Redoing my network... (Part 2)


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Why do you need it prior to log on? What are you doing at this stage?

Because my current desktop, documents, user profile, etc. is loaded from my current RAID5 drive "D:". I want to make a share drive off the WS2012 with a storage pool and load that when Windows loads up.

If I remove my RAID5 now and logon to Windows, Windows makes some temp profile or something like that, doesn't it? That's why I want to avoid that.

I already have one drive in the WS2012R2 so I can test this out perfectly.

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No, but you can manually redirect what you want.  when you log on it will be redirected before you get to the desktop.

 

 

Click start -> yourprofile -> right click "Desktop[/size]icon1.png

" click the locations tab, Move and you can choose where your desktop location folder is. I have this set up also for my Documents, Photos and videos. It will also transfer the files already in the desktop folder.

 

Change the desktop to my documents or any other thing you may want to redirect.  Use the unc path where you want to redirect.

 

Let me see if I understood you correctly :)

 

Right now I have on my PC "D:" and thats the RAID5.  On my server I have "X:" (for clarification purposes) which is now ONE drive. One I understand this, Ill put in another 3 drives and make it a pool.

 

I have

My Documents: D:/ My Documents

Desktop: D:/ My Documents/Desktop

 

etc

 

X: has the same thing that D: has that means X:/My Documents and X:/My Documents/Desktop

 

Are you suggesting I put "\\WS2012R2\X\My Documents"? Wouldnt there be permission issues there when logging on? Also, when a program looks to save to a default location, how do I know it works with a UNC path and that it does not need a network drive?

Thats the sole reason of having a network drive mapped; I would have perfered iSCSI but it seems that it is not worth it.

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Can't you set the permissions? If this is your home network who cares if everyone has access to it....

Well, the drive I have installed currently in the WS2012R2, if I try to map it, it still asks me for my username and password on the WS2012R2, not my Windows 7 username/pass.
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Because my current desktop, documents, user profile, etc. is loaded from my current RAID5 drive "D:". I want to make a share drive off the WS2012 with a storage pool and load that when Windows loads up.

If I remove my RAID5 now and logon to Windows, Windows makes some temp profile or something like that, doesn't it? That's why I want to avoid that.

I already have one drive in the WS2012R2 so I can test this out perfectly.

This sounds like a very bad idea. Officially you can do roaming profiles and folder redirection to get varying levels of network storage for those locations...

Throwing your user profile itself on a network drive will severely affect performance in a very adverse way. This is why Microsoft will only support logon and logoff syncing for it...

Do this via the supported methods. And be very well aware of the pitfalls.

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This sounds like a very bad idea. Officially you can do roaming profiles and folder redirection to get varying levels of network storage for those locations...

Throwing your user profile itself on a network drive will severely affect performance in a very adverse way. This is why Microsoft will only support logon and logoff syncing for it...

Do this via the supported methods. And be very well aware of the pitfalls.

When I format and reinstall next time, Ill probably leave the user profiles on C: (system drive) and everything else (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc) from the NAS.
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OK, just tested it out a bit on the Desktop...

 

It seems that if a change is made on the server (adding a text file), it takes a while for the client to see it and refresh the Desktop.

If the change is made on the client, the server sees it instantly.

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Restarted PC and all hell broke loose :p

First thing it asked my is for credentials. I used my WS2012R2 credentials and then it mapped the network drive correctly. Slowly, it then started to populate my entire Desktop again.

This is why I thought SMB wouldn't be a good idea for this in the first place and why I would need the network drive mapped BEFORE login and WITHOUT asking credentials.

I thought before hand going the iSCSI route since I believe this only needs a one time credentials thing and from then forward, its authed and not only that but is looks like a "local disk" to Windows.

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Dude think about this for a couple of seconds - this is HOME setup!!!  Why would you want your desktop on the server?  What if esxi is down??  Kind of hard to fix when your desktop wont even load!

 

Put your profile on your C, you have NO use of it on a server in a home setup..  And another thing - why is it asking you for creds?  Why did you not just setup matching username and passwords for passthru if your not going to join this box to the domain I thought you were creating in 2k12?

 

Folder redirection is used in a domain setting, when your machine is a member of the domain so you don't have to worry about mismatch in creds, also do you not have offline folders enabled - your stuff should be cached on your local machine anyway.  Which is the case would negate the issue of esxi not being on and not having a desktop ;)  But would also prevent the building of your desktop when you login

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Dude think about this for a couple of seconds - this is HOME setup!!!  Why would you want your desktop on the server?  What if esxi is down??  Kind of hard to fix when your desktop wont even load!

post-25747-0-38396400-1397913637.png

Thats why.

I really have no desire to go thru 65000+/44GB of files to see what is important and what isnt.

