I had been having quite a few DFS replication/synchronization issues, and frankly, SAM wasn't much help in identifying and troubleshooting problems.
I think I finally fixed the biggest issues, so I am hoping that at least SAM might help me monitor my DFS from now on.
Frankly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of detail up here on DFS, or how to really use SAM to monitor it effectively. So I guess I am just putting this out there, hoping to generate some discussion and helpful tips for those of us who would like to use this tool to help with DFS. Here is where I am at so far:
What I have noticed is the DFS template is a mix of 24 components, some of which are specific to a replicated folder (5 of the 24)--they simply will not function without an instance ID--and others that are at the namespace or server level.
So what I did is create 2 new app monitor templates, one with the 5 folder-specific components which I assigned to every replicated folder I have, and another template (with the other 19 components) which I assigned to each server that participates in DFS.
Some of the "generic" components seem like they would be more appropriate for folder-level monitoring (e.g. staging space above high watermark, replication stopped, no space for replication, etc). I am thinking that if I added a foldername filter to the component, that it would then be appropriate to move them over into the folder monitor template. But that gets to be a LOT of heavy lifting as the number of replicated folders increases.
I would love to see a mechanism within a application monitor to set something once, and then have all the components "inherit" it from the app monitor, just like the app monitor can inherit credentials from the node.
Thoughts anyone?