We ae moving a PDC from a Windows 2003 server to a 2008 64bit server.
During this changeover it has been suggested to do some changes to the way our environment works.
For Example:
It has been suggested to us to move to redirected folders in our company enviroment.
Currently we use mapped drives for the users files. This has worked and is fine.
What we mean by folder redirection, is that when users log in to their WS that their Local "My Documents" folder is pointed to a file server. Currently they have to go to their X: drive to get to their personal folder.
Some questions:
1. Is this a better method? (folder redirection) Some have argued this is the way things are done today. I,m not really sure that is true? I have seen other organizaations do what we are doing.
2. What are the advantages to Folder redirection? All the advantages I see are really similar to mapped drives e.g. We back up the users files on the file server, we will do the same on the redirected files.
3. Perhaps one of the advantages (or disadvantages) is that when you are using redirected folders if the network disconnects the files are also on your local HD as an "off line copy." This makes it nice if there is a network outage or slow network I suppose, but I could also imagine that when the network comes back up there may be bottle necks or miss aligned files or second copys. Thoughts / expeirences??
5. Research seems to show that in 2008 R2 you cannot remove from the redirected folders Pictures or Music. Is that true? This seems kinda dumb if true. I really dont want to be backing up pictures or music. While we dont have a lot some people do put pictues in their folders, and its hard to stop them. In the past we didnt care cause it was on their local computer now if we go to this method its another thing to police.
6. It has also been proposed that best practice is not to use the same name for the server. The problem is that any unc paths will now not work e.g.\\OldPDC\share\filez verses\\NewPDC\Share\filez
Is it true that renaming a new server the same name is difficult and not the best way to do things. I think part of reason for this is because they want to to a parallel change over. In other words slowly move things over. This means that really they cant have two computers on the network called the same thing.
I have asked a lot of questions I know but this is a big deal to change and IM not sure what the best thing to do is.
Thanks.