by MS
Working Offline
You are considered to be working offline whenever your computer is not connected to the local area network. When working offline, you can work with network files in the same way that you do when you are connected to the network. You have the same permissions when working offline. Therefore, if you only have read access to a file when you're connected to the network, then when you're working offline, you'll still only be able to read and not modify the file. You know you are working offline when you see a red X over Network Drives or in the notification area of the taskbar.
You can also specify that you want to work offline. To work with offline files stored on your computer rather than on the network, follow these steps:
In Windows Explorer, open the network folder that contains the files you want to work with offline and then click Work Offline on the toolbar.
When you are finished working offline and want to begin working online again, click Work Online on the toolbar. This will sync any changes you've made offline with the files on the network.
Managing Offline File Synchronization
Sync Center, shown in Figure 11-4, simplifies the management of cached offline files and folders. In Sync Center, a sync partnership is established for every shared folder that has locally cached contents. Each sync partnership established has a set of properties that enables you to control whether and how syncing occurs.
Figure 11-4: Use Sync Center to view and manage synchronization.
Viewing Current Sync Partnerships
You can view current sync partnerships in Sync Center by following these steps:
Click Start, Control Panel. In Control Panel, click Network And Internet.
On the Network And Internet page, click Sync Center.
In Sync Center, currently defined sync partnerships are listed according to name, status, progress, conflict count, error count, and category.
Once you've accessed Sync Center, you can easily check for synchronization problems, start or stop syncing, and configure syncing.
Syncing Offline Files Manually
You can manually start syncing of offline files using either of the following techniques:
Sync all offline files and folders When multiple sync partnerships have been established, you can sync all offline files and folders by opening Sync Center and then clicking Sync All. Sync All is only available when no individual sync partnerships are selected.
Sync a specific network share When you want to sync the offline files and folders for a particular shared network folder, you can sync a specific network share by opening Sync Center, clicking the sync partnership that you want to work with, and then clicking Sync.
Syncing Offline Files Automatically
Group Policy settings control exactly how offline file syncing works. Generally, offline files are automatically synchronized when a user reconnects to the network after being disconnected from the network or electing to work offline. You can also configure synchronization so that it occurs at one of the following times:
At a specific scheduled time
When the user logs on
When the computer is idle
When the user locks or unlocks Windows
Scheduling Syncing You can create and manage scheduled synchronization by following these steps:
In Sync Center, click the sync partnership you want to work with and then click Schedule.
If you've previously scheduled synchronization for this resource, you can:
q Create a new schedule Click Create A New Sync Schedule and then follow steps 3–7.
q View or edit an existing schedule Click View Or Edit An Existing Sync Schedule, click the schedule to change, click Next, and then follow steps 3–7.
q Delete an existing schedule Click Delete An Existing Sync Schedule, click the schedule to delete, and then click Delete. Click OK and then skip the remaining steps.
Review the items you are configuring and clear the check boxes for any items you don't want to configure. Then click Next. Click At A Scheduled Time.
The Start On and At options are configured so scheduled syncing will start immediately. (See Figure 11-5.) If you want to start scheduled syncing on a different date and time, use the options provided to change the start date and time. You can use the left and right arrow keys to navigate the fields and the up and down arrows to change the values.
Figure 11-5: Create a sync schedule.
The Repeat Every option sets the sync interval. The default repeat interval is once every day. You can set the repeat interval to a value in minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months. Because only changes are synced, you might want to sync more frequently than you would with Windows XP. For example, with important files, you might want to sync every three to four hours.
Click Next.
Type a descriptive name for the scheduled sync and then click Save Schedule.
Syncing on an Event or Action You can create and manage synchronization based on events or actions by following these steps:
In Sync Center, click the sync partnership you want to work with and then click Schedule.
If you've previously scheduled synchronization for this resource, you can:
q Create a new schedule Click Create A New Sync Schedule and then follow steps 3–6.
q View or edit an existing schedule Click View Or Edit An Existing Sync Schedule, click the schedule to change, click Next, and then follow steps 3–6.
q Delete an existing schedule Click Delete An Existing Sync Schedule, click the schedule to delete, and then click Delete. Click OK and then skip the remaining steps.
Review the items you are configuring, clear the check boxes for any items you don't want to configure, and then click Next. Click On An Event Or Action.
As shown in Figure 11-6, use the check boxes provided to specify the events and actions that start automatic syncing.
Figure 11-6: Sync based on events and actions.
Click Next.
Type a descriptive name for the scheduled sync and then click Save Schedule.
Determining Synchronization Details, Errors, and Warnings
Synchronization results provide details, errors, and warnings. To view current sync results, open Sync Center and click View Sync Results under Tasks. You can use the sync details to determine when syncing was started, stopped, or completed. You can use errors and warnings to determine whether there are problems with the synchronization configuration.
