Migrate to DFS from UNC file shares? Complications..
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So, just a thought... and I'll take the beating after the fact.
Have I been doing this all wrong the entire time? meaning, the current setup we've had for 3+ years on our network?
Have a windows 2008 R2 VM (AD, GPO, win time)
On this windows server. I attached local storage (Presented through xenserver).
On this local storage (its local to operating system, but presented through xenserver as a SR -- iSCSI NAS storage).
So on this local storage; I have all the folder/file structures and also shared network locations. Within GPO, I specified the network location path for the User Profile and folder redirection settings...
in best practice scenerio's... or for larger envinronments
Is it best to just have separate network storage and SMB shares for these? rather than it all be saved back to the VM localized storage?
As you've mentioned, and opened my eyes to the NAS idea for this satellite office
Satellite office has ~20 users
Primary office has 100 users at the moment & growing...
So just looking for input on best practice scenario. As our office is using the folder redirection & Roaming profiles....
I dont really see any time that we will get away from this.. I'm trying to see if I would be able to 'draw a line' and get away from it. But our users are not very computer savvy at times (ironic, being that they have to sit at computer entire day to perform billing on behalf of clients).
We would have to re-train the users to save all the files to a specified network drive. But the Roaming profiles (AppData folder) comes in handy as users complain if they lose their Bookmarks in google chrome... and their windows sticky notes...also their outlook .OST (exchange cached). Users rely on outlook. I do not see many users using office365 for 100% of their use. as many users have access to multiple employee inboxes or a corporate inbox. Office365 (to my knowledge) you cannot view more than 1 mailbox. Unless you goto cogwheel and specify view another users box.
**edited and added further details
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@ntoxicator said:
So, just a thought... and I'll take the beating after the fact.
Have I been doing this all wrong the entire time? meaning, the current setup we've had for 3+ years on our network?
Have a windows 2008 R2 VM (AD, GPO, win time)
On this windows server. I attached local storage (Presented through xenserver).
On this local storage (its local to operating system, but presented through xenserver as a SR -- iSCSI NAS storage).
I don't understand what you have here. Could you show a screen shot?
In my XS I have a VM called UR-Bond I have created to virtual disks assigned to the VM, as seen below
to Windows, they appear as local hard drives, as if everything was physical
If you are matching this, and creating shares on these drives, I'd say you're doing fine, cause that's how I do it.
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Thats how I do it.
Topology / setup:
Xenserver node --
Within XenServer you specify a SR (storage repository). Here, I setup iSCSI storage. This was 3 years ago at time of initial setup. I now wish I used NFS (more viewability into actually files on stor)
on XS - I added a Virtual Disk to the Virtual Machine. Guest Operating System (Windows Server 2008 R2) Sees this disk as local to it..
Reason I ask if this is best practice.... Is, now if we are to migrate to a new XenServer setup. All this data on the VM and its attached virtual disk will have to be moved. Will take long time over GigE.
So its safe and okay to keep growing storage this way? But I'm sure @scottalanmiller will chime in as well. Even adding another server for SMB network storage location would further complicate. Hence, why to keep all storage localized to physical machines/disks and the DRBD options
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@ntoxicator said:
I dont really see any time that we will get away from this.. I'm trying to see if I would be able to 'draw a line' and get away from it. But our users are not very computer savvy at times (ironic, being that they have to sit at computer entire day to perform billing on behalf of clients).
This is where management buy-in becomes a must. Any time you are making changes, you have to start from the top.. if they don't support it, then your users won't either.
We would have to re-train the users to save all the files to a specified network drive.
Where are they saving to now? Into My Documents (Documents?)
But the Roaming profiles (AppData folder) comes in handy as users complain if they lose their Bookmarks in google chrome... and their windows sticky notes...
This I can definitely understand. I suppose one question would be - why is there such a large need to constantly move people around to different desks? What if anything can be done to stop that?
also their outlook .OST (exchange cached). Users rely on outlook. I do not see many users using office365 for 100% of their use. as many users have access to multiple employee inboxes or a corporate inbox. Office365 (to my knowledge) you cannot view more than 1 mailbox. Unless you goto cogwheel and specify view another users box.
This is a possible huge drain on resources. OSTs can become huge. Copying them to the network, and down again with each move can hammer a network into oblivion. It's probably not hurting you to bad except during end of day sign out, or if you have to move a larger number of people to new desks on the same day, as those would be the two most likely times of having to copy the OST to/from the network.
As for the actual issue with OWA vs local Outlook, Yeah I have no idea if MS is looking to add support for multiple mailboxes in OWA (assuming it's not there already).
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@ntoxicator said:
Thats how I do it.
Topology / setup:
Xenserver node --
Within XenServer you specify a SR (storage repository). Here, I setup iSCSI storage. This was 3 years ago at time of initial setup. I now wish I used NFS (more viewability into actually files on stor)
What are you connecting iSCSI to? do you have external storage? I'm sure you probably said you do, I just don't recall right now.
I have all internal storage.
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Yeah this goes back to the discussion in other thread on XenServer and DRBD vs SAN
The primary office we have with over 100 users, I built this configuration 3 years ago
1 single XenServer & a Synology rack mount NAS
using iSCSI to present the disks to XenServer SR
Back at the time of this setup.. same as always with this company I work for. Management is a mess and decisions are not thought out. Everything is 'do it quickly'. I hammered them 3 years ago asking any future growth or plans... now, 3 years later. they want to grow the company to 500 or more employee's by year 2020.
Where are they saving to now? Into My Documents (Documents?)
But the Roaming profiles (AppData folder) comes in handy as users complain if they lose their Bookmarks in google chrome... and their windows sticky notes...
