Whilst this would be a bit of pain to set up initially, you could look at having DFS but not replicating the data. When a user moves, at that point, just configure their folder as having two targets (old and new location) so that the data is replicated across.
But from what I'm seeing of your requirements, you really just need to have a process in place, rather than any fancy DFS related technology. Work with management so that you are included in the pre-planning/work that's involved when a user moves location (I mean, some other stuff happens right? Security passes, desk allocation, new phone number etc. Get hooked in that process rather than being told about it after the fact). Also, with DFS, EFS encrypted files are not replicated (just in case you using that). Cheers Ken -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, 29 August 2009 2:43 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Advice on re-locating user home profiles Sean Martin <[email protected]> wrote on 08/28/2009 01:21:19 PM: > DFS would probably work if you used it in conjunction with DFS-R. > The questions are this > > 1) Do you want to host ALL of your user profiles on all servers? No. Because then I would need hundreds of gigabytes of storage at each site, so that each site has a copy of all user profiles. I have about 1,000 users. Right now, my "main" fileserver has something on the order of 900G of user storage alone. If I add in the other 4 servers, I'm looking at a couple terrabytes of space, at each site, just for user folders .. Yes, I know - in spite of policy against it, I know they've got many, many music files, etc, that they shouldn't have. I also need to clean that up. Even after I do, I'll still have multiple hundreds of gigs of valid files. > 2) Is it possible to upgade to Windows 2003 R2, to take advantage of DFS-R? That part I can do/mostly have done. > In a typical roaming profile environment, DFS should be a fairly > decent solution. We found that in a terminal service/Citrix > environment, especially with multiple application silos, DFS and > DFS-R was a pain and ultimately unsupported. We don't use roaming profiles, no. And we're not a terminal server/Citrix environment. > If using DFS-R/FRS, you wouldn't have to worry about > backup/restores, as the data would be replicated for you. Again, > this would require hosting all user profiles on all of your servers > to maintain continuity. Yeah, and that's the part I don't see happening, due to the storage and the huge bandwidth issues (those huundreds of gigs have to fully replicate, at least at first. After that, I'm sure it's manageable use of bandwidth, to replicate changes). > Clients will connect to the DFS server within their site. You could > implement some type of redundancy/load balancing as well by adding > multiple servers to your Folder Targets. You can control which > servers clients connect to using referral ordering. Hmmm ... > Again, I don't have much experiencing using FRS, but from my > experience with DFS-R and from what I've read about the > improvements, it would be worth researching whether upgrading to > Windows 2003 R2 would be feasible. Thanks! > > - Sean > On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 8:21 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Daniel Rodriguez <[email protected]> wrote on 08/28/2009 12:01:52 PM: > > > And you are not using DFS beecause? This would help you tremendously. > Don't know enough about to implement. I know the general theory of it > (it's pretty equivalent to a mount point in Unix/Linux, I believe). How > would it help me, tho? > > Would I specify the profile location as "\\DFS\Users\username1", and then > - as long as something mounted into DFS has a path "\Users\username1", > offline folders would be happy? And then I'd only have to worry about > doing the backup/restore from one physical server to the other? > > > On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:56 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > I have 5 sites that have file servers in them. We assign a user's home > > profile in AD (home folder) to be the server closest to them, for > > performance sake. We also use folder re-direction via GPO, as well as > > offline files (sometimes, the WAN connections can hiccup, and we lose > > connectivity). A mostly standard (or not unknown) configuration, right? > > > > Here's my problem/aggravation: > > > > I have people move from site to site all the time. Their computer goes > > with them. Rather than have them access all their files over a WAN link, > > we want them to access them locally, for performance reasons. > > > > This means I have to synchronize their re-directed folders; backup their > > files at the old fileserver; restore to the new fileserver; delete their > > offline files cache (else it will continue to synchronize to their old > > fileserver); and change their profile setting in AD. Unfortunately, I > > can't schedule the time of their move, so I end up hearing about it > after > > they've moved into their new site. So I either have to interrupt their > day > > and stop their computer usage (while the backup/restore is taking > place), > > or try and doing it in the evening, remotely, on my time from home. This > > is - of course - further complicated by the fact that I have to > coordinate > > with the user's schedule for daytime work, etc. > > > > I know that a good chunk of my problem is not technical, it's the fact > > that I can't do the backup and delete offline cache as the last step > > before the user moves, so that by the time they are all set up at their > > new site, everything is ready to go (in terms of cleared offline folders > > cache, and new entry in profile setting in AD, and restore done to new > > server). But since I (apparently) can't change this process, I'm looking > > for some advice on ways to make my life easier. > > > > Any advice? (from a technical standpoint, I mean) Better way to do this? > I > > don't think something like DFS would help, but I've never used it, so > I'm > > not sure. Something I am not yet aware of? > > > > Details: > > Win2000 AD > > Clients are either Win2000 or WinXP Pro > > Backup software is EMC NetWorker > > WAN links are Verizon TLS (Transparent LAN Service) - effectively > > speaking, we use a VLAN on Verizons fiber LAN. It is pretty reliable. > > > > Thanks ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
