Onedrive replacing homedrives.

[gypo]

Question for you - what happens when your broadband feed dies? Your cloud services are rendered useless if not in a hybrid environment?

 

The reason I ask is that we are being pushed to look at moving from Exchange to O365 but our current LA provided broadband feed is very unreliable, meaning a lot of possible downtime.

[PaulO99]

We are starting to look at using O365 but the restriction of having to put OneDrive on the local drive is causing problems.

OneDrive cannot handle Roaming Profiles and although there are workarounds they do appear to require Internet access to be available (no off-line working)

As for 100% visibility of users drives, while Microsoft indicate that it is not a problem for OneDrive (I have yet to confirm that fact) the Google 'SuperAdmin' can only see that that has been 'shared' in GoogleDrive (unless latest updates have resolved the issue)

[CyberNerd]

the Google 'SuperAdmin' can only see that that has been 'shared' in GoogleDrive (unless latest updates have resolved the issue)

 

This just isn't true. There are two ways to do this: You can use the vault, as a superadmin this is straightforward - but you can also delegate the vault to teachers so they can review their classes. Or you can use the API - with the API you have total control over the permissions of any file or folder in GAFE. You can also get third party apps which will use the API to do this in a gui. I hear Google are also working towards extending classroom and drive to give parental access so it can be used more like an exercise book.

[PaulO99]

Thanks for putting me straight on the Google drive visibility CyberNerd. Although that solution is only 12 months old and before that you had to pay. Initial investigation (relatively quick check) seems to show it might be a better solution than Microsoft. 🙄

 

Has anyone any detailed experience of the tool suggested by 'Winner' for mapping network drives to OneDrive?

[ITGURU]

For those of you storing in the cloud what do you do about recovery - say if someone overwrote a file and needed to restore from the day before or a month ago?

[CyberNerd]

For those of you storing in the cloud what do you do about recovery - say if someone overwrote a file and needed to restore from the day before or a month ago?

 

I go to Users > Recover files > Select the date and click "recover"

[SchoolsBroadband]

We moved to One Drive and Sharepoint storage about a year or so ago. Best thing we ever did. All our Windows server now does is Active Directory and that's it although I'm sure the nail will be in the coffin for it shortly too.

 

We've a 100Mbit leased line which is more than capable of looking after the 50 or so staff we have on site. We rarely get anywhere near maxing the line out.

 

Dave

[Steve21]

We moved to One Drive and Sharepoint storage about a year or so ago. Best thing we ever did. All our Windows server now does is Active Directory and that's it although I'm sure the nail will be in the coffin for it shortly too.

 

We've a 100Mbit leased line which is more than capable of looking after the 50 or so staff we have on site. We rarely get anywhere near maxing the line out.

 

Dave

 

Curious how close is "rarely" though Considering if it's that 50 staff, increase to 800+ students/staff and suddenly you're talking Gig+

 

Also is that just based on Word Documents etc adminy wise? or anything like videos/music editing etc

 

Just wondering more in a school scenario

 

Steve

[jmak]

For those of you storing in the cloud what do you do about recovery - say if someone overwrote a file and needed to restore from the day before or a month ago?

 

I go to Users > Recover files > Select the date and click "recover"

Presume this is for O365? With Google drive, when you open a file there's a panel on the right with all of the edits and you just click on them until you find the version you want.

[CyberNerd]

Presume this is for O365? With Google drive, when you open a file there's a panel on the right with all of the edits and you just click on them until you find the version you want.

 

I was describing GAFE. The document revision doesn't recover deleted files or files that are not Google Apps ones. To recover these you need to do it via the Admin console.

[jmak]

Possible misunderstanding on my part - I know the thread is about backup, but I was looking at the bit about restoring an over written file from the day before.

[CyberNerd]

Possible misunderstanding on my part - I know the thread is about backup, but I was looking at the bit about restoring an over written file from the day before.

 

I misunderstood too, not sure how the Google file recovery would work with that. I might give it a try next week.

[Winner]

Thanks for putting me straight on the Google drive visibility CyberNerd. Although that solution is only 12 months old and before that you had to pay. Initial investigation (relatively quick check) seems to show it might be a better solution than Microsoft.