Yes -- users save to My Documents (Documents), Pictures folder, Desktop. etc. The folder redirection works very nicely. As 90% of users connect and launch remote applications through a Terminal Server wrapper (use to use RDWeb). But i've deployed 2X Gateway (Parallels 2X). That way our clients billing software does not need to be installed and maintained on over 100 workstations. I can install it on a terminal server and push it out over network to all users.
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@ntoxicator said:
Yeah this goes back to the discussion in other thread on XenServer and DRBD vs SAN
The primary office we have with over 100 users, I built this configuration 3 years ago
1 single XenServer & a Synology rack mount NAS
using iSCSI to present the disks to XenServer SR
Aww, right - so you have a SAN. SAN = block level storage, which is what iSCSI is.
As mentioned in other threads, you're situation is about as risky as it possibly can be. This isn't to say that you're one moment away from a failure or anything, only that the solution picked is significantly more risky than other options, but lease risky being using local storage. But we'll leave anything more to that other thread.
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@Dashrender said:
Aww, right - so you have a SAN. SAN = block level storage, which is what iSCSI is.
Correct, no NAS here at all. That term is adding confusion.
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@ntoxicator said:
On this windows server. I attached local storage (Presented through xenserver).
On this local storage (its local to operating system, but presented through xenserver as a SR -- iSCSI NAS storage).
So on this local storage; I have all the folder/file structures and also shared network locations. Within GPO, I specified the network location path for the User Profile and folder redirection settings...
in best practice scenerio's... or for larger envinronments
Is it best to just have separate network storage and SMB shares for these? rather than it all be saved back to the VM localized storage?
Now sure what you mean.... network storage and SMB shares are how you present them whether there is local storage for them or not. Those are unrelated things. I'm unclear what you are asking.
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Exactly.. I know its risky and I've hammered management about this and hence migrate to a new setup. To be more resilient towards any point of failure. As now its a waiting game.
Ok, I'll keep using SAN. As I know before NAS and SAN use to be very different in terms. However, in my usage case due to block level storage, its indeed a SAN.
Well, all things to be answered have been taken care of here. As it originally started off as DFS questions.
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@ntoxicator said:
Where are they saving to now? Into My Documents (Documents?)
But the Roaming profiles (AppData folder) comes in handy as users complain if they lose their Bookmarks in google chrome... and their windows sticky notes...
Yes -- users save to My Documents (Documents), Pictures folder, Desktop. etc. The folder redirection works very nicely. As 90% of users connect and launch remote applications through a Terminal Server wrapper (use to use RDWeb). But i've deployed 2X Gateway (Parallels 2X). That way our clients billing software does not need to be installed and maintained on over 100 workstations. I can install it on a terminal server and push it out over network to all users.
This is fine, and I see no reason to change it at this time, other than admin simplification.
I wonder, when those users log into your TS, do they use the same profile on the TS as they do on their desktops, just an unrelated question.
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@ntoxicator said:
Ok, I'll keep using SAN. As I know before NAS and SAN use to be very different in terms. However, in my usage case due to block level storage, its indeed a SAN.
They remain just as different as they always were. Nothing has changed. iSCSI is always SAN, cannot be used in conjunction with NAS functionality,
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Just saying, The data being saved/written. Its all being saved to a virtualized disk pointed to the Guest Operating System (Windows Server).
But regardless, its data. When the time comes when we have to migrate to a new server setup -- it will just take time to migrate the windows server VM
As this Windows Server VM (Domain Controller). This single VM, has ALL the 1.5TB of storage that sits on one of the Virtualized Disks. As presented to XS through the storage repository as an ISCSI disk (pool).
Moving from the ISCSI disk pool NAS storage, and migrating data to a physical node using DRBD would take time. Although maybe not as slow as I'm assuming it might be.
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@ntoxicator said:
Exactly.. I know its risky and I've hammered management about this and hence migrate to a new setup. To be more resilient towards any point of failure. As now its a waiting game.
That's not the issue. It's not that individual points of failure are a big deal. The big deal is that you have a totally unnecessary dependency chain that greatly (massively) magnifies your risk while introducing unnecessary cost, effort and performance bottlenecks.
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@ntoxicator said:
Well, all things to be answered have been taken care of here. As it originally started off as DFS questions.
Through conversation, I think we've determined that the best solution for you is a NAS appliance at your remote location, so the need of DFS is gone.
Although - @scottalanmiller can a NAS be used in a DFS mount?
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@ntoxicator said:
Moving from the ISCSI disk pool NAS storage, and migrating data to a physical node using DRBD would take time. Although maybe not as slow as I'm assuming it might be.
iSCSI is not NAS, it is SAN. Always, no exceptions. iSCSI and NAS can never go together.
Moving to local disks will take no longer than moving to anything else. Local disks are the fastest possible option so it is equal or better than any other option.
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@Dashrender said:
Although - @scottalanmiller can a NAS be used in a DFS mount?
Some can and some cannot.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Although - @scottalanmiller can a NAS be used in a DFS mount?
Some can and some cannot.
ug!
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NAS is just a file server. Some can't even do SMB!!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ntoxicator said:
Moving from the ISCSI disk pool NAS storage, and migrating data to a physical node using DRBD would take time. Although maybe not as slow as I'm assuming it might be.
iSCSI is not NAS, it is SAN. Always, no exceptions. iSCSI and NAS can never go together.
Moving to local disks will take no longer than moving to anything else. Local disks are the fastest possible option so it is equal or better than any other option.
I might be wrong on this, but I think @ntoxicator just flubbed when calling it NAS here - he's just not used to calling what he has SAN yet.
