During a company split I was put in charge of file services.
The company were splitting of a part of the company with specific requirements:
- Minimize user required interaction
- Users have to be able to use homefolders from both sides
- New company wanted to use redirection instead of only homedirectories
With these requirements we decided to use a DFS root. This allows me to create a fake new home server and share and point to the old server. This allows new clients access through the new layout, and old systems the old homedirectory. Due to the requirements we needed to keep the SID history.
With the new structure each user should have the following structure:
\\server.newdomain.tld\home\<username>\Documents\\server.newdomain.tld+home\<username>\Desktop\\server.newdomain.tld\home\<username>\Favorites
What we did:
- Installed a new file server servertemp.newdomain.tld
- Created a home share on servertemp.newdomain.tld
- Create username folders and containing Desktop and Favorites folders
- Installed a DFS machine called server.newdomain.tld
- Created the DFS share home
- Using commandline we scripted in each user
home\<username>\Documentsin DFS to point to old home directory - Using commandline we scripted in each user
home\<username>\Desktopin DFS to point to\\tempserver.newdomain.tld\home\<username>\Desktop - Using commandline we scripted in each user
home\<username>\Favoritesin DFS to point to\\tempserver.newdomain.tld\home\<username>\Favorites
Then we let the client team migrate all clients to the new domain with migrated users. This is were the file guys get to take it easy.
When we no longer needed the compability with he old domain we did the following for each user:
- Robocopy home directory to the new
\\tempserver.newdomain.tld\home\<username>\Desktop - Repointed the DFS
\home\<username>\Documents
When all users were migrated we requested a longer window and did:
- Uninstalled the DFS machine (
server.newdomain.tld) - Rename
servertemp.newdomain.tldtoserver.newdomain.tld