Why does the P11D Organiser have problems with a DFS (Distributed File System)?

Storing the P11D Organiser application and the associated data files on a DFS (Distributed File System) or replicated storage will cause issues with the operation of the application. By way of explanation, when data is being replicated using a distributed file system, the data on the destination system may sometimes be inaccessible until replication completes, which can affect user experience and application availability.

A DFS is constantly looking for changes and updates to files, and then replicating these to other datastores or servers, which means when the P11D Organiser requests exclusive access to files, it can sometimes be refused by the server, as the files are technically 'in use' by the replication service at the point of the request.

A DFS would normally be used to offer a single DNS point for a set of storage devices, so one possible solution is to ensure that you configure the application to use a direct UNC path to a single server, rather than the DNS address.

Replicated servers and DFS devices are ideal for storing and serving documents, this is what they are designed to do and why the replication is so vital, however, they are NOT designed to work as an application server, which is what the P11D Organiser requires to function correctly.

The same issues can be seen on a smaller scale with customers trying to run the P11D Organiser on Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive or SharePoint, as they work in a similar way, looking for changes to files, then 'grabbing' them for replication (or syncing) to the 'cloud'.

In summary, if stored on a server or network storage, it needs to be a standard SMB share or something that presents as a SMB share (e.g. an Azure File Share).