Outlook .pst folder redirection possible?
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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?
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@Dashrender said:
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?
Because you would never say that you were storing something on a SAN if you were storing it on a file server. That would be no different than saying "we store stuff on disks." Why would you say you were storing to a SAN if you were storing to a NAS or FS that in turn might be storing on a SAN?
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iSCSI only because I really assumed that there were not wiring up Fibre Channel or similar to each desktop.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
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?
Because you would never say that you were storing something on a SAN if you were storing it on a file server. That would be no different than saying "we store stuff on disks." Why would you say you were storing to a SAN if you were storing to a NAS or FS that in turn might be storing on a SAN?
Maybe I'm the odd thinker (non-thinker) here - but when he said that they stored everything on a SAN, a fileserver with SAN storage is exactly what I thought he meant... it never crossed my mind that the workstations where connected directly in some way to the SAN.
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I see why you would just to that. But it seems a very strange thing to mention that the eventual storage that the desktops don't see is a SAN. If the files are storage directly on a SAN, it makes total sense to mention and vendors like Netgear used to sell products that do nothing but this and Drobo promotes it as a use case big time. So while it is relatively niche, it's a very real use case. It's quite popular in the Mac video processing world.
If you are storing files on a file server, doesn't it sound very odd to refer to storing stuff on the file server as being "on the SAN", even if the bits eventually get flushed to disk on a SAN device?
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I think of myself in that situation - If I have a SAN backed file server, I might want to boost that I have SAN to make myself feel good that "look at me I have a cool environment", etc.
Today I'd ask myself why do I even have a SAN because of all of the caveats.
I don't mean to imply the OP meant this, just offering it as a single explanation as to why they mentioned SAN instead of a file server.
Hopefully you see where I'm coming from.
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@Dashrender said:
I think of myself in that situation - If I have a SAN backed file server, I might want to boost that I have SAN to make myself feel good that "look at me I have a cool environment", etc.
Today I'd ask myself why do I even have a SAN because of all of the caveats.
I don't mean to imply the OP meant this, just offering it as a single explanation as to why they mentioned SAN instead of a file server.
Hopefully you see where I'm coming from.
I suppose. That only works if "having technology" sounds cool. Not saying SAN is or isn't cool, but does having one at work sound cool? Every large company has SAN, most small ones do, too. It's not something hip and modern, its just storage. Hard to imagine it sounding specifically cool. He didn't say "I'm running this cool SAN ....", he just has user directories on it. Nothing involving user directories is cool
It's a little like pointing out that in your day as a mechanic that you worked on a diesel engine. Sure, maybe most people don't, but being diesel only makes it so exciting.
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LOL - I feel like you're belittling me. I know you're not, it's just the difference in the way we think.
Today I don't think it's so cool having a specific technology - I'm out of that phase of my working life.
But when I was 20 - hell yeah having something that seemed only destine for an Enterprise company in my office would make me feel cool and I would have felt the need to talk about it.
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@Dashrender said:
But when I was 20 - hell yeah having something that seemed only destine for an Enterprise company in my office would make me feel cool and I would have felt the need to talk about it.
But, and this is important I think, would you feel cool because you worked on it or did you feel cool because your office had it.
For example, do you think that the receptionist would brag about the fact that the IT guy was using a SAN for her documents? My guess is that you would feel that it was cool because you were the one touching it, not just because you were an end user leveraging it.
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Are you saying that the OP was an end user? We don't see many end users around here, even fewer that actually know the technology that's in the closet.
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@Dashrender said:
Are you saying that the OP was an end user? We don't see many end users around here, even fewer that actually know the technology that's in the closet.
No, but in the way that it was worded with the SAN comment there was no hint at him running the SAN, only that other people had storage on it. If he meant to brag, he left out all of the bits that would connect it in that way.
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I mean I get it a little, I don't have to be a pilot to brag about getting to "fly" in a 787 Dreamliner. But it isn't bragging to make me sound cool, just sound lucky on my luxurious flight.
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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.
Where did you go @dafyre ? How is your system setup? SAN to the desktop or to the fileserver?
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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.)
Yes Home Folders on the SAN. One big iSCSI LUN connected to a Windows Server Failover Cluster for the SMB share of \server\homefolders... The full path was \server\homefolders\username.
It was a single LUN (3TB, IIRC). Not a LUN per user... that's just nuts!
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Yeah, inquiring minds want to know!
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@dafyre said:
@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.)
Yes Home Folders on the SAN. One big iSCSI LUN connected to a Windows Server Failover Cluster for the SMB share of \server\homefolders... The full path was \server\homefolders\username.
It was a single LUN (3TB, IIRC). Not a LUN per user... that's just nuts!
An so the home folders are actually on a fileserver and the fileserver stores on a SAN.
One LUN per user is actually a standard way to handle certain things. Not common, but not unheard of. The Netgear SC101 SAN was designed for exactly this.
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Replied.
Head got stuck in PowerShell coding... I'll check back again in a bit. -
@dafyre said:
@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.)
Yes Home Folders on the SAN. One big iSCSI LUN connected to a Windows Server Failover Cluster for the SMB share of \server\homefolders... The full path was \server\homefolders\username.
It was a single LUN (3TB, IIRC). Not a LUN per user... that's just nuts!
OK now that we know that it's a fileserver, why did you mention that it was SAN?
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@Dashrender said:
@dafyre said:
@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.)
Yes Home Folders on the SAN. One big iSCSI LUN connected to a Windows Server Failover Cluster for the SMB share of \server\homefolders... The full path was \server\homefolders\username.
It was a single LUN (3TB, IIRC). Not a LUN per user... that's just nuts!
OK now that we know that it's a fileserver, why did you mention that it was SAN?
The SAN is where the User Home Folders lived. The File Server connected to the SAN, and shared out the "HOMEFOLDERS" folder from the SAN Lun.
Edit: Going AFK a bit. I'll catch up soon.
