File server - User folder structure

[techie08]

Im just about to migrate our student and staff file servers to 2012r2 and i wanted to know what structure people use for the home directories? Below is ours currently and each users home folder is shared. Is this the best way or is it better to share the root folder such as Students, or 2014Intake and not have the individual home folders shared?

 

 

Thanks

Edited July 16, 2015 by techie08

[sted]

ive got it so i have a users share then yeargroups in that in then every kid has their own folder so d:\users\2014\somekid. Going down the d:\users\somekid route means you have more folders in any one folder making it tougher at least imo to find anything or mass select say this years leavers and move them to an archive folder

[techie08]

ive got it so i have a users share then yeargroups in that in then every kid has their own folder so d:\users\2014\somekid. Going down the d:\users\somekid route means you have more folders in any one folder making it tougher at least imo to find anything or mass select say this years leavers and move them to an archive folder

 

Do you share the Users or 2014 or somekid folder?

[sted]

users so the kids homefolder is \\server\users$\2014\somekid

[ITGURU]

Share the intake year folder here i.e 2014$

 

AD Home folder is \\server\2014$\%username%

 

[kennysarmy]

Home folder local path here for students = for example : \\FP5\4978$

 

On the server it's:

 

\\fp5\d$\users\PupilDrives\2008

\\fp5\d$\users\PupilDrives\2009

etc

 

where the year is the year that year group started the school.

[3s-gtech]

We have them in a flat folder - easier to set things like Ownership, do bulk changes etc. Some disadvantages like moving leavers, equal quotas for all years.

[Areku]

\\servername\studentdata$\%USERNAME%

 

95% of your users have the year of start at the begining of their name 10Areku for example, would tell me i started in 2010, and im leaving this year.

whilst this doesnt catch users who have started since, I also use a tool called ADinfo (cjwdev) that will give me the accounts ov everyone who hasnt logged in for X days.

[Sagima]

Students are in\\fileserver\pupils\[leavingyear]\%username%

[ITGURU]

I don't see the need for the year they start at the beginning of the username,. when your looking down a list of usernames or profiles starting with 10 11 12 etc it doesn't seem necessary

[sted]

I don't see the need for the year they start at the beginning of the username,. when your looking down a list of usernames or profiles starting with 10 11 12 etc it doesn't seem necessary

prevents duplicate names the chances of 2+ john smiths in a school is number of years times higher than 2+ john smiths in year 2

[ITGURU]

Depends on your network setup,. If we had 2 John Smiths in same year or not, they would have unique usernames and email addresses so one would shot up as smith j and one smith ja or smith john as that's our naming conversion. in AD we leave it to show their username as display name, makes it easier to find students.

 

the ST before teachers and intake year before students is from the old days of Netlinc here, but done away with it as new staff ask my why do users have a number/letters before their name.

 

the ST before teachers and intake year before students is from the old days of Netlinc here, but done away with it as new staff ask my why do users have a number/letters before their name.

 

Also have email address lists set-up by year so they can go via that route or right click and view the email address.

Edited July 16, 2015 by ITGURU

[kennysarmy]

prevents duplicate names the chances of 2+ john smiths in a school is number of years times higher than 2+ john smiths in year 2

 

Our logins are their sims admissions number - so no chance of duplicates

[Sephiroth]

\\ServerName\.StudentData$[shared]\YearOfEntry\Username

 

AD mirrors this setup to simplify management. Year of Entry is the year that the student would have joined as a Year 7 student regardless of what year they join us at (e.g. a student starting this academic year as a year 11 would be 10Entry) and usernames are SIMS admission number. Partly to ensure unique names but also means that they have to be enrolled to the school before they get an account. We can't be strong-armed into doing it anyway!

[sted]

well yes it depends on logins and mine are flexible enough to cope with 2 but id rather avoid it most are either 2jsmith or 2johns depends on the school but as you id end up with 2josmith or 2johnsm if i had to but its less than ideal imo so i try to avoid it where possible but still have meaningful usernames i cant see 5 year olds logging in with their sims admition number the teachers would lynch me.

[Sephiroth]

i cant see 5 year olds logging in with their sims admition number the teachers would lynch me.