 

Has anyone any detailed experience of the tool suggested by 'Winner' for mapping network drives to OneDrive?

 

We use kixtart for our logon scripts, here's the OneDrive extract that you can adapt to whatever scripting language you use, just substitute the bold domain names for your 365 tenancy:

 

:MAIN
CLS

GOSUB ONEDRIVE

EXIT


;*********************************************************************
;*******   Map Office 365 SharePoint sites as network drives	******
;*********************************************************************

:ONEDRIVE

;Map OneDrive as network drive

$RegPath1 = "##[b]domain[/b]-my.sharepoint.com@@SSL#DavWWWRoot#personal#" +  @UserID + "_[b]domain_net[/b]#Documents"
$RegPath2 = "##[b]domain[/b]-my.sharepoint.com@@ssl#personal#" +  @UserID + "_[b]domain_net[/b]#Documents"

;Map drive using 'Cookie365.exe'
? "Mapping your OneDrive to 'O' drive, please wait... "
RUN "%LOGONSERVER%\netlogon\cookie365.exe -s https[b]://domain[/b]-my.sharepoint.com -quiet  -homedir -mount O:"

;Change OneDrive label to 'OneDrive'	
WriteValue("HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\$RegPath1","_LabelFromReg","OneDrive","REG_SZ")	
WriteValue("HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\$RegPath2","_LabelFromReg","OneDrive","REG_SZ")
   
RETURN

 

You will also need to set the startup type for the 'WebClient' service to Automatic. This can be done through Group Policy.

Edited February 1, 2016 by Winner

[TSEARS]

We moved to One Drive and Sharepoint storage about a year or so ago. Best thing we ever did. All our Windows server now does is Active Directory and that's it although I'm sure the nail will be in the coffin for it shortly too.

 

We've a 100Mbit leased line which is more than capable of looking after the 50 or so staff we have on site. We rarely get anywhere near maxing the line out.

 

Dave

 

Hi Dave,

 

We have got a login script which maps OneDrive as the documents (Mapped Drive) as well as the shared areas which are SharePoint sites. I have been asked about disaster recovery and how we would access documents if the ISP went down etc. Did you have anything in place for this?

I'm thinking to sync OneDrive to a NAS box using Synology or something but then it kind of goes against getting data off our servers!

 

Cheers,

Tom

[ITGURU]

Hi Dave,

 

We have got a login script which maps OneDrive as the documents (Mapped Drive) as well as the shared areas which are SharePoint sites. I have been asked about disaster recovery and how we would access documents if the ISP went down etc. Did you have anything in place for this?

I'm thinking to sync OneDrive to a NAS box using Synology or something but then it kind of goes against getting data off our servers!

 

Cheers,

Tom

I asked another school what their backup plan was as they are on O365 and onedrive. Their answer was, we have 4g in an emergency. Really...for all staff to use?! I'd like to see that happen! To me, it's more important all data is accessible during school hours so no plans to move to the cloud.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi Dave,

 

We have got a login script which maps OneDrive as the documents (Mapped Drive) as well as the shared areas which are SharePoint sites. I have been asked about disaster recovery and how we would access documents if the ISP went down etc. Did you have anything in place for this?

I'm thinking to sync OneDrive to a NAS box using Synology or something but then it kind of goes against getting data off our servers!

 

Cheers,

Tom

 

If you're a secondary school i'd recommend having an FTTC backup connection.

 

Alternatively if you're a primary school then get a backup ADSL / FTTC. We can put via a different carrier so it gives some diversity in the event of a primary link failure and it still does the same content filtering and security.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[TSEARS]

If you're a secondary school i'd recommend having an FTTC backup connection.

 

Alternatively if you're a primary school then get a backup ADSL / FTTC. We can put via a different carrier so it gives some diversity in the event of a primary link failure and it still does the same content filtering and security.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

 

That's a good idea, may look into that then, I may be in contact regarding that!

 

How does having just OneDrive behave with media files, like editing movies etc?

