Real World Computing
Hyper-V hyped
Finally, Home Server promised a new extendable andself-balancing filing system, which really intrigued me - so imagine my surprise on finding plain old NTFS. Sure, there'sa bunch of stuff running on top of it, but it isn't clear whether this is some mutant child of the defunct WinFS or something new with more mainstream implications.
Microsoft is being annoyingly coy about this and I shall dig deeper in the coming months.
Jon Honeyball
Sync or swim
This month, I'm looking at File Synchronisation under Windows XP and Vista from a domain perspective, to supplement what I've said recently about Roaming Profiles and Group Policies. Once Offline Files get added to the mix - as they obviously must with synchronisation - management can become very tricky. I'll examine the differences between XP and Vista's handling of synchronisation, but first let's recap on Offline Files.
The Offline Files facility is simple in principle: enable this feature and, when you're working offline, all your networked files remain available; go back online and synchronisation causes the actual files on the server to be updated with the edited versions from your laptop, desktop, handheld or whatever. It's great when it works, but can reduce you to a gibbering wreck when it doesn't - troubleshooting it just isn't funny.
Kick off the facility by creating a new share (or choosing an existing share), then enabling Offline Files for it. From then on, whenever a user connects to that share, new files created on the server are copied automatically to their local cache, too, ready to be used when they're no longer connected to the network. Before going any further, I should point out that you mustn't enable offline files for locations such as the profile shares created as part of roaming profiles - in fact, you should explicitly disable Offline Files on such a share or you can end up with mysterious problems down the line (been there, done that, got the T-shirt). There's also no need to enable offline files fora redirected folder. The operating system makes offline files automatically available when you've disconnected from the network, and you can see this by looking at the files' icons in My Documents/ Documents: you should see arrows indicating that these files are available offline.
These two-way arrow symbols are different in design between XP and Vista, but there's no mistaking what they mean. You can configure your offline files' settings either when you create a share or later on, but it's usually better to do it when you create the share because it's one less chore to remember.
Under Windows Server 2003, offline files are set by default to "Only the files and programs that users specify will be available offline", which effectively means that nothing will be automatically made available offline unless you say so. However, don't rely on this setting where profile shares are concerned - instead, right-click on the share, select Properties and then click on the Sharing tab, click the Offline Settings... button and choose "Files or programs from the share will not be available offline". If you do leave offline files at their default setting, your users will be able to make files and folders available offline by the simple expedient of right-clicking on the object in question and choosing "Make available offline" from the pop-up menu.
Clearly, offline files aren't going to be much use unless some form of synchronisation takes place whenever the user reconnects to the server. Therefore, the default setting for folders, for example under Windows XP when offline files are enabled, is that synchronisation of offline files is to take place whenever the user logs off. However, I'd suggest amending this to require synchronisation to take place whenever the user logs on as well. Either way, your users will eventually get to see the infamous synchronisation dialog that causes them continually to run and tell you that their PST or DBF files haven't been synchronised, forcing you to explain to them for the billionth time that those file types aren't supported for offline file synchronisation under Windows XP (along with LDB, MDB,MDE, MDW, SLM, and indeed DB?, which is any file with a DB file extension). By the way, in case you didn't know, Vista has no such reservations and syncs every file type.
