Location based drive mapping? 1

[cajuntank]

I have a few mobile users that I need to be able to have their application drive mapped (O:\) based on their current location. We currently use GPO User Configuration, Preferences to handle our current drive mappings, but I am not thinking of how I can "target" those users so that they have a O:\ drive going to one share at location A and then go to O:\ drive to a different share just because they logged in at location B the next day.

We have different OU(s) for each location. The mobile user/s in question were just randomly put into one of the OU(s)/location that they work at mostly.

Any ideas?

 

[kmcferrin]

What your want to use are site GPOs, and create a separate GPO for each site.

Go into Active Directory Sites and Services (you do have your sites configured correctly, right?) and right-click on a site and select "Properties". Go to the "Group Policy" tab and create a new GPO that handles the mapping for you. Lather, rinse, and repeat for each site. Problem solved.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[cajuntank]

Ok... so if I'm understanding you correctly... I currently have this GPO for drive mappings and My Documents folder redirection and it is linked to the OU. Am I basically just unlinking it from the OU container and linking it to the site instead? Nothing else I have to do?

 

[kmcferrin]

I believe that is it. Obviously you'll need to make sure that the appropriate security for the GPO is set (i.e., read and apply rights to the correct people) but otherwise it sounds like you should be good to go.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[pagy]

See if this faq gives you anything;

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=5908

Paul
MCTS: Exchange 2007, Configuration
MCSA:2003
MCSE:2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

RFC 2795 - The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2795.html

 

[kmcferrin]

While I applaud the script in the linked FAQ, it really is re-inventing the wheel. You end up building a lot of logic into the script trying to determine location and what should be mapped based on location, whereas with using a site policy you are making use of the location data that is already present.

Besides, the script is determining logon location based on the location of the authenticating server, not the location of the authenticated user. What if you're in a site that doesn't have a DC, or a site where the DC was down or temporarily unavailable during authentication? You could be authenticating via a server at a completely different site but you would want the site-specific mapping to still take place. That's why Site GPOs will work better.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[58sniper]

True - it's probably an assumption that the DC is the file server. Hence, if it's down and you're not authenticating to it, then you couldn't get to the files on it anyways.

I'm a big fan of using DFS for stuff like this. With DFS, you'd connect to the closest DFS box, and yet have replication to other locations. This can be really nice, since if you use DFS for all of your file shares, you'd end up with one server where all of your file data could be backed up from. That means you wouldn't have to be backing up a ton of data in other locations. But that does require some planning.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

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