I'm interested in getting some input from enterprise-grade Linux users and enthusiasts on options for setting up replicating file servers to deploy on an Active Directory domain.

So you know where I'm coming from, I manage networks for a few large clients and have been gradually migrating different aspects of their infrastructure to Linux-based solutions. In fact, at this point only the workstation and domain controllers are running Windows and pretty much everything else I have moved to the Linux platform.

I'm not interested in moving them from Active Directory because it works, they get it, and it's relatively easy to use. That said, I'm not against setting up some additional DCs running Linux down the line.

Right now, they are all using their DCs as file servers hosting replicating DFS roots that I've set up. I'd like to move that functionality off the domain controllers and onto a purely Linux-based series of file servers. I'd actually just like to have separate file servers in general, but while I'm at it I'd like to go ahead and set up Linux-based file servers.

I've looked into setting up DFS roots in Samba, which I've not had much luck with but I know can be done. But if I'm going to move them all to Linux, I'm not necessarily tied to the MS-DFS protocol. I want it to be Windows-accessible out of the box, so I suppose that limits me to Samba, but I'd like to use something other than MS-DFS for the backend replication stuff.

So if you skipped past all that , here's my main question: is there some DFS alternative that I might want to look into that would be Windows-accessible but does replication without using MS-DFS? If it helps, my distro of choice is along the lines of Debian, Ubuntu, etc. but I'm not against using something else if it would be easier to set up and manage.

Thanks in advance!

Have you already looked at AFS?

I have, but not to deeply. That was one of the main things I came across but I was afraid the Windows compatibility would be an issue. It's definitely something I'll be testing out.

I am not sure how much compatibility you are looking for, but I remember using it a bit on public use machines - it seemed to work well enough.
http://www.openafs.org/pages/windows.html

After reading up on it, I think this may be just what I'm looking for. It definitely sounds like it fixes the issues I've had with MS-DFS. Since there is an MSI available for client installation, I can just add that to Group Policy so that support will be added to any new Windows member to the domain.