User Home Directory Orginization considerations

[HeavyHand]

To start I'm running my domain at win2k3 functionality level and I'm rolling out win7 computers. I have a vista desktop setup as my group policy mgmt console for the uplevel machines.

I'm trying to figure out the best and easiest way to manage user home directories for my network. About half of my users are mobile and for the time being will be using offline file synchronization until I can figure out something better. Currently users are broken up into logical groups

e.g. User Home Directory \

Management
Office
IT
Lab
etc. And each person has their own folder within the share.

The last place I was at just had a user home directory share with every employee's folder being in there. With a couple thousand users it seemed messy.

But as I am rolling out new laptops and trying to do more and more through group policy it seems like having all my users broken down into groups is potentially limiting me more than anything.

Would I be better off not grouping my users home folders by dept or is there a way to manage this as is?

 

[58sniper]

The last place I was at just had a user home directory share with every employee's folder being in there. With a couple thousand users it seemed messy.

Not if there is a standard naming convention.

The problem with using various subfolders based on role is when someone changes roles. Either you have to go change it, or you have an incorrect structure. Why add administrative overhead?

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

http://www.exchangeblogs.com/

 

[JordanCN2]

I agree about not putting them into department subfolders first. I have about 200 users on a server. I have one share called \Users and each user has a subfolder with full access (\Users\Username). I also map Z:\ to the \\Server\Users\%USERNAME% on their Profiles tab in AD and map their MyDocuments folder to Z:\ and set it to available offline

If you were going to put users my documents data in the subfolders just for sharing purposes you can just give read access to that users group to their folder as well.

 

[gmanzo]

Hi, I have XP and Win7 computers and also have a share called \users and I would like to do exactly what Jordan CN2 does, would you please help me letting me know How to do it?

 

[58sniper]

gmanzo - please don't hijack threads.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=gpo+my+documents+redirection

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

http://www.exchangeblogs.com/