Enterprise Vault and Replication with Volume Replicator

Hi All,

I am after some advice and am hoping someone here can help me out.

I have been asked to investigate implementing a distributed file system for one of our clients.  The client has a datacentre and 25 remote offices.  We would like to implement a file-based architecture where each remote site has a copy of its files, which are then replicated back to the datacentre.  The datacentre copy will then be used for backup processes and in the event that the site server fails.

This is all well and good, but we also need to implement stub-file based archiving.  Our client is not happy with the idea of having to go to two separate locations to get files, so we need to use stub files that remain on the top tier of storage while the data blocks are moved to a lower performing disk tier.

Again, this isn't something that should pose a problem.

However, we had intented to use Microsoft's DFSR to carry out the replication, and a third-party solution to handle the archiving, but after discussions with MS it transpires that DFSR cannot replicate stub files (or NTFS reparse points in technical terms). 

I then discovered through forum hopping that it might be possible to achieve both of these requirements through a combination of Enterprise Vault (stub-file based archiving) and the Volume Replicator option from Storage Foundation (replicated filesystems).  I cannot find anyone who has succesfully achieved this though, hence my post here.

I would therefore be immensely grateful if anyone could offer me any support as to whether this will work.   I don't want to cross-post to the Storage Foundation group yet, but if that is thought to be the better place I would be only too happy to re-post.

Thanks in advance,

Phil