Technically Speaking

In Windows Server 2003 R2 you can centralize the storage of user data so that information stored by a user within your environment is stored on the network rather than on each of their desktops. This will allow the data to be backed up during normal disaster recovery planning and backup operations and keep everything in a central location in case the user needs to change PCs.

This tip will look at the basics for redirecting folders in Windows Server 2003 R2.

To configure folder redirection throughout your environment in Windows Server 2003 R2, you can use a group policy object.

Note: Before configuring a Group Policy Object to manage Folder Redirection, you will need to create a share on the server that will hold the redirected folders.

1. Open the Active Directory Users and Computers Management Console and select the Domain or Organizational Unit (OU) for which you want to configure Folder Redirection.
2. Right click the domain or OU object and select properties from the context menu
3. Then select the Group Policy tab and choose edit to open the group policy object editor
4. Expand User Configuration and then expand Windows Settings
5. Finally expand Folder Redirection

Here you will see the following choices for user folder redirection:

· Application Data –

· Desktop –

· My Documents –

· Start Menu –

The redirection for each of these user folders can be configured separately, allowing you to redirect only the My Documents folder for the Accounting OU and the Start Menu for the IT OU.

1. Right click the folder you want to redirect and select properties

This will display the Properties Dialog for the selected folder providing options for the redirection.

1. Select the Basic – Redirect Everyone’s Folder to the same location option in the Setting dropdown list
2. Select the settings for the target folder location from the following choices:

· Redirect to The User’s Home Folder – using this option will place the contents of the My Documents folder within the Home Folder configured in the users account settings. This option only applies to My Documents.

· Create a Folder for Each User under the Root Path – using this option will create a folder for each affected user under the root path (also specified in this dialog). A common setting, this can help keep all of the user’s redirected folder data in the same location. This setting is not available for the Start Menu folder.

· Redirect to the following location – this will allow all of the redirected user folders to exist in the same location, adding %UserName% to the path can also create individual folders for each user, similar to the second option above. If a user specific environment variable such as %UserName% is not included, all of the redirected content will be moved to the same folder.

· Redirect to the local user profile location – using this setting will redirect the folder content to the location of the local user profile. This is the default setting.

Once the target settings are selected you will need to specify a root share for the data redirection. You will enter the Root Path in the format of \\Servername\sharename . This path should point to the share you configured earlier.

If you select the advanced setting for this folder in the setting dropdown you would also be able to specify settings independently for groups of users. For example, you can redirect the My Documents folder for Domain Admins to a different location than the My Documents folder for the Accounting group. This target location may be configured so that permissions prevent other users from seeing or accessing the contents. The other settings remain the same.

Using folder redirection takes only a few minutes to configure and can help keep user data in your environment in a centrally managed location instead of scattered across desktop computers.