Point users in the right direction
Most administrators know that no matter how stern your company's policies and warnings, believing that users will back up their document files is tantamount to believing in Santa Claus. Windows 2000's new folder redirection feature lets you move special user folders—the Application Data, Desktop, My Documents, and Start Menu subfolders under the user's Documents and Settings folder—from local computers to servers, thereby ensuring regular backup of user files.
Backup insurance isn't the only advantage you gain from folder redirection. When you implement redirection, roaming users no longer need to download their documents during logon and upload the files during logoff. Instead, Win2K sends the pointer to the server-based folder during the logon, thereby speeding the logon and logoff processes. (See the sidebar "Folder Redirection vs. Offline Folders," page 144, for an explanation of how this feature differs from offline folders.) Additionally, you can impose disk quotas against the server that holds user documents, thus "encouraging" users to clean out their My Documents folders occasionally.
The downside of folder redirection is that it requires a lot of disk space on the server. Also, users can't get to documents when the server is unavailable. Because redirection is server-configured, however, you can easily move the pointers to another server (or even back to users' local computers) when the original server is scheduled for maintenance. If a server goes down unexpectedly, you can restore its backup to another server and change the pointers. This option lets users get back to work in a reasonably short time.
Best Practices
The best practice is to redirect only the My Documents subfolder. You shouldn't, however, redirect My Pictures, which resides under My Documents: The size of the graphics files in My Pictures can overwhelm your server's disk-space capacity. I can't think of any good reasons to redirect the other available subfolders, and doing so might prevent users from employing local applications when the server is down. To protect user documents, you must redirect folders to servers that use NTFS.
Setting Up Folder Redirection for My Documents
Folder redirection is a Group Policy feature, so Win2K implements redirection through Active Directory (AD). Before you start the policy configuration process, create a parent folder on each server that will hold redirected folders, and share that folder. By default, the new folder will provide Full Control for the Everyone group; you can keep this default because individual user folders will maintain individual permission schemes. If you have some reason to deny Full Control, you must provide at least Modify permissions for the Everyone group.
If you're redirecting folders for users in a domain or organizational unit (OU), open the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in. You can use the MMC Active Directory Sites and Services snap-in to apply Group Policy at the site level. However, common practice is to establish a basic set of policies on a domainwide basis, then establish policies that apply to individual OUs. Another reason to start at the domain level is that the domain's Default Domain Policy provides one place to view or edit policies. (Sites don't have a Default Site Policy.) However, if you've created a site-based architecture for your enterprise, applying policies on a site-by-site basis might make sense.
In the console pane of the appropriate MMC, right-click the domain, OU, or site container that contains the user accounts for which you want to redirect folders. Choose Properties from the shortcut menu to open the container's Properties dialog box.
Move to the Group Policy tab. From this tab, you can add the folder redirection policy to an existing policy or create a new policy, depending on the way you like to organize your AD. (You might prefer to put all policies in one policy object or keep similar policies in individual policy objects.) Select the new or existing policy object and click Edit to open the Group Policy Editor (GPE) snap-in. Expand the User Configuration object in the GPE's console pane, expand Windows Settings, and select the Folder Redirection node.
Separate My Pictures from My Documents
To eliminate My Pictures from the redirected folder settings, you must first separate the My Pictures subfolder from the My Documents folder. Otherwise, these folders behave as one unit.
Expand My Documents in the console pane and right-click My Pictures. Choose Properties to open the My Pictures Properties dialog box. The Target tab shows the current location for My Pictures; by default, the setting is Follow the My Documents folder. Click the arrow at the right of the Setting box and select No administrative policy specified. Click OK to separate My Pictures' policies and My Documents' policies.