The best I can do is copy everything from D:/My Documents/Desktop to C:/Users/(myusername)/Desktop

Put your profile on your C, you have NO use of it on a server in a home setup..  And another thing - why is it asking you for creds?  Why did you not just setup matching username and passwords for passthru if your not going to join this box to the domain I thought you were creating in 2k12?

I have no clue why it is asking me for credentials. I set its NTFS security permissions for Everyone. Is there a setting I missed? Should I share it as a shared folder isntead of "D$"?

 

Folder redirection is used in a domain setting, when your machine is a member of the domain so you don't have to worry about mismatch in creds, also do you not have offline folders enabled - your stuff should be cached on your local machine anyway.  Which is the case would negate the issue of esxi not being on and not having a desktop ;)  But would also prevent the building of your desktop when you login

Ive seen a lot of sync issues at work with Offline Folders enabled; Im not sure what this is related to so Im not a fan of turning it on here.
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You really should understand what you're attempting to do and then adjust properly...

 

Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection will slow down your performance... As, quite naturally, you'll need to squeeze your I/O down to the slowest link (in this case a 1 Gb network link unless you are running 10 Gb at home). If you're aiming to just get the data onto the other machine it would be far more beneficial to just plop the files onto a network share with a one time copy.

 

Roaming Profiles will require a syncing of your profile when you log on and when you log off the machine as Windows doesn't support accessing things like the Registry from a network location. This can slow your login performance by a large margin as you profile folder increases. Folder Redirection is designed to help this by moving heavy folders out of the profile and onto a network share, but this will also introduce slowdowns as everything is constantly pushed to this server. Some applications also don't like being pushed to a network share.

 

You're adding too much complexity here.

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You really should understand what you're attempting to do and then adjust properly...

 

Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection will slow down your performance... As, quite naturally, you'll need to squeeze your I/O down to the slowest link (in this case a 1 Gb network link unless you are running 10 Gb at home). If you're aiming to just get the data onto the other machine it would be far more beneficial to just plop the files onto a network share with a one time copy.

 

Roaming Profiles will require a syncing of your profile when you log on and when you log off the machine as Windows doesn't support accessing things like the Registry from a network location. This can slow your login performance by a large margin as you profile folder increases. Folder Redirection is designed to help this by moving heavy folders out of the profile and onto a network share, but this will also introduce slowdowns as everything is constantly pushed to this server. Some applications also don't like being pushed to a network share.

 

You're adding too much complexity here.

Will iSCSI solve this issues by seeing a HDD as a local drive? Performance issues will still exist, I know.
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Dude I can tell you what is junk about 42 Gig of that most likely..  What do you mean you don't have time go through your files..  So you don't want to spend a few minutes now, but you want to spend extra time pulling those across the network every time you want to access one of them.. Or when you log in and log out sync up your doc folder that you put on a server..

 

What could you have in my docs that takes up 44GB?  Videos!!  Music?  Those belong on your NAS - not your my docs.  ISOs from linux distros?  Again they belong on your NAS!

 

Its real simple - search for videos - move them to your video share, search for music move them to your music share, iso - search them and put on your data share.. This is all of about 10 minutes of work.. Your spending more time posting about it then you would of already be done fixing it the correct way!

 

"You're adding too much complexity here."

 

Exactly!!!

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Dude I can tell you what is junk about 42 Gig of that most likely..  What do you mean you don't have time go through your files..  So you don't want to spend a few minutes now, but you want to spend extra time pulling those across the network every time you want to access one of them.. Or when you log in and log out sync up your doc folder that you put on a server..

Its obvious I have something confused because Ive always thought it just displayed data, not actually pulled it off...

 

What could you have in my docs that takes up 44GB?  Videos!!  Music?  Those belong on your NAS - not your my docs.  ISOs from linux distros?  Again they belong on your NAS!

My "D:" drive (which right now is the RAID5) contains a folder called "My Documents" inside there, there are folders like:

"Desktop"

"My Music"

"My Pictures"

etc.

Its structured this way.

 

Its real simple - search for videos - move them to your video share, search for music move them to your music share, iso - search them and put on your data share.. This is all of about 10 minutes of work.. Your spending more time posting about it then you would of already be done fixing it the correct way!

 

"You're adding too much complexity here."

 

Exactly!!!

Ive done a quick list of files on the desktop and there are some that are pictures (with no names so I would have to go thru all of them to put them in folders (for example) called Holiday, Cell Phone, etc.) then there are music which I would have to check if I already moved them to their folder (Artist/Album) in the music folder, etc. For privacy reasons, I cannot post the layout of the "My Documents" folders to show the (semi)organization I have.

