Offline Files - An official stance - suitable for general shared f

Hi there,

I've been looking for a whitepaper, or an official line from Microsoft which
defines the capabilities of Offline Files in a client/server environment.

As we all know, in a XP Client<=>Windows Server 2003 environment, once
Folder Redirection has been established by Group Policy, the redirected
folder is automatically made available offline. This is what Microsoft only
seem to explicitly refer to in white papers.

From my experience of Offline Files & Windows networking in general, I
strongly feel that Offline Files is not suitable to be enabled by multiple
users on the same share i.e. a common shared drive. Imagine a server with a
shared drive, mapped as S: on the XP client. 5 or more workstations/laptops
mark S: to be available offline. A further 20 clients are connected, working
normally with the shared data on S:

I have been looking for some documentation, or an official line from
Microsoft which states that they support such a configuration.

I'm looking for a MS technote/article which covers

a) What would be the expected performance impact of such a configuration
b) IMO this potentially could create serious conflicts for each user
synchronising, as well as for the users who are accessing the files on the
shared drive normally while they are being synchronised. Is there an article
published by Microsoft to this effect?

Also, other users anecdotal positive/negative experiences with such
configurations would also be most appreciated.


Cheers

Keith

We use offline files in a couple of situations--each is a group of 4 folks.
In one case only one of the 4 uses the files offline--he has a laptop
running Vista. In the other case, there are two users using files offline
regularly--one with an XP laptop, the other with Vista.

We don't use standard folder redirection--we just set specific folders for
offline access based on the needs of the users.
(only a handful of users use "my documents" for anything--work is kept in
the server folders)

The synch mechanisms are quite a bit different between Vista and Windows
XP--but we really haven't seen significant issues--the synch process lets
the user know after the synch completes whether there are files with various
kinds of conflicts, and gives them choices as to disposition--for example,
file changed on server and on client machine--save both, save one, etc..

One Vista user found the system rather opaque--he'd hear that a new batch of
transactions had been added to a file, for example, but not see them in his
copy and not realize that the synch had errors and he needed to make choices
to resolve them.

We certainly have never seen any performance issue.

The overall server has 30 users, of whom perhaps 20 might be active at a
given time, but the particular folders used offline although available to
everyone, are primarily used by the smaller groups.

I will say that I never saw offline files mentioned at all in the migration
document which did cause some extra effort when we migrated from 2003 to
2008 in August.


"Keith" <> wrote in message
news:3BD0CB88-5192-4CA5-B848-...
> Hi there,
>
> I've been looking for a whitepaper, or an official line from Microsoft
> which
> defines the capabilities of Offline Files in a client/server environment.
>
> As we all know, in a XP Client<=>Windows Server 2003 environment, once
> Folder Redirection has been established by Group Policy, the redirected
> folder is automatically made available offline. This is what Microsoft
> only
> seem to explicitly refer to in white papers.
>
> From my experience of Offline Files & Windows networking in general, I
> strongly feel that Offline Files is not suitable to be enabled by multiple
> users on the same share i.e. a common shared drive. Imagine a server with
> a
> shared drive, mapped as S: on the XP client. 5 or more
> workstations/laptops
> mark S: to be available offline. A further 20 clients are connected,
> working
> normally with the shared data on S:
>
> I have been looking for some documentation, or an official line from
> Microsoft which states that they support such a configuration.
>
> I'm looking for a MS technote/article which covers
>
> a) What would be the expected performance impact of such a configuration
> b) IMO this potentially could create serious conflicts for each user
> synchronising, as well as for the users who are accessing the files on the
> shared drive normally while they are being synchronised. Is there an
> article
> published by Microsoft to this effect?
>
> Also, other users anecdotal positive/negative experiences with such
> configurations would also be most appreciated.
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Keith

I looked for some actual written documentation without finding any one thing
that seems to fit. You can find zillions of documents if you search
support.microsoft.com and technet.com for "offline files."

