With the higher probability of workstations being susceptible to data loss, compared to servers in a secure data center, either from a system failure and/or reload, our company decided that using a domain policy which redirects the Documents and Settings folder (as well as newer OS's "Users" folder) to a file server. Their official position is that you NEVER keep business data on a workstation device. Ultimately this saves a significant amount of money in storage and licenses. Additionally, this practice lowers the cost of the desktop support team managing end-user systems. They no longer need to be concerned about business data when performing OS reloads/upgrades. HTH ~Rick
-----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU] On Behalf Of Zoltan Forray Sent: Monday, December 10, 2012 10:42 AM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: [ADSM-L] Backing up desktops/workstations I am looking for war-stories, experiences, suggestions, ideas from you folks that have implemented backing up desktop machines, which could expand into thousands of additional TSM nodes. I have been tasked with looking into doing this. The current guidelines is to "only backup 'documents and settings/users' folder, excluding all music files (mp3/wmv/wav/flac/ogg)". My first thought is to stand-up a new server (or two). Create a default policy-domain with short retention (30-days or less) with few copies (2) and a cloptset with an exclude everything and include doc & settings/users plus exclude or the music files. -- *Zoltan Forray* TSM Software & Hardware Administrator Virginia Commonwealth University UCC/Office of Technology Services zfor...@vcu.edu - 804-828-4807 Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable organizations will never use email to request that you reply with your password, social security number or confidential personal information. For more details visit http://infosecurity.vcu.edu/phishing.html