I can though show you how I have it configured. Seems as I was incorrect as the "%USERPROFILE% variable is set to C:/Users/(myusernamehere)

post-25747-0-46924300-1397925393.png

Got this off

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

One of the reasons I like this configuration is if I format it takes a REG file to configure. Also, there are programs that go to default locations to save and/or games that use default folders to save in as well (Grand Theft Auto comes to mind). With this config, I just set the folders and everything is saved where I want without have to move it back or anything.

Maybe there is another way to deal with my "overcomplex" problem :/

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Storing your documents on D partition is not overly complex - what is overly complex is trying to do that over a network?  For what possible freaking reason could you have to do this?

 

You don't have 44G free on your C drive? Until at such time you can org your files?  Or resize C and create a local D?

 

"thought it just displayed data, not actually pulled it off..."

 

Do you have offline folders setup?  Do you know how long its going to take to parse through 44GB of files for meta data for it to display, or whatever portion of files your looking at.

 

How much space do you have on your C drive currently dude?  My C is 107GB and I have 42GB free, and I have 16GB in my "download" that is just junk that I either need to move over to my storage or delete.  How is it you don't have 44GB free on your C drive to "temp" store your stuff until you have time to clean it up?

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Storing your documents on D partition is not overly complex - what is overly complex is trying to do that over a network?  For what possible freaking reason could you have to do this?

Ive always had documents (including videos, music) storaged locally as a RAID5, USB, FireWire, eSATA, etc., never over a network. Maybe its because Im not used to it.

The only reason I have is that I see "My Documents" and I enter and done. I dont want to go to X: and look for a folder called "My Documents". Thats the only stupid reason I can think of

 

You don't have 44G free on your C drive? Until at such time you can org your files?  Or resize C and create a local D?

Yes, I have about 50GB free.

A alternative I could do is simply leave D:/My Documents/Desktop and make a new Desktop on C:/Users/(username)/Desktop...I perfer not to because I know thats gonna get filled up quickly as well..

 

"thought it just displayed data, not actually pulled it off..."

Do you have offline folders setup?

No. Ive seen problems with it at work and Im not sure what they are related to so I perfer not to. Would this make it less complex?

How much space do you have on your C drive currently dude?  My C is 107GB and I have 42GB free, and I have 16GB in my "download" that is just junk that I either need to move over to my storage or delete.  How is it you don't have 44GB free on your C drive to "temp" store your stuff until you have time to clean it up?

I have 50GB free I believe.

So, your suggestion BudMan, would be to store all of that on the local system C: drive?

Before I do that, I use Windows Media Player to stream to my TV downstairs. I can still do this by setting in my Windows 7 machine to use folders from my NAS' network drive right?

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Im pretty much set on moving some of those entries around to store them locally but I would have to know the WMP streaming to TV question in other to go forward...

 

Some other questions will problably popup Im sure :)

 

Thanks to all lending a hand and sorry for the stupid questions/incorrect thoughts.

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"can still do this by setting in my Windows 7 machine to use folders from my NAS' network drive right?"

 

Why would you do that?  So your going to pull files from your "nas" to your machine to then stream to your TV?  Run the media player on your NAS box, why does your workstation have to come into play - your box could be off for all that mattes.

 

My media player just plays the files from my smb share, I could turn off my computer and still watch stuff on any of the TVs in the house via my popcorn hour media player.  I don't have to worry about transcoding of the files on the fly via media player - does your TV access smb/cifs shares?  Either way media player streaming should be moved to the box that has direct access to your files, not over the network just to go over the network again out the same interface.

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My media player just plays the files from my smb share, I could turn off my computer and still watch stuff on any of the TVs in the house via my popcorn hour media player.  I don't have to worry about transcoding of the files on the fly via media player - does your TV access smb/cifs shares?  Either way media player streaming should be moved to the box that has direct access to your files, not over the network just to go over the network again out the same interface.

CIFS never worked on my TV (the auth part at least); My TV correctly detected that I was sharing media thru WMP and it was able to stream that. Is this possible in WS2012R2?
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This is strange; I had a power outage last night and now WS2012R2 is telling me to reinitialize the disk I put in to test RAW mapping.....

Obviously no chance in hell and Im gonna check if there is still data on that drive...

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....Im speechless as everything on that drive is gone.....

I have a backup copy of all of my important data and of course the RAID5 is still up but......

Can someone explain this? :/

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CIFS never worked on my TV (the auth part at least); My TV correctly detected that I was sharing media thru WMP and it was able to stream that. Is this possible in WS2012R2?

 

Why not just put a DLNA server on your NAS?

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Why not just put a DLNA server on your NAS?

Instead of using WMP? Yup, thats a solution Fahim S.

XBMC and Plex come to mind. Any other recommendations?

BTW, is there a way to copy and paste between my PC and a VM on ESXi? I know its doable when its my PC and a VM on my local machine using Workstation but ESXi?

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