Use-case 24: How To Isolate And Migrate Home Folders/Profile Paths Of Employees When Decommissioning File Servers In Your Active Directory

Some pain points I.T. Asset Management(ITAM) Ops deal with, is life-cycle management of servers. Especially, when there is a request for change of an out-of-date file server which was not accounted/maintained properly, during its lifetime. This causes great difficulty in validating the documents, tracking access entries to the documents and assessing the impact of retiring the server.

Home folders and profile paths are Active Directory resources, which are usually associated with file servers. They are user specific storage repositories, allocated and pointed by Active Directory attributes. Home folder is like the users' vault that contain their data. Profile path deals with the personal settings of the user to boot upon interactive logon, remote desktop, etc. Organization allocate these data deposits for employees on file servers not only to utilize the space that comes with dedicated servers but also to,

1. Ensure datum pertaining to users is securely stored as other mediums of storage are vulnerable and unreliable.

2. Promote usage tracking, data tracking and auditing.

Step 1 : Kindly go to AD Mgmt --> User Management --> Bulk User Modification --> Move/Delete HomeFolders .

Step 2 :

If you want to move home folders to another location:

-Click the Move Home Folder option.

-Select Move Home Folder To .

-Specify the location where you want to move the home folders in the field provided. Only Universal Naming Convention path is supported. The format should be: \\file-servername\shared directory name

-Select Retain a copy in the original location , if you want a copy of the home folder to exist in its original location as well.

If you want to move profile paths to another location:

-Click the Move Home Folder option.

-Select Move Profile Path To .

-Specify the location where you want to move the profile paths in the field provided. Only Universal Naming Convention path is supported. The format should be: \\file-servername\shared directory name

-Select Retain a copy in the original location , if you want a copy of the profile folder to exist in its original location as well.

Now, to specify the employees you can,

a. Import a simple CSV file with the sAMAccountName of the users. The users will be matched and displayed. You can then click on Check All and Apply this change.

b. Click on search and it will give you all the users in your domain. You can handpick users and apply this change.

c. If all the users belong to an OU , you can choose the OU on Add OUs and hit Search . All users from that OU would appear. You can then click on Check All and Apply this change.