My one comment regarding Keith's question is that I think your experience
will vary depending on how often your users work offline. We have a share
where several people frequently work on the same documents. They're
available offline in case of a network outage or whatever, but generally,
they're working online. This keeps people from attempting to simultaneously
edit the same file because if the second user goes to access the file,
they're prompted to open it read only by Word, Excel, etc. If these people
were working offline, you could get multiple offline edits to the same file.
That would result in a sync error for the last person to sync the document
back to the server copy, and that conflict would have to be resolved
manually. Depending on the type of document, that's going to give you a
potential mess to deal with - I guess you'd merge all the edits into one
document and figure everything out with tracking, but it might not be the
best experience.

So I'm thinking that if you're using offline as security against a network
or server failure, you won't have any issues unless your system is down for
a while. But if you have users collaborating on shared documents and mostly
working offline, you might be better off figuring out something that works
with SharePoint or some other product that's more friendly to that type of
use.

Have you ever heard of DocVerse? It caught my eye as a great idea that I
hope is successful (not to mention it might be a good solution).
http://www.docverse.com/.



"Bill Sanderson" <> wrote in message
news:23AE798D-4EC4-4523-B067-...
> We use offline files in a couple of situations--each is a group of 4
> folks. In one case only one of the 4 uses the files offline--he has a
> laptop running Vista. In the other case, there are two users using files
> offline regularly--one with an XP laptop, the other with Vista.
>
> We don't use standard folder redirection--we just set specific folders for
> offline access based on the needs of the users.
> (only a handful of users use "my documents" for anything--work is kept in
> the server folders)
>
> The synch mechanisms are quite a bit different between Vista and Windows
> XP--but we really haven't seen significant issues--the synch process lets
> the user know after the synch completes whether there are files with
> various kinds of conflicts, and gives them choices as to disposition--for
> example, file changed on server and on client machine--save both, save
> one, etc..
>
> One Vista user found the system rather opaque--he'd hear that a new batch
> of transactions had been added to a file, for example, but not see them in
> his copy and not realize that the synch had errors and he needed to make
> choices to resolve them.
>
> We certainly have never seen any performance issue.
>
> The overall server has 30 users, of whom perhaps 20 might be active at a
> given time, but the particular folders used offline although available to
> everyone, are primarily used by the smaller groups.
>
> I will say that I never saw offline files mentioned at all in the
> migration document which did cause some extra effort when we migrated from
> 2003 to 2008 in August.
>
>
> "Keith" <> wrote in message
> news:3BD0CB88-5192-4CA5-B848-...
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I've been looking for a whitepaper, or an official line from Microsoft
>> which
>> defines the capabilities of Offline Files in a client/server environment.
>>
>> As we all know, in a XP Client<=>Windows Server 2003 environment, once
>> Folder Redirection has been established by Group Policy, the redirected
>> folder is automatically made available offline. This is what Microsoft
>> only
>> seem to explicitly refer to in white papers.
>>
>> From my experience of Offline Files & Windows networking in general, I
>> strongly feel that Offline Files is not suitable to be enabled by
>> multiple
>> users on the same share i.e. a common shared drive. Imagine a server with
>> a
>> shared drive, mapped as S: on the XP client. 5 or more
>> workstations/laptops
>> mark S: to be available offline. A further 20 clients are connected,
>> working
>> normally with the shared data on S:
>>
>> I have been looking for some documentation, or an official line from
>> Microsoft which states that they support such a configuration.
>>
>> I'm looking for a MS technote/article which covers
>>
>> a) What would be the expected performance impact of such a configuration
>> b) IMO this potentially could create serious conflicts for each user
>> synchronising, as well as for the users who are accessing the files on
>> the
>> shared drive normally while they are being synchronised. Is there an
>> article
>> published by Microsoft to this effect?
>>
>> Also, other users anecdotal positive/negative experiences with such
>> configurations would also be most appreciated.
>>
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Keith
>

Thank you both, Bill & Dave, for your input, its great to hear of your
personal experiences.

I think, Dave, you have spotted the same glaring hole in Microsofts usually
extensive documentation...this is a feature that many users & administrators
leverage; however its difficult to classify it as a fully 'reliable'
universal file synchronisation method without developer backing.

The company I am looking after is an architects firm, and the shares in
question hold a number of Autodesk application documents - so my fear is that
their current practise could lead to heinous data loss in the future (their
backup regime, of course, is a failsafe). White papers pro or con would
settle the debate in my head...but they're lacking it seems. It makes it
difficult to give a professional opinion other than one based on experience.

