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creative555

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best approach for handling remote computers after we migrate DFS, file servers, change paths for mapped drives

Hello,

What would be the best approach for handling remote computers after we migrate DFS, file servers, change paths for mapped drives and login scripts to the target name space. The remote computers that have week connectivity, connected wirelessly and don’t get gpupdate right away. For example, do we request to have remote laptops delivered to the location so that they can be plugged directly into the network or push scripts to get gpupdates or send emails to the users to run batch files so that mapped drives paths will get updated through Group policy, etc The mapped drives paths for users get pushed through group policy. The concern is that remote computers will not get access to the mapped drives after the migration.


Here are more details:
Client is using domain name space, so all the shares are accessed through domain url  \\sourcedomain.com\share1 We are planning on changing the namespace to the target url \\targetdomain.com\share1 and migrating all file servers to the target.

Thank you very much in advance.
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Mahesh
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Not sure what do you mean by "The remote computers that have week connectivity"

If you can plug computer on wired network, they should get GPOs

Only fact if wan link / mpls link speed is less than 512 kbps, you might not get GPO scripts get applied because of slow wan link detection which is by default enabled in GPO
any link speed at 512kbps and below will be considered as slow link and in that case gpo scripts won't apply

What you can do, in GPO modify below settings
Computer configuration \Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Group Policy  and enable GPO slow link detection setting and keep value to 0 kbps so that your script GPO will apply no matter what is your link speed
http://www.rebeladmin.com/2015/05/group-policy-slow-link-detection/
Probably the best way is to have those PC's imaged with exactly what you want and the wan connection already setup so they are ready when they get plugged in.

Sounds like you might need to have one employee receive them, prep them and send them to the appropriate location. This way you know exactly what to expect then they are plugged in.
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Lionel MM
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compdigit44

If your DC's are 2012 then I believe you can force a group policy update from the server side. As other experts have mention enabled slow link detection then give the gp update a try off hours when the link is less used hopefully.
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ASKER

Thank you so much for great suggestions. Let me confirm what solutions we are going to take and I will let you know what we decided to do and the best approach.

Please let me know if there are any issues that might come out? For example manually mapped drives, logon scripts? Do we have to update logon scripts as well? How do we ensure that we didn't miss anything and everything switched from \\sourcedomain.com\share1 to \\targetdomain.com\share1

Please note that we will not be able to migrate all file servers at once. So we will be doing few file servers at once and updating only those users who using those file shares on the migrated file servers. Would batch file in the logon script could be applied for selected users only?
I believe this is cross forest domain migration scenario
If you are talking about DFS name space and domain migration, you cannot add servers out of your forest in dfs name space

"Please note that we will not be able to migrate all file servers at once. So we will be doing few file servers at once and updating only those users who using those file shares on the migrated file servers. Would batch file in the logon script could be applied for selected users only?"

Offcource you have to migrate file servers one by one
Once file server migrated, ACL on file server will be / should be replaced by target accounts, in that case only target users can access those file servers, if source users need to access target file servers, you have to grant them permissions manually / explicitly

If you could specify your scenario in detail, we could suggest right approach
THank you so much. We will provide the batch file to users.