IntelliMirror Adds Manageability

What's the biggest challenge you face in the maintenance of your enterprise Windows NT infrastructure? Is the answer

(a) software distribution
(b) configuration management
(c) easy OS installation
(d) roaming users
(e) all the above

If you answered e, then you're among the majority of Windows administrators. The arrival of Windows 2000 (Win2K) is just around the corner, and with Win2K comes technology that might revolutionize software distribution, configuration management, OS installation, and roaming user profiles. I can hear you skeptics saying, "Revolutionize?" Administrators have waited a long time for Win2K's improved manageability. Although these improvements are only the beginning, in this article I explain how these improvements represent a revolution in the ideas surrounding Windows management.

Over the past year, Microsoft has used various terms to refer to management technology, including Zero Administration for Windows (ZAW), Change and Configuration Management, and IntelliMirror. IntelliMirror is a subset of the Change and Configuration Management solution within Win2K. What is IntelliMirror? To answer this question, I'll examine the features that make up IntelliMirror, explain why these features are important for getting control of your Windows infrastructure, and show you how to set up these features in your Win2K environment.

The name IntelliMirror hints at this technology's purpose to intelligently mirror the user experience regardless of computer choice or network connectivity status. Underlying the mirroring of the user experience are three important categories of management: user document management, user settings management, and software installation. Spanning these categories and enabling the management features are two key Win2K technologies—Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy. As I examine each IntelliMirror management category, I'll explain how AD and Group Policy help you manage your environment.

User Document Management
IntelliMirror's user document management technology lets documents follow users. The keystone to this technology is the offline-folders feature—previously known as client-side caching. Offline folders let users store server-based files, server-based folders, and Web content locally on a Win2K workstation so that users can continue to use or view content without a network connection. If you're familiar with NT 4.0's My Briefcase, think of offline folders as a more intelligent and integrated My Briefcase.

Let's look at an example of how offline folders work. Suppose a user's home directory resides on a network server and maps to the H drive. The user can simply right-click on the home directory folder and choose the Make Available Offline property from the context menu to tell Win2K to cache the contents of the home folder to a laptop. After the user disconnects the laptop and logs on again, the home folder will be available on the laptop without a network connection. If the user was working on a document in Microsoft Word, he or she can continue editing this file as if the laptop is still connected to the network. The next time the user connects to the network, Win2K will perform a file-level synchronization of all changes the user made to the laptop version of the home folder with the server. Offline folders perform only whole-file synchronization, not bit-level synchronization. Therefore, if a user changes one byte in a cached file, Win2K will copy the whole file back to the server when the user reconnects to the network. If two people are working on the same server-based file offline, Win2K will use the last-writer-wins approach (i.e., the most recently saved copy) when synchronizing the files with the network.

An administrator can specify that a client always cache the contents of a given share or folder. Alternatively, an administrator can restrict caching to only documents or only application files. From the client, a user can pin (i.e., select) a file or folder, such as the home folder, to make the folder continuously available offline.

To manage synchronization in Win2K, Microsoft provided the Windows Synchronization Manager tool. From the Start menu, choose Programs, Accessories, then Synchronize. You can set up offline-folder synchronization on a per-network-adapter basis, which lets you modify synchronization behavior depending on whether a network connection is via dial-up or LAN. For each network connection that you define, you can specify whether to perform synchronization at logon or logoff, when the computer is idle, or on a scheduled basis.

To control offline-folder behavior for Win2K users, you can use AD-based Group Policy Administrative Templates, which are similar to NT 4.0 system policies. Screen 1 shows some of the offline-folder policy options that you have at your disposal if you use Administrative Templates.

IntelliMirror's user document management also includes the My Documents folder feature. The My Documents folder is part of a Win2K user profile that will replace NT 4.0's personal folder. When you use roaming profiles, Win2K lets you redirect a user's My Documents folder location to prevent caching a large My Documents folder each time a user logs on to a new Win2K machine. Screen 2 shows how to use the My Documents Properties page's Target tab to move the default location for My Documents to another location on your network, such as a home folder.

Finally, user document management includes the new disk quota feature in Win2K. You can define disk quotas on a per-volume and per-user basis. You can use Win2K disk quotas to track user disk usage and limit the number of bytes a user owns. Additionally, Group Policy Administrative Templates let you enforce a quota policy for the Win2K machines' local drives.

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