[The_W]

Hi, can you confirm if your users need to 1st login to 365 and tick the 'keep me signed in' check box for the drives to map error free, or are you using ADFS?

 

I don't have ADFS set up but have tried the SSO option in the new Azure AD Connect tool but it's missing something (a persistent cookie I think) causing the drive mappings to return an 'access denied' message. If the user opts to stay signed in, drive mappings seem to work (not sure if the cookie expires!)

 

Thanks

W

[TSEARS]

Hi, can you confirm if your users need to 1st login to 365 and tick the 'keep me signed in' check box for the drives to map error free, or are you using ADFS?

 

I don't have ADFS set up but have tried the SSO option in the new Azure AD Connect tool but it's missing something (a persistent cookie I think) causing the drive mappings to return an 'access denied' message. If the user opts to stay signed in, drive mappings seem to work (not sure if the cookie expires!)

 

Thanks

W

 

Hi,

 

Nope, we use ADFS, so no credentials needed.

Make sure you have enabled the group policy for SSO and also added the Microsoft login site to your trusted sites list.

We have the script running on every login. On login, the script detects if they are already mapped, if they are not, it will map them, or if they already are it will refresh the connection.

 

Has been working perfect with ADFS, but we may give it a go with just the AD Connect tool running (We already use this as well) that way we can get rid of ADFS and have one less component to worry about!

[JamboD]

Has been working perfect with ADFS, but we may give it a go with just the AD Connect tool running (We already use this as well) that way we can get rid of ADFS and have one less component to worry about!

 

 

Hi Tom,

 

I was just wondering if you ever managed to test this with just the AD Connect version of SSO? I'd really like to get our student's OneDrives mapping but I don't have ADFS set up and it looks like the AD Connect version is far easier to implement

 

Thanks,

 

James

[TSEARS]

Hi Tom,

 

I was just wondering if you ever managed to test this with just the AD Connect version of SSO? I'd really like to get our student's OneDrives mapping but I don't have ADFS set up and it looks like the AD Connect version is far easier to implement

 

Thanks,

 

James

 

Hi James,

 

Not as of yet - This week I have worked on getting SSO working for G Suite going through ADFS which works perfect, so not had a chance to revisit this.

 

If I get a chance later this week, I will turn ADFS off as 99% of our users are still on local exchange server as we are in the migration stage, and G Suite no one really logs into! (Just manages the Chromebooks)

 

As soon as I have any results, Ill be sure to let you know on here! Crossed fingers it will still work

 

Cheers,

Tom

[JamboD]

Hi James,

 

Not as of yet - This week I have worked on getting SSO working for G Suite going through ADFS which works perfect, so not had a chance to revisit this.

 

If I get a chance later this week, I will turn ADFS off as 99% of our users are still on local exchange server as we are in the migration stage, and G Suite no one really logs into! (Just manages the Chromebooks)

 

As soon as I have any results, Ill be sure to let you know on here! Crossed fingers it will still work

 

Cheers,

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

 

I'll be really interested to see how you get on with it. I've just been experimenting with the SSO provided by syncing the Windows 10 clients to Azure but Cookie365 doesn't appear to like it. SSO is working properly and Cookie365 is picking up the correct details when I run it but when it retrieves cookies I get "[ERROR]:Buffer cannot be null.", seems like quite a popular error on the comments for Cookie365!

 

Thanks,

 

James

[AlanD]

RM computers (Yes - that much maligned School computer company) do their OneDrive for free with CC4.5...so you do get something for your money!

 

Works in much the same way (seemingly) as IAM - in that all the authentication and cookies are handled invisibly from the user and it uses WebDAV - and so does not try to cache the whole of your online drive with local profile. Just appears as another drive letter on the desktop like magic.

 

So you can have all your student (and staff) files in the cloud instantly accessible anywhere - and useable with Office 365 from anywhere - or on a desktop in school. Not sure I would want everyone using it as an alterative to on premise storage without increasing our external bandwidth - especially for users doing lots of video/sound/graphics stuff. But yes, it would work brilliantly for Office type applications.

 

...and No I don't work for RM, and only secretly confess to others that I actually use CC4.