Please explain offline files to me

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Guest

I am working on a network setup by someone else and am a little confused.
There is a 2000 server and each client has a home directory on the server and
it is mapped to thier H:\ drive on the local machines, their My Documents is
also pointed to h:\. Now offline files are enabled for everything on the h:\
drive and it snycs at logoff. Now where does this sync to and what benefit
does it give if all the users are using files from their h:\ drive on the
server??
 
You would usually use offline files with a laptop. The user would be able to
access his files when not connected to the network. When they do connect the
files on the server get synchronized with what is on their laptop.

Unless the server has a habit of going down, not sure what benefit this
would be using a desktop.


hth
DDS W 2k MVP MCSE
 
On desktops it makes it easy to nuke and pave if you need to.

In the book Jesper Johansson and I are writing we mention this in the chapter
for small businesses. We recommend that you configure roaming profiles and
folder redirection (of My Documents, My Pictures, Application Data, and Desktop)
with offline files. That way, all the information people create will be stored
on the server and will get backed up regularly. Now if a client PC gets whacked
or whatever, you can just wipe the hard drive, reinstall Windows, and get
back to a functioning system with all the user's data intact without a lot
of effort.

Steve Riley
(e-mail address removed)
 
I must be missing something here Steve. If you use Folder Redirection to
redirect My Documents etc. to a server share, why would you want the
contents of it replicated to the desktops using Offline Files? Since the
data is already on the server (for backup, ease of desktop replacement etc.)
what purpose is served by having locally on the desktops as well?

The synchronization dialogs are confusing to the desktop users and the
additional network traffic seems a bit of a waste.

I'm all in favour of using Offline Files so that laptop users can have a
synchronized copy of server resident files for use when they are not
connected to the network, but I fail to see the benefit for desktops.

--
Bruce Sanderson MVP Printing
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders

It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.
 
I have, more often than one would think, encountered at customers the desire
to have everyone's content stored on their own computers *and* on the servers
to be backed up. A common thread in these environments is that the servers
aren't managed very well and often go down -- and if the users didn't have
local copies of their information, they wouldn't be able to get any work
done.

You're right; ordinarily the feature makes sense for laptops because of their
mobility. But a sufficient number of people I talk to also like running it
on their desktops, too.

Steve Riley
(e-mail address removed)
 
Thanks for the info guys. I was kind of confused because I didn't really see
the point for using on LAN desktops either. It was taking a long time to
synchronize accross their 10MBps network.
 
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