Resolving Synchronization Conflicts
Synchronization conflicts occur if a user makes changes to a file offline that is updated online by another user. You can view and resolve synchronization conflicts by following these steps:
In Sync Center, click View Sync Conflicts under Tasks.
Any existing conflicts are listed in the main pane, as shown in Figure 11-7.
Figure 11-7: Conflicts are listed according to document name, file type, time, partnership, and conflict type.
To display the Resolve Conflict dialog box, shown in Figure 11-8, double-click a conflict you want to resolve.
Figure 11-8: Use the Resolve Conflict dialog box to resolve synchronization conflicts.
You can now:
q Click the version you want to keep. If you want to keep the local version and overwrite the network version, click the version listed as On This Computer. If you want to keep the network version and overwrite the local version, click the version listed as being on the shared network location.
q Click Keep Both Versions to write the local version to the shared network location with a new file name. Generally, the new file name will be the same as the old file name, but with a numeric suffix, indicating the version increment. If you are at all unsure about which version of a file to keep, keep both versions and then compare the two versions carefully for changes that should either be merged or discarded.
Making Offline Files Unavailable
As an administrator, you can specify files that should not be available for offline use. Typically, you'll
do this when a shared folder contains specific files that users shouldn't manipulate. To make a file unavailable for offline use, you should set a specific exclusion policy as described in Chapter 8 in the "Administratively Controlling Offline Files and Subfolders" section.
In the Computer Management console, you make a shared folder unavailable for offline use by completing these steps:
Right-click Computer Management in the console tree and then select Connect To Another Computer. Use the Select Computer dialog box to choose the computer you want to work with.
In the console tree, expand System Tools and Shared Folders and then select Shares. Current shared folders are displayed in the details pane.
Double-click the share you want to configure for offline use. On the General tab, click Offline Settings.
In the Offline Settings dialog box, select Files Or Programs From The Share Will Not Be Available Offline.
Click OK.
Configuring Disk Quotas
The following sections discuss how to use and manage disk quotas. Disk quotas enable you to manage disk space usage, and they are configured on a per volume basis. Only NTFS file system (NTFS) volumes can have quotas, so you can't create them for file allocation table (FAT16 or FAT32) volumes. The first step in configuring quotas is to enable disk quota policies as described in Chapter 8 in the "Configuring Disk Quota Policies" section. Once you configure the necessary policies, you can set up quotas for specific volumes on a system.
Using Disk Quotas
Administrators use disk quotas to manage disk space usage for critical volumes, such as those that provide corporate or user data shares. When you enable disk quotas, you set a disk quota limit and a disk quota warning. The disk quota limit sets the maximum space usage (which prevents users from writing additional information to a volume), logs events regarding the user exceeding the limit, or both. You use the disk quota warning to warn users and to log warning events when users approach their disk quota limits.
Real World
Although most administrators configure quotas that are enforced, you can set disk quotas that are not enforced. You might wonder why you would do this. Sometimes you might want to track disk space usage on a per user basis and know when users have exceeded some predefined limit. Instead of denying the users additional disk space, however, you can track the overage by recording an event in the application log.
Disk quotas apply only to end users, not to administrators. Administrators can't be denied disk space even if they exceed enforced disk quota limits. Disk quota limits and warnings can be set in kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), terabytes (TB), petabytes (PB), and exabytes (EB). In a typical environment, you'll restrict disk space usage in megabytes or gigabytes. For example, on a corporate data share that is used by multiple users in a department, you might want to limit disk space usage to 20 to 100 GB. For a user data share, you might want to set the level much lower, such as 5 to 20 GB, restricting the user from creating large amounts of personal data. Often you'll set the disk quota warning as a percentage of the disk quota limit. For example, you could set the warning at 90 to 95 percent of the disk quota limit.
Because disk quotas are tracked on a per volume, per user basis, disk space used by one user does not affect the disk quotas for other users. Thus, if one user exceeds his limit, any restrictions applied to this user don't apply to other users. For example, if a user exceeds a 5 GB disk quota limit and the volume is configured to prevent writing over the limit, the user can no longer write data to the volume. However, he can remove files and folders from the volume to free up disk space. The user could also move files and folders to a compressed area on the volume, which can free up space, or the user could elect to compress the files. Moving files to a different location on the volume doesn't affect the quota restriction. The amount of file space is the same unless the user is moving uncompressed files and folders to a folder with compression. In any case, the restriction on a single user does not affect other users' ability to write to the volume (as long as the volume has free space).
