home folders v my documents please contribute!!

[schtek]

In days of OLD and battleships were made of IRON i hear NT4 was around and so was home folders..

In days of NEW and destroyers are made of aluminium i know 2003 servers are here and my documents folders is the rage...

can i ask of you ALL old and new what your thoughts are on home folders v my documents for saving clients work!!!

What do you all think is the best way to set up this task and why you think yours is the best way!!

i hope this builds a valuable discussion in the next 2 weeks or so!!

many thanks to all of you for your contributions


"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."

 

[karmic]

Hope you get a few replies...

I don't even use "home folders" anymore and generally remove "my documents" from the workstation altogether. Everything goes on the server, even email pst's, be it in the personal user share, common or secure drives.

It's a bit of teaching for the average user but it works for me and them... And I typically won't let them set up links to the files/folders on the server. They usually wind up as UNC and are a pain to change out servers if necessary.

~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~

 

[CallwaveEmp]

Create Domain DFS shares for your home drives.
Use Group Policy to redirect My Documents to the DFS Shares.
For Laptops, Synchonize their local My Documents with the network.
Use Group policy to ensure that the default place to store files is My Documents. Train the users repeately - if it isnt in My Documents - it doesnt get recovered.
The only thing I agree with above is to put the pst files on the network. However, place them into my documents.
When you are ready with the above, enable roaming profiles. Not necessarily so users can log on anywhere - but so you can re-image their workstation, they can log in, and everything is the way it was.
Buy another server - add it to the DFS hierarchy, and replicate between them. Do you have multiple sites - put them in different locations. My Laptop users work from both locations - and A.D. site awareness ensures that they connect to the nearest server. If either server goes down, users will be redirected to the other location. Slow, but better then explaining downtime.
Place both DFS shares on a Win2k3 volume - and use shadow copies. Manage the space so you can create 2 copies a day. You can restore any file with just a few clicks.

If all fits togther, and is simple to maintain.

 

[itsp1965]

You can still maintain the My Documents folder but have it point to a network share. We did this when we first rolled out Win2K. Users are used to the interface and their files are being backed up.

 

[schtek]

Well here is 3 different versions of how home/my doc's are set up from server 2003....
keep em coming

many thanks to u all


"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."

 

[markdmac]

Some interesting thoughts have been presented here. I have to totally disagree however with the concept of putting PST files on the network. This is your best opportunity to corrupt a PST and to cause unnecessary latency in using Outlook. Storing PST files so they can be backed up is of course a great idea, but not the working copy. Microsoft provides a free add on to backup the PST to a network share when Outlook is closed. This is the preferred and safest method.

You will find the utility here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...3A-B7D0-4B16-B8AF-5A6322F4FD01&displaylang=en

I think that itsp1965 is right in that users are often used to using the My Documents folder. I however prefer to separate things. I've found that there is a lot of junk that users will store locally. While disk space on the server is cheap these days, the greater the volume of data you have the greater the challenge it is to back it up. Most tape storage units will only hold 80GB IF you can get really tight compression. We typically only see abut 56GB fitting on a tape. So unless you have a tape changer I recommend leaving My Documents local and providing your users with a mapped drive and instruct them that anything that needs to be backed up should be placed in the network folder. I typically like to map a P drive (P for personal) and and S drive (shared). While this does make the users have to think about their data, I think it is important and most users seem willing to abide by this as a guideline.

Since you have referenced the old NT4 Home drive I want to point out that while that is still in ADUC it is really just there for legacy integration. You should try to avoid setting a home drive in a users properties because it creates additional overhead in managing your users. Instead, you should use a comprehensive login script that can map the drives for you. Refer to my FAQ faq329-5798 for information on how to do this. If you support multiple physical locations, you might want to also look at another of my FAQs faq329-5908.



I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[schtek]

and another thanks markdmac your scripts have work V well for me in the past!!


"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."

 

[CallwaveEmp]

Backup and storage are good considerations markdmac - but that is what quotas are for.

And, BackupExec and NetBackup (the two I am most familiar with) have the ability to skip files/folders in the backups. Tell the users that no files from "My Music" will be restored, and eliminate them from the backups.

 

[markdmac]

The only problem with enabling quotas is the fact that Microsoft's solution is not nearly as robust as it needs to be. If you store a users home folder and a group drive on the same partition, a user can get locked out when you don't want them to. For instance lets say you want your users to have no more than 100 MB in their personal folder and you set a quota for that amount. You give the user access to a group drive that is to be used by the entire department. This folder needs to be able to hold as many items as are needed by the business. If your user puts 50MB in their personal drive, they will get locked out if they were to put another 50MB in the groups share.

As pro-Microsoft as I am they have really failed in this regard. Novell had comprehensive quotas 15 years ago back when I first started in the industry.

Choosing to eliminate the My Music folder is well and fine, but what do you do when your users move all their music to the My Documents folder?

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[porkchopexpress]

I do agree with Mark on quotas there are far better third party solutions out there.

It does look like MS have taken this on board though as the 2003 R2 version look far superior.

http://www.redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1008

http://redmondmag.com/images/0705red_Insider_Fig3.jpg

 

[markdmac]

Yes, I agree. I can't wait for those updates to come out.

As an MSCE and CNE (who hasn't managed Novell for years) it has always irked me that there was something so necessary that microsoft wasn't doing as well as a 15 year old product.

Now if we can just get the enhancements to NTBackup that we've been askign Microsoft for I think life will be golden.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark