Redirecting the Client Desktop to the Server

As some of you know, I have a strong interest in backing up data and making sure it's secure. Naturally, I took advantage of the My Document Redirection tool in Small Business Server 2003. I like it for a number of reasons:

• My Documents and everything in my Documents lives on the server, so it's easily backed up


• Using multiple PCs all have the same My Documents folder


• I designed the tool :o)

But that's not enough. Recently, I've found that for the current things that I work on, I keep them on my desktop, until I'm finished, then I file them away in my Documents or delete them. So what's the problem?

My Desktop is not a safe place to store things!

It's not backed up, The data is only in one place, it's the most important data to me at that time.

What did I do? I simply just re-directed the desktop to the server. Here's how:

1. On the SBS server, open Server Management, Advanced Management and Group Policy Management


2. Now decide were you want this policy. I would put it in the Users OU under: Expand Forest, {domain name}, My Business and Users


3. Right click on SBSUsers and select Create and Link GPO Here...


4. Give your GPO a name, I usually start with who created the GPO, followed by what's in the GPO, for this example, I'll use "Seanda - Desktop Redirection"


5. You'll see the newly created GPO appear in the SBSUsers OU, right click it and choose Edit


6. The Group Policy Object Editor opens, let's drill in to User Configuration, Windows Settings, Folder Redirection and right click on Desktop and choose Properties


7. Here is where we will instantiate the policy. On the Target tab, change the Setting to Basic - Redirect everyone's folder to the same location


8. In the Root Path type in the location to redirect to: \\{servername}\users.
   • In this example, I'm redirecting to the built in Users' share, since the ACLs are set correctly, if you want to redirect to a different share, you should read help topic in the "More Information" button on the My Document Redirection tool


9. On the Settings tab, you can choose a number of things:
   
   
   • Grant the user exclusive rights to desktop - if this is checked. Administrators cannot get into this folder without taking ownership
   
   
   • Move the contents of Desktop to the new location - if this is checked (and I think you should keep it checked), the contents of the current desktop, will move to the new location, this is so your users don't know what you've done. :)
   
   
   • Finally, Policy Removal will tell policy what to do if you ever delete this policy in the future

That's all there is to it. The next time your users log in (might be 2 times for XP clients, due to asynchronous logons), the users desktop will exist on the server & automatically included in your SBS backup!

So what's the draw back? Well, the items on the desktop will all get the funky blue icon saying that it is synchronized for offline use in the event the server goes down.

Enjoy the redirected life