“For an "R2," Server 2008 R2 delivered a fairly impressive list of new goodies for Active Directory (AD) techies.  One of the most important of those goodies was Active Directory’s new support of PowerShell scripting, in combination with 73 new AD-related PowerShell cmdlets and their GUI cousin, a brand-new administrative tool for AD called the Active Directory Administrative Center (ADAC).”

“I really like some of the new PowerShell cmdlets and really like the ADAC GUI tool, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that you can fairly simply bring R2’s PowerShell cmdlets and ADAC to any Active Directory running pre-R2 domain controllers.  In fact, you can even retrofit Powershell and ADAC support on domain controllers as far back Windows Server 2003.”

Check the details in the latest newsletter from Mark Minasi.

Ken Tamaru is working on a new verson of RichCopy. It will be released in a couple of weeks.

We have been redesigning the File Server Consolidator website over the last week.

With the new homepage we want to give visitors a better impression of what File Server Consolidator is and its benefits.

The new design is a lot more open and friendly, has real screenshots of the product, and has much less text.

What do you think? Leave your comments below.

Photo Credits:jurek d.

One of the most often used roles of Windows Server is the File Services role. It provides a secure and easy way for users to share files and data. Without precise rules from the beginning, shared folders can become chaotic and finding data can become difficult and time consuming. Manual folder makeovers can be done in very small environments, but can quickly become impossible as a company grows. File Server Consolidator has been designed especially for those situations. It makes it possible to improve the folder structure when manual adjustments are not efficient. This article describes the steps for file server migration using File Server Consolidator.

Install the File Server Consolidator on a server

File Server Consolidator (FSC) is a multi-layered solution. It consists of a database, an FSC server and FSC clients. First, you have to decide on a server that will host the server part. FSC server runs as a Windows service and saves the data to a database. For user client deployment the Click Once technology is used. There are two possibilities to deploy the user client application.
Once you have a server ready that will host the File Server Consolidator service, and have decided on the client application deployment, then you can install the FSC. The installation is fully automated with the installation program and can be done in a minute.

Create and configure a new project

When you first run the administration client it will create a new FSC project for you. You can also create additional projects as needed. Each project should have a clear, descriptive name.
A very important decision that has to be made is how you are going to organize security on the new folder structure. File Server Consolidator enables very flexible folder security settings.
You can redesign as many shared folders as you wish. Before users can work with them in FSC you have to define them in the project as source locations.
Although you can leave it up to users to create the new folder structures as they like, it is recommended to define the initial structure before you start the project. You have probably decided to rearrange the old shared folders because they were not optimal. You don’t want to end up with a similar messy structure.
Together with the new location of their data users can decide also who has access to that data. To be able to do that FSC needs a list of all users who should have access to new folders. Administrators can manually add users one by one or import them from a text file. The input file can be prepared in Excel or any text editor.

Users define where the data should be migrated

This is organizationally the most difficult step. It is also the most time consuming. The ball is now in the end users’ hands. They have to start the user client application by clicking on the link that was sent to them by administrators.
The user client is very intuitive and easy to use. On the left side is the existing folder structure and on the right side is the new folder structure. Users move existing shared folders to the new structure and select their colleagues that should have read access and those that should also have a possibility to make changes.

Create and verify migration scripts

After the users have indicated where in the new folder structure they want to have their data you can create migration scripts. File Server Consolidator uses script templates to create the migration scripts. Make sure to review the scripts and also test them!

Backup data

It might happen that after the migration a user notices that he forgot to mark some of his data for migration, or he might change his mind and want to copy the data to a different location.
Before you run the migration scripts and migrate the data make sure that you have a valid backup. In case something goes wrong you might need it to recover to the previous state. This step is even more important if you are not copying, but moving the data to the new location.
It is not enough to only make the backup. It must also be tested!

Run the migration scripts

Finally, you can run the scripts and migrate the data. When you run the scripts make sure you run them in the right order.

Photo Credits:Jim Linwood

You can’t give some user groups permissions on a folder that hasn’t been created yet, or when the group doesn’t exist.

Scripts for data restructuring that File Server Consolidator generates have to be run in the following order:

1) Run the script that creates user groups in the Active Directory;
2) Execute the script that creates folders on the new file server;
3) Run the script that grants permissions on folders created in second step to user groups from the first step;
4) Run the script that will copy the data from old folders to the new ones.