Thanks again for your input & time!

Keith

In article <A8C40828-85FF-4714-AF3E->,
says...
>
> Thank you both, Bill & Dave, for your input, its great to hear of your
> personal experiences.
>
> I think, Dave, you have spotted the same glaring hole in Microsofts usually
> extensive documentation...this is a feature that many users & administrators
> leverage; however its difficult to classify it as a fully 'reliable'
> universal file synchronisation method without developer backing.
>
> The company I am looking after is an architects firm, and the shares in
> question hold a number of Autodesk application documents - so my fear is that
> their current practise could lead to heinous data loss in the future (their
> backup regime, of course, is a failsafe). White papers pro or con would
> settle the debate in my head...but they're lacking it seems. It makes it
> difficult to give a professional opinion other than one based on experience.
>
> Thanks again for your input & time!
>
> Keith

As a side note, working with some 80 companies, not just SBS, we disable
offline on all workstations and most laptops in all companies. There are
just too many issues with Off-Line files that MS has not fixed.

--
You can't trust your best friends, your five senses, only the little
voice inside you that most civilians don't even hear -- Listen to that.
Trust yourself.
(remove 999 for proper email address)

It's interesting that there seem to be people on both sides of the offline
files issue. I have not had any bad experiences with it in at least 8 or 9
years, and we use it regularly on about 30 XP and Vista desktops and
laptops. Yet Leythos and others (with a lot more experience than my 30 PCs)
seem to have found it more trouble than it's worth.

One very satisfactory solution that Lanwench (who dislikes offline to say
the least) gave me years ago is to use Second Copy. I have a couple of
users who have figured out different ways of making that work in place of
offline files, and at least for them, it's been bulletproof.
http://www.secondcopy.com/

It seems like this might be an ideal use for a Terminal Server, although
that might not be overly helpful if the user is really offline, as opposed
to just working remotely.


"Leythos" <> wrote in message
news: om...
> In article <A8C40828-85FF-4714-AF3E->,
> says...
>>
>> Thank you both, Bill & Dave, for your input, its great to hear of your
>> personal experiences.
>>
>> I think, Dave, you have spotted the same glaring hole in Microsofts
>> usually
>> extensive documentation...this is a feature that many users &
>> administrators
>> leverage; however its difficult to classify it as a fully 'reliable'
>> universal file synchronisation method without developer backing.
>>
>> The company I am looking after is an architects firm, and the shares in
>> question hold a number of Autodesk application documents - so my fear is
>> that
>> their current practise could lead to heinous data loss in the future
>> (their
>> backup regime, of course, is a failsafe). White papers pro or con would
>> settle the debate in my head...but they're lacking it seems. It makes it
>> difficult to give a professional opinion other than one based on
>> experience.
>>
>> Thanks again for your input & time!
>>
>> Keith
>
> As a side note, working with some 80 companies, not just SBS, we disable
> offline on all workstations and most laptops in all companies. There are
> just too many issues with Off-Line files that MS has not fixed.
>
> --
> You can't trust your best friends, your five senses, only the little
> voice inside you that most civilians don't even hear -- Listen to that.
> Trust yourself.
> (remove 999 for proper email address)

Leythos wrote:
> In article <A8C40828-85FF-4714-AF3E->,
> says...
>> Thank you both, Bill & Dave, for your input, its great to hear of your
>> personal experiences.
>>
>> I think, Dave, you have spotted the same glaring hole in Microsofts usually
>> extensive documentation...this is a feature that many users & administrators
>> leverage; however its difficult to classify it as a fully 'reliable'
>> universal file synchronisation method without developer backing.
>>
>> The company I am looking after is an architects firm, and the shares in
>> question hold a number of Autodesk application documents - so my fear is that
>> their current practise could lead to heinous data loss in the future (their
>> backup regime, of course, is a failsafe). White papers pro or con would
>> settle the debate in my head...but they're lacking it seems. It makes it
>> difficult to give a professional opinion other than one based on experience.
>>
>> Thanks again for your input & time!
>>
>> Keith
>
> As a side note, working with some 80 companies, not just SBS, we disable
> offline on all workstations and most laptops in all companies. There are
> just too many issues with Off-Line files that MS has not fixed.
>

I've appended a note here rather than elsewhere to indicate agreement
with Leythos, not as a reply to him.