I can imagine that this format does work better in a secondary school. Our policy here is that as soon as a student is admitted and the account created, an email is sent to the form tutor to give them the username and temporary password of the new starter, who is then expected to write it down in their log book. We rarely get anyone here saying that they can't remember their username, which is better than I expected when I made the change from YearSurnameFirstInitial [10BloggsJ].

[sted]

I can imagine that this format does work better in a secondary school. Our policy here is that as soon as a student is admitted and the account created, an email is sent to the form tutor to give them the username and temporary password of the new starter, who is then expected to write it down in their log book. We rarely get anyone here saying that they can't remember their username, which is better than I expected when I made the change from YearSurnameFirstInitial [10BloggsJ].

eye some kids have issues with 3john so ive had to set the bar low to try and keep it standard for everyone so teachers can "work them out" as im only in most school once a week

[ADMaster]

It looks like you need to redirect their documents to a sub folder, that will get rid of the entire list displaying as my documents.

I share the root of the structure and have DFS setup so if the file server changes the UNC path does not.

server path d:\shares\students\year\username

unc path \\domain.tld\school\students\year\username

documents pitches desktop etc are all redirected to a the appropriate sub folder under username.

[MrFrostmaul]

We have almost the same naming and location system and it works fine for us on 2012 R2.

[kennysarmy]

It looks like you need to redirect their documents to a sub folder, that will get rid of the entire list displaying as my documents.

I share the root of the structure and have DFS setup so if the file server changes the UNC path does not.

server path d:\shares\students\year\username

unc path \\domain.tld\school\students\year\username

documents pitches desktop etc are all redirected to a the appropriate sub folder under username.

 

works until they delete that sub-folder?

[ITGURU]

There are 2 ways you can avoid needing to use subfolders and get rid of the 'my documents issue'

1. Block desktop.ini using File Server Resource Manager - although I have noticed it add a few seconds delay the first time a new user logs on or a profile is reset.

2. (The way I do it) - have a logon and logoff script which deletes the desktop.ini so it always shows their full username on the server.

[ADMaster]

works until they delete that sub-folder?

 

First I'm not sure why you would want to delete your own documents folder...

However I have tested this.

 

When logged on as the user I tried to delete the documents folder, the result.. it deleted my documents but left the folder.

 

I went the the server and deleted the folder and the user had errors trying to access their documents.

 

I logged the user on to a different PC and the folder was re created by the GPO.

 

My guess is some GPO caching is why the original PC didn't create the folder again. I'm not that bothered to dig through event logs etc.

[kennysarmy]

First I'm not sure why you would want to delete your own documents folder...

However I have tested this.

 

When logged on as the user I tried to delete the documents folder, the result.. it deleted my documents but left the folder.

 

I went the the server and deleted the folder and the user had errors trying to access their documents.

 

I logged the user on to a different PC and the folder was re created by the GPO.

 

My guess is some GPO caching is why the original PC didn't create the folder again. I'm not that bothered to dig through event logs etc.

 

You are trying to rationalise what kids will do ????

[Alis_Klar]

If you Map or redirect to the documents or my documents sub folder they can't navigate to above the folder to delete it.

 

I'm doing a migrations also and it wal working fine until I removed the permission for the group of users. Each user has permission for their own folder only. Now redirection fails.

 

MS say you should let the folder redirection create the folder for you. It also worked for me with a preexisting folder. So at the moment I am relying on the h: drive being mapped to home folder but if the user clicks documents they get their local c:\users folder. Don't have. Roaming profiles here due to bad experiences with wifi a few years ago. Should test it out again I suppose.

[ITGURU]

We used to have problems with large roaming profiles and Wi-Fi, but now I have a special laptop.v2 profile, so that any student that logs onto a laptop will pull down this mandatory profile. It's basically a new user logged in with the basic settings so only a few megs in size. Works flawlessly, and saves each user having to generate a local profile when they login.

 

If you Map or redirect to the documents or my documents sub folder they can't navigate to above the folder to delete it.

 

I'm doing a migrations also and it wal working fine until I removed the permission for the group of users. Each user has permission for their own folder only. Now redirection fails.

 

MS say you should let the folder redirection create the folder for you. It also worked for me with a preexisting folder. So at the moment I am relying on the h: drive being mapped to home folder but if the user clicks documents they get their local c:\users folder. Don't have. Roaming profiles here due to bad experiences with wifi a few years ago. Should test it out again I suppose.