Roaming profiles/Redirect best approach

UCS - Univention Corporate Server
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#1

Hello,

Sorry again for another topic about this… but i keep have trouble to find the best approach to setup.

I have one domain with multiple “slave servers” because geolocation…

So the main goal with the roaming/shared folders is that the users avoid wan usage when eveything is ok.

But as the domain is only one, what is the best way to set the home drive?

  • Use %username% but… do exist any variable for servername instead domainname? In that case a rsynv over the night to the “main office” would prevent data lose and keep a “sync” in other geolocation for all the users, so if some server die the users still have eveything…

  • Use only the main office as shared and all the users get their data from main and setup it as the user can have the documents offline on theirs computers?

Thanks

#2

Hey,

Setting the path for roaming profiles globally isn’t possible anymore. For roaming profiles in an Active Directory-style domain you have to set the path to use in each user object in the LDAP directory. This implies that using variables such as %username% doesn’t make much sense as each user has his/her own custom path anyway.

I’d simply set the local server’s name for each user depending on where they spend most of their time. For example, for Jane Doe working in the San Francisco office set it to \\sanfrancisco-dc\jdoe whereas John Smith working in London would have set it to \\london-dc\jsmith.

Don’t try syncing folders between locations unless you really, really have to. Syncing is extremely complex, especially bidirectional synchronization. Setting up your own handcrafted solution will undoubtedly result in a lot of hours of effort, unsatisfied users and accidental data loss thrown in somewhere. Believe me, I’ve been there and got the scars to prove it.

If you really must have bidirectional sync, look into hardware storage solutions that implement such synchronization. Yes, they’re very expensive, but they’re worth it.

That’s what backups are for, preferably locally for quick restoration as well as off-site for disaster recovery purposes.

Kind regards
mosu

#3

Thank you for your time.
In fact what i pretend with the “central” backup instead local is in case the serve really die. As this locations (london os san francisco) only will have one server.

The sync will always be one direction london -> MAIN office, in the advent of server die, then the restore backup will be manual.

About the users setting, any advice how to prevent the fact that londo-dc server dies and avoid change all the users settings to change paths to main-office-dc?

I’m trying the %logonserver% because of that :confused:

#4

Hey,

well, something like %LOGONSERVER%\jdoe\windows-profiles\default should work. That’s from the default tooltip in the Univention Management Console for that field. Microsoft seems to agree.

Kind regards
mosu

#5

@Moritz_Bunkus i try that… but that only works for “Windows profile directory” for “Windows home path” doesn’t work :confused: The variable…

If i put %logonserver%\joe\data and the directory exist -> /home/joe/data the mapped drive doesn’t appear

If i put in the explorer ‘%logonserver%\joe\data’ i can access the folder

#6

Just use a netlogon script that uses the variable instead, e.g. (untested)

net use /d Z:
net use Z: \\%LOGONSERVER%\%USERNAME%

Edit: to expand on that. It’s totally up to the client to interpret variables such as %LOGONSERVER% whenever they do something such as connecting network shares. The server side cannot affect the outcome. If Windows doesn’t replace variables when mounting the home path, then you’ll simply have to use a different method. Logon scripts are a common way to achieve more flexibility.

#7

@Moritz_Bunkus sorry for the late reply.
I’m trying solve the sso…

Back to this… i understand the script usage… but that will be more complex, as i have differrent geo locations i have users that should mapped the drive using the local server instead the central one (to avoid wan usage)

That said to me makes sense use the variable, don’t know if the issue is in windows or ucs, but is weird that the same settings address works for windows profile directory and not for home directory.

Still try understand what would be the best approach to solve my “dilema” how to mount userfiles locally and redundancy when local server is down :confused:

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