You can enable disk quotas on local volumes and on remote volumes. To manage disk quotas on local volumes, you work with the local disk itself. To manage disk quotas on remote volumes, you must share the root directory for the volume and then set the disk quota on the volume. Keep in mind that when you enable disk quotas on a local volume, operating system and application program files are not included in the volume usage for the user who installed those files. Generally, system files are owned by Trusted Installer and program files are owned by the system account.
Only members of the domain administrators group or the local system administrators group can configure disk quotas. Through local group policy, you can enable disk quotas for an individual computer. Through site, domain, or organizational unit policies, you can enable disk quotas for groups of users and computers. Keeping track of disk quotas does cause some overhead on computers, which is a function of the number of disk quotas being enforced, the total size of volumes and their data, and the number of users to which the disk quotas apply.
Although it appears that disk quotas are tracked per user, behind the scenes, Windows Vista manages disk quotas according to security identifiers (SIDs). Because disk quotas are tracked by SIDs, you can safely modify user names without affecting the disk quota configuration. Tracking by SIDs causes some additional overhead when viewing disk quota statistics for users because Windows Vista must correlate SIDs to user account names so that the account names can be displayed in dialog boxes. This means contacting the local user manager or the Microsoft Active Directory directory service domain controller as necessary. Once names are looked up, they are cached to a local file so that they are available immediately the next time they are needed. The query cache is infrequently updated, so if you notice a discrepancy between what is displayed and what is configured, you'll need to refresh the information. Usually, this means selecting Refresh or pressing F5 in the current window.
Enabling Disk Quotas on NTFS Volumes
Disk quotas are set on a per volume basis, and only NTFS volumes can have disk quotas. Disk quotas must first be configured through Group Policy as discussed in Chapter 9. Once the appropriate group policies are configured, you can use the Computer Management console to set disk quotas for local and remote volumes.
To enable disk quotas on an NTFS volume, follow these steps:
Start Computer Management. You are connected to the local computer by default. If you want to configure disk quotas on a remote computer, right-click Computer Management in the console tree and then select Connect To Another Computer. In the Select Computer dialog box, select the computer you want to work with.
In the console tree, expand Storage and then select Disk Management. The volumes configured on the selected computer are displayed in the details pane.
Using the Volume List or Graphical view, right-click the volume you want to work with and then select Properties.
Click the Quota tab, shown in Figure 11-9, and then select the Enable Quota Management check box.
Figure 11-9: Once you enable quota management, you can configure a quota limit and quota warning for all users.
To set a default disk quota limit for all users, select Limit Disk Space To and then use the fields provided to set a limit in KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, or EB. Next use the Set Warning Level To fields to set the default warning limit. You'll usually want the disk quota warning limit to be 90 to 95 percent of the disk quota limit.
Tip
Although the default quota limit and warning apply to all users, you can use the Quota Entries dialog box to configure different levels for individual users. If you create many unique quota entries and don't want to re-create them on a volume with similar characteristics and usage, you can export the quota entries and import them on a different volume.
To enforce the disk quota limit and prevent users from going over the limit, select the Deny Disk Space To Users Exceeding Quota Limit check box.
Keep in mind that this creates an actual physical limitation for users, but not for administrators.
To configure logging when users exceed a warning limit or the quota limit, use the Log Event check boxes.
If the quota system isn't currently enabled, you'll see a prompt asking you to enable the quota system. Click OK to allow Windows Vista to rescan the volume and update disk usage statistics. Actions can be taken against users that exceed the current limit or warning levels, which can include preventing additional writing to the volume, notifying users the next time they access the volume, and logging applicable events in the application log.
Viewing Disk Quota Entries
Disk space usage is tracked on a per user basis. When disk quotas are enabled, each user storing data on a volume has an entry in the disk quota file. This entry is updated periodically to show the current disk space used, the applicable quota limit, the applicable warning level, and the percentage of allowable space being used. As an administrator, you can modify disk quota entries to set different limits and warning levels for particular users. You can also create disk quota entries for users who have not yet saved data on a volume. By creating entries, you ensure that when a user does make use of a volume, she has an appropriate limit and warning level.
To view the current disk quota entries for a volume, follow these steps:
Start Computer Management. You are connected to the local computer by default. If you want to view disk quotas on a remote computer, right-click Computer Management in the console tree and then select Connect To Another Computer. In the Select Computer dialog box, select the computer you want to work with.
In the console tree, expand Storage and then select Disk Management. The volumes configured on the selected computer are displayed in the details pane.
Using the Volume List or Graphical view, right-click the volume you want to work with and then select Properties.
On the Quota tab, click Quota Entries. This displays the Quota Entries dialog box, shown in Figure 11-10. As you can see from the figure, each quota entry is listed according to a status. The status is meant to quickly depict whether a user has gone over her limit. A status of OK means the user is working within the quota boundaries. Any other status usually means the user has reached the warning level or the quota limit.
