Better folder structure and Migrating Users Data from windows 2003 to windows 2012

[genesis]

Hi Guys

We are currently using Windows 2003 as our file server and we have Drive “E” and all the user's files upto 1.3TB are saved here.

This server was setup by my predecessors and within this drive there have been different shares set up. We have separate shares as follows.

 

1. Student’s home drive- Maps for the students
   
2. Staff home drive- Gets mapped for admin staff and Teachers
   
3. SLT Drive – Gets mapped only for SLT
   
4. Police drive- Gets mapped only for police
   
5. Finance Drive – Get mapped only for the finance
   
6. Shared drive - Gets mapped both for admin staff and teachers.
   
7. 
   

As I am planning to migrate the all data from Windows 2003 to our new Windows 2012 file server.

I was wondering if there is any better way to make it more organised. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Your help much appreciated.

Thanks

[psydii]

Looks fine to me.

 

You might want to consider giving each 'drive' their own volume, but whether that is a good idea depends on how much storage you have on your new box.

 

How the folders and permissions are managed within each of those shares is really the thing that makes a difference to your end users. I tend to control the top two levels of folders to provide structure. Of course requests for new folders are easily accommodated. In your case with the divisions already in place, I'd restrict myself to managing only the next level down, and below that the owner of each folder can look after things.

 

 

(The 'correct' answer of course is to move the lot into Office365 and turn each drive into a Sharepoint site or Office365 group.[emoji15])

[LukeC]

Might be worth look at setting up DFS if not all ready.

[Duke5A]

I try and keep things as segregated as possible and use as the least amount of shares that I can. My setup goes something like this:

 

• Staff Home Folders ("\\fileserver\staff$")
  -UserA
  -UserB
  -UserC
   
  One top level share with users in their own folders underneath and maps pointing to their corresponding folders. Use file level permissions to keep users in their own folders and never grant full control to the user as you don't want them to be able to monkey with permissions.
   
  
• Student Home Folders ("\\fileserver\students$")
  -2016
  -StudentA
  -2017
  -StudentB
  -StudentC
  -2018
  -StudentD
   
  One top level share with students in their own folders underneath organized by graduation years and maps pointing to their corresponding folders. Use file level permissions to keep users in their own folders and never grant full control to the student as you don't want them to be able to monkey with permissions.
   
  
• Building Shared ("\\fileserver\buildingshared$")
  -BuildingA
  -Staff
  -Student
  -BuildingB
  -Staff
  -Student
  -BuildingC
  -Staff
  -Student
   
  Maintain security groups that divide staff up by the buildings they work in and don't allow one building's staff into another's share. Place the student folder underneath the staff. This is done so that staff can modify the student shared area under one drive mapping. Use file level permissions to keep the kids from being able to go up a directory into the staff folder. If you have staff that work in multiple buildings then simply make them members of multiple staff groups.
   
  Map staff to the root of the share so that they can choose the appropriate building. This allows staff the works in more than one building to use the same shared drive rather than having to use a different map for each building.
   
  
• Applications
  -BuildingA
  -BuildingB
  -BuildingC
   
  
• CentralOffice
  -Business
  -Student Services
  -Human Resources
   
  Have your SLT separated into different security groups based on roles and limit cross access.
   
  
• District Shared
   
  Grant all district staff read to this share and limit who has write.
  

 

The object is to give people as much access as they need to do their job and no more. It's not so much about keeping a staff member of one building out of another building's share for confidentiality reasons as it is damage control. People accidentally delete/move things and keeping control of how many hands are in the pot mitigate this. Additionally if something like Crypto Lock ever gets lose in your environment measures like this could go a long way in minimizing potential damage.