Changing policies to use DFS namespaces

Question

We recently rolled out DFS replication and namespaces. I want to change the target in my policies from \\server\Home to the DFS namespace. I've followed the document and put {{\\server\Home}} in the Description of the namespace. The server hasn't actually changed, just the path statement in the policy target. I've created a test policy and it works when creating new users. My problem is with existing users. Storage Manager is up to date with the latest version.
This is the behaviour I see:
I change the target in the policy to the namespace. I go to Management Actions and Manage the user. In Pending Events, I see a Bypassable event with the message: Waiting for policy paths to become accessible -- 27:File system path already exists. When I bypass the event and Watch the file system, I see the folder on the server renamed to username-FSMOVE. A new folder is created and the data is copied. In Pending Events, the rest of the actions pass through fine. Sometimes the Home Directory attribute in AD is updated, mostly it is not.
My question is, is there any way to bypass all the data copies and simply update the Storage Manager database and the AD attribute? New users behave correctly, existing ones just need to be updated with the new path. I have nearly 100,000 users and several thousand groups. Clicking "bypass" one by one is a chore I don't look forward to. I'm almost tempted to simply wipe out SM and install new.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

On 5/15/2013 11:36 AM, stober wrote:
>
> We recently rolled out DFS replication and namespaces. I want to change
> the target in my policies from \\server\Home to the DFS namespace. I've
> followed the document and put {{\\server\Home}} in the Description of
> the namespace. The server hasn't actually changed, just the path
> statement in the policy target. I've created a test policy and it works
> when creating new users. My problem is with existing users. Storage
> Manager is up to date with the latest version.
>
> This is the behaviour I see:
> I change the target in the policy to the namespace. I go to Management
> Actions and Manage the user. In Pending Events, I see a Bypassable event
> with the message: Waiting for policy paths to become accessible --
> 27:File system path already exists. When I bypass the event and Watch
> the file system, I see the folder on the server renamed to
> username-FSMOVE. A new folder is created and the data is copied. In
> Pending Events, the rest of the actions pass through fine. Sometimes the
> Home Directory attribute in AD is updated, mostly it is not.
>
> My question is, is there any way to bypass all the data copies and
> simply update the Storage Manager database and the AD attribute? New
> users behave correctly, existing ones just need to be updated with the
> new path. I have nearly 100,000 users and several thousand groups.
> Clicking "bypass" one by one is a chore I don't look forward to. I'm
> almost tempted to simply wipe out SM and install new.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
>
stober,
The good news is that you can multi-select events in Pending Events -
Ctrl+A to select an entire page of events, then clicking 'Bypass', works
just fine. You can also change the page size for the event list - by
default the paging is 1000 events, but it can be set to any number. I
wouldn't recommend trying to put 100,000 in the Pending Event list at
once -- the UI will be extremely slow -- but 5,000 is more than
reasonable for this sort of task.
What you're really after, though, is the Assign Home Directory
management action. This sets the Home Directory attribute on the target
users for the management action without doing any file system copies.
That should save you a great deal of work!
- NFMS Support Team