The whole idea of 'sharing' files has fundamental problems not fixable
by MS or anyone else. It's a hangover from DOS, when the only way of
bringing any kind of networking benefit to single-user computers running
non-network-aware applications was to pretend that a networked directory
was another local disc partition. It was better than nothing at all, but
it could never be the method of collaborative working for which many
people still try to use it. As for 'shared' and 'offline' together,
don't even think about it. File synchronisation is something that a
single user does between multiple intermittently-connected environments,
not what potentially different editors of the same file ought to be trying.

Almost no applications produce file formats which can be automatically
merged in any way. The moment that two different modifications are made
to the same original file, those files cannot be reconciled without the
modifications all being documented and manually added to the original.
Even then, there must be adjudication in cases where the modifications
are mutually incompatible. Impractical, to say the least.

Where people *do* have to work on the 'same' document they should:

a) do it sequentially, not simultaneously, with some technological means
to impose discipline, and

b) keep all intermediate versions of the document, preferably being
unable to delete earlier versions, while

c) making edited versions available to others at the earliest possible
opportunity, which strongly suggests 'online' rather than 'offline'.
Internet access is now practical and reasonably-priced for low-ish data
volumes, anywhere that a good mobile phone signal is available.

Microsoft is putting a great deal of effort into supporting
collaborative working, and file sharing is where it started from, not
where it is now. Sharepoint is a simple means of sharing files
sequentially, but with some limitations, and it is not intended for
offline work. Have a look at Groove, and see whether it is likely to be
of use to your client.

But without spending a lot of money, offline files should always be
treated as read-only, with all actual work being carried out
sequentially and online, remotely if necessary. Anything else will one
day, as the OP suggests, end in tears.

--
Joe

Again, thank you all for your input, its very good to get both sides of this
'debate'.

I work for a company which provides IT services to small-mid companies; I
placed this q in the SBS forum, since this particular client is using Offline
Files in that environment.

The issue has arisen as we have noted some concerning user/local
administrator practises which have gone against the grain of advice we have
provided. Now they are experiencing performance and stability issues, we have
been called in to analyse their systems & practises. As we have stepped
through what our professional opinions on habits/practises are in use; we
have come to a sticking point with Offline Files. After migrating them from
NT4->SBS 2003 & prior to leaving them 'to it', we provided advise about
leveraging the various features they now had access to (Group Policys, ISA
Server usage monitoring etc), we advised against utilising Offline Files on
their three main shares; as these were the staple shares every user accessed
frequently throughout the day.

During our analysis, we discovered that up to 5 laptop users are
synchronising these shares at login, screensaver time, and logoff. As their
performance woes are centric around Login/Logoff time, we fingered this
practise as having a potential effect, and again re-iterated our professional
opinion that this is not 'best practise'.

Met with the 'everyone does it - my friend Joe Bloggs who owns this mid
sized company has EVERYONE synchronising ALL shares, with no problems at all'.

Obviously, this is a difficult situation where people who might not be as
qualified as they should be, presume that because everyone does it - its good
practise.

My aim was, and still is, to find a Microsoft document describing either the
full architecture of Offline Files (and the newer Vista/2008/7 Sync) so we
could give informed advice about the official limitations of the system - OR
find a document which specifically states that they do/do not support OF in
such an environment.

Common sense will undoubtedly prevail - I think once I explain the
implications of how they are operating there will na'ery be an
argument...however I was hoping to lean against MS's corporate stance. It
seems, as Joe alluded to, that if MS were to actually form an official
stance, it could impact the takeup of its other collaboration technologies.

I don't really want to end the debate with alternative software if I can
help it (I believe in utilising the suite of services provided with SBS to
their maximum, rather than buying something else because its 'easier' to
configure), however an alternative robust synchronisation package may be
their only certain way to ensure 'best practise' is maintained.

Thanks again to all who have contributed, and any that have anything else to
add.