Micro Focus Storage Manager 5.0 for Active Directory is a new release that adds functionality and addresses several outstanding issues. The Storage Manager 5.0 Engine is backwards compatible with the Storage Manager 4 Event Monitor. For most operations, the Storage Manager 4 Agent is compatible with the Storage Manager 5 Engine. However, for the following new features and resolved issues, you must upgrade Agents in order for them to perform the necessary delegated work:
Active Directory to Active Directory Cross-Empire Data Migrations
Groom Operations
Policy-based vault and groom
The new management interface is compatible only with a Storage Manager 5 Engine.
We encourage you to update all of your Storage Manager components at your earliest convenience.
Storage Manager 5.0 for Active Directory offers new features and functionality which are summarized below. For an expanded discussion of these features, refer to the Novell Storage Manager 5.0 for Active Directory documentation set at: http://www.novell.com/documentation/storagemanager5.
With the release of Storage Manager 5.0, Micro Focus is providing the eDirectory to Active Directory Cross-Empire Data Migration and the new Active Directory to Active Directory Cross-Empire Data Migration subsystems only as additive support pack purchases to Storage Manager.
For example, if you wanted to migrate user data from OES to Microsoft, you would need to purchase licenses for Storage Manager 5.0 for Active Directory + the eDirectory to Active Directory Cross-Empire Data Migration support pack.
IMPORTANT:If you are in the process of migrating data from a Novell network to a Microsoft network using Cross-Empire Data Migration (which was included in Storage Manager 4.x for Active Directory), do not upgrade to version 5.0 until you have completed your migration to Microsoft.
Action Blocks allow the sharing of specific policy options among multiple policies. Sharing options eliminates the need for copying policy settings from each other and promotes the sharing of general and often-repeated policy options such as groom and vault rules. The first Action Block to be implemented are Filters for groom and vault rules. Action Blocks are also used by the new Groom Operation.
This new feature allows you to migrate data from one Active Directory forest to another. Similar in approach to the previously available eDirectory to Active Directory Cross-Empire Data Migration, this feature uses an easy-to-use wizard interface.
This new management action will enforce and move vault paths as necessary according to effective policy. Previously, after a vault path was set, it was immutable. This management action can help you correct vault paths as needed.
You can now use this management action to set the Drive Letter to an empty value, thus resulting in the Home Drive property being removed.
In Storage Manager 4, we introduced the ability to copy data across the network without the need for a policy through the Data Management feature. Data Management has been renamed to Copy Operation. In addition, we have added the Groom Operation which provides the ability to perform groom files by leveraging Action Blocks.
For Home Folder and Remote Desktop Home Folder policies, you now have the ability to set an empty drive letter for the Home Drive property when you provision managed storage. The benefit of this setting is that a Windows client will not attempt to mount a home folder when the Home Drive property is blank.
The Apply Home Drive management action will honor the setting in the policy. In addition, the Assign Managed Path management action now allows you to set the Drive Letter to an empty value, thus resulting in the Home Drive property being removed.
Exchange HealthMailbox accounts are filtered from results when you browse the forest hierarchy.
The Users container created by Micro Focus Domain Services for Windows (DSfW) is now browseable in the Cross-Empire Data Migration eDirectory source.
Policy-based vault and groom now properly handles Microsoft Server 2012 Data Deduplication stubs.
Beginning with version 4, Storage Manager for Active Directory exclusively uses DNS FQDNs for server names in all UNC paths set in and by Storage Manager. This is a change from Storage Manager 3.x and earlier, where NetBIOS names were used (though a config file-only option to use DNS names existed in Storage Manager 3.1.x). This change is per Microsoft’s own recommendation, as Microsoft slowly attempts to phase out NetBIOS and WINS.
This problem manifests itself in two scenarios:
Folder Redirection has already been in effect where the UNC path value for the home folder uses one form of the host name, and then the UNC path of the home folder attribute is modified to refer to the same actual location but with the host name in the other format (for example, switching from NetBIOS to DNS FQDN).
Switching the UNC path from server and share (for example, \\server\\share\\path-remainder), regardless of the host name format that was used, to using a DFS name space (for example \\some-domain.com\dfs-name-space\link\path-remainder) where the DFS link being used resolves to the same location as the original UNC path.
The root-cause for the problem is that the Folder Redirection code in Windows, prior to the hotfix, was not resolving the old and new UNC path values for the home folder to determine if they refer to the same location on disk. Unlike Storage Manager, which makes this determination via its “path overlap detection” functionality, the Folder Redirection code makes a bad assumption that it can unconditionally delete the files on the “old” path after it copies them to the “new” path and thus, it ends up deleting files that should not have been deleted.
These Windows bugs, which can result in loss of data in the redirected folders or the entire redirected folder, are described in the following Microsoft KB articles:
“You are unable to update the target location of offline file shares in the Offline File client side cache without administrative permission in Windows Server 2008 R2 or in Windows 7”
“After you apply a GPO to redirect a folder to a new network share, the redirected folder is empty on client computers that are running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008”
These KB articles specifically apply to users logging on through Windows Vista or Windows 7 computers, as well as users logging on interactively on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Users on other operating systems might be affected as well.
The good news is that both of the KB articles above include links to hotfixes that help resolve these issues.
While this is not a Storage Manager issue in itself, Storage Manager’s exclusive use of DNS FQDNs in UNC paths can exacerbate this problem, or introduce it into an environment that was previously exclusively using NetBIOS naming for servers and using folder redirection.
NOTE:If your environment uses folder redirection, we strongly recommend reading the KB articles above and applying any relevant hotfixes before managing storage with Storage Manager. (In fact, we strongly recommend applying these hotfixes if you use folder redirection in your Active Directory environment with the affected operating systems, even if you are not managing user storage with Storage Manager. Microsoft’s continuing push to move away from NetBIOS and WINS might eventually introduce this issue into your environment with or without Storage Manager installed.)