c:\system volume information” /Grant Administrator:F
• Run to Delete Database –> rd “c:\system volume information\dfsr” /s /q
• I would actually rename the folder and delete it later (it will take awhile)

Step 5: Enable DFS Replication within the File Services Role in Server Manager.

• copy your DFSR tweaks and restart the service to load the new settings.

see the following. http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/03/31/tuning-replication-performance-in-dfsr-especially-on-win2008-r2.aspx

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\DFSR\Parameters\Settings]"AsyncIoMaxBufferSizeBytes"=dword:00800000"RpcFileBufferSize"=dword:00080000"StagingThreadCount"=dword:00000008"TotalCreditsMaxCount"=dword:00001000"UpdateWorkerThreadCount"=dword:00000020

Step 6: Recreate the Replication Group and reconfigure your replicated folders.

• remember to set your staging size by default it's 4GB. My staging size is 20 GB and I was having multiple watermark errors even setting it to 40GB. You can always tune it down once the initial sync is complete.

Quick tips:

- After removing or recreating the replication group, you can use the command “dfsrdiag pollad” – from an elevated command prompt – to pull the changes from the domain controllers, which should speed things up a little for you.

- After recreating the DFSR group, you can use the following command to poll the status of the replication:

    Wmic /namespace:\\root\microsoftdfs path dfsrreplicatedfolderinfo get replicationgroupname,replicatedfoldername,state

A state of 2 refers to initial replication and a state of 4 refers to replicating state.