Outlook .pst folder redirection possible?
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Our ADDC is 2008 at the moment, and we have an option for Folder Redirection APPDATA(Roaming). Our environment is heavily utilize Outlook as primary communication application. We DO NOT host our exchange server as we are outsourced.
One day a HDD died on one of our user. All documents and files are Folder Redirected to network drive so everything is good. However, Outlook .pst file is located in APPDATA Local and it was not redirected to network drive. The problem is restoring Outlook mails. He has about 10GB of mailbox size and it took a whole day with bandwidth restriction lifted to completed. In the mean-time I offer him OWA so he can continue his work even if it is slower than Outlook.
To prevent this from happening again I want to know how to set GPO for APPDATA(Local) or GPO/script that will move and reconfigure Outlook Data file to new location...say /Document/Outlook PST. This way it will be covered by GPO Document folder redirection. I am trying to find an automatic way that does not required me to go cube to cube.
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PSTs are not mean to be stored this way, they have a tendency to corrupt at worst and be sluggish at best. It at all possible, consider moving users to OWA to fix this problem.
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This is not recommended by MS at all. Putting a PST on a network share invites corruption and performance issues.
If this is a concern for you, you should look at running a backup job to backup the PST from time to time.
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What is slower about OWA than local Outlook?
Does the user use Outlook plugins? If yes, that would prevent you from moving to OWA.
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@Dashrender said:
What is slower about OWA than local Outlook?
Nothing that I've found. It's always faster in my own use cases. Even in startup, somehow!
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@Dashrender said:
What is slower about OWA than local Outlook?
Does the user use Outlook plugins? If yes, that would prevent you from moving to OWA.
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
What is slower about OWA than local Outlook?
Nothing that I've found. It's always faster in my own use cases. Even in startup, somehow!
They just.. don't like OWA.
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@LAH3385 yeah I keep hearing that.
What version of Outlook are they on? If we're talking about people who last saw OWA in the 2007 days, maybe even the 2010 days, I can understand where they are coming from, OWA 2010 was very usable, and 2013 is pretty much Outlook in a browser.
I'd ask them to take a look again and let them know about the freedoms it grants them (use from any computer - all data available from anywhere, etc).
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At my last employer, we did store the PST files in the End-User's Redirected Documents folder. To my knowledge, we never had any Outlook issues that were caused by that.
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@LAH3385 said:
They just.. don't like OWA.
At some point you have to decide what to present and not to present as options. If what they want doesn't meet their needs, take it off of the table.
Present it to management with the costs, limitations, issues, etc. Don't hold back, let them back the decision. If things corrupt, hold them accountable.
Let people move person by person. Those with OWA can mock their Luddite brethren until more switch out of embarrassment.
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@dafyre said:
At my last employer, we did store the PST files in the End-User's Redirected Documents folder. To my knowledge, we never had any Outlook issues that were caused by that.
If they are small, the network is fast and the NAS never disconnects, it often works.
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@Dashrender said:
This is not recommended by MS at all. Putting a PST on a network share invites corruption and performance issues.
If this is a concern for you, you should look at running a backup job to backup the PST from time to time.
I want Folder Redirection to act as a backup where Offline file is the original and Network drive is the copy. I don't think that is how it works.
@Dashrender said:
@LAH3385 yeah I keep hearing that.
What version of Outlook are they on? If we're talking about people who last saw OWA in the 2007 days, maybe even the 2010 days, I can understand where they are coming from, OWA 2010 was very usable, and 2013 is pretty much Outlook in a browser.
I'd ask them to take a look again and let them know about the freedoms it grants them (use from any computer - all data available from anywhere, etc).
We are on 2010. I have the latest OWA with Outlook.com and it looks gorgeous.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
They just.. don't like OWA.
At some point you have to decide what to present and not to present as options. If what they want doesn't meet their needs, take it off of the table.
Present it to management with the costs, limitations, issues, etc. Don't hold back, let them back the decision. If things corrupt, hold them accountable.
Let people move person by person. Those with OWA can mock their Luddite brethren until more switch out of embarrassment.
Do you have to manually point to Outlook file to Document or is there a general setting something I can tweak with?
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
At my last employer, we did store the PST files in the End-User's Redirected Documents folder. To my knowledge, we never had any Outlook issues that were caused by that.
If they are small, the network is fast and the NAS never disconnects, it often works.
We are <100 users. Out network is 1Gb. We do not experience issue that often.
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@LAH3385 said:
@Dashrender said:
We are on 2010. I have the latest OWA with Outlook.com and it looks gorgeous.
It's great, I've been on it for four or five years now. So much nicer for me than traditional Outlook.
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@LAH3385 said:
If they are small, the network is fast and the NAS never disconnects, it often works.
We are <100 users. Out network is 1Gb. We do not experience issue that often.
Number of users and network bandwidth are rarely the issues. It's disk speed, user behaviour and system reliability that affect you.
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We set FSRM to block .PST and .OST files.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
At my last employer, we did store the PST files in the End-User's Redirected Documents folder. To my knowledge, we never had any Outlook issues that were caused by that.
If they are small, the network is fast and the NAS never disconnects, it often works.
We were ~250 users, most of them were redirected to a home folder on the SAN. The network was 1gig, and we did have problems, but by and large, the Exchange bits and the Home Folder bits were reliable.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
At my last employer, we did store the PST files in the End-User's Redirected Documents folder. To my knowledge, we never had any Outlook issues that were caused by that.
If they are small, the network is fast and the NAS never disconnects, it often works.
We were ~250 users, most of them were redirected to a home folder on the SAN. The network was 1gig, and we did have problems, but by and large, the Exchange bits and the Home Folder bits were reliable.
Home folders on a SAN? We've seen people do this with smaller Drobo units but it's awkward. You have a LUN per user and iSCSI on the desktop? I've worked in a few places doing this but never on any scale (like a dozen users tops and very special user cases.)
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
At my last employer, we did store the PST files in the End-User's Redirected Documents folder. To my knowledge, we never had any Outlook issues that were caused by that.
If they are small, the network is fast and the NAS never disconnects, it often works.
We were ~250 users, most of them were redirected to a home folder on the SAN. The network was 1gig, and we did have problems, but by and large, the Exchange bits and the Home Folder bits were reliable.
Home folders on a SAN? We've seen people do this with smaller Drobo units but it's awkward. You have a LUN per user and iSCSI on the desktop? I've worked in a few places doing this but never on any scale (like a dozen users tops and very special user cases.)
Why would you go to thinking that they would have a LUN per user and ISCSI? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to think that the SAN is shared through a Windows Server, and that a share is made available for the home drive?
