I guess this is a dillema if you are in a small company more than a mid-sized or larger company. There are soo many possible ways to back-up a users files that's it's going to be difficult to manage no matter what.

Most users feel that every document is important. Well, maybe to them they are, but not necessarily to the business. If we don't place restrictions on the users they will keep everything, multiple copies of the same document, and that e-mail from five years ago. Is it all necessary to the operations of the business - I think not.

Having a solid 'desktop policy' with a limited network storage area for the users is a good start. In this policy the users must be educated on how and when to use this storage. (always in my opinion). In a Microsoft house we can make it easy for them and utilize folder re-direction. Send the "My Documents" contents to a network storage area via Group Policy. However, the users never watch the size of thier storage, that's for us to do...a whole other ball of wax.   

Chris,

I agree.  I feel like a larger orginazations backup policies would probably be better than a smaller org's policies.

As one of the users who feels that every document that I have is important it would be hard for me to go through and delete things "i didn't think I needed".  It may be paticular to my job but I often find that I write a document and only reference it once a year, it would be hard to choose things that would have to go.

With disks being very cheap now, I don't see why the files can't be stored on a server (baring speed issues).  The one policy I know my company implements is that no mp3 or movie files can be on the servers, they have scripted a cleanup job to delete these files off our server to save space and enforce the policy.

So yeah it can be done, I just wouldn't be happy! :-)

-Dave

I think you have to come to a compromise of some sort. You can send out emails and information regarding keeping files on your desktop. Next step would be to try to address the topic thru a policy. Then you would need to conduct some training on why we are adopting a policy and what effect it will have on end users. Lastly we must enforce this policy. The key is to be a business enabler not a business preventer. We don't want to do anything that is going to slow down business production, but implement things that make the business more efficient and productive. My recommendation would be to have them write to a network drive.

The topic of desktop backup is a one of those multifaceted topics that IT professinals all have a unique opinion about. I believe that a competent IT professional is a business enabler who skillfully uses technology and policy to protect the end users (sometimes from themselves).

Most of us will agree that keeping sensitive or critical data on a workstation or mobile computer is risky. However with the growing ubiquity of wireless broadband and the rapid adoption of telecommuting it cannot be avoided indefinitely.

IT Professional must work with business managers to determine why users keep such data local and determine the severity of the risk exposure. There are adequate options available to mitigate such challenges. I believe that it would be prudent for desktop backup to become part of the backup strategy which should include policy and proceedures for dealing wih high value data.

I agree with Chris's statement. It really is up to the user to archive their data onto some type of external device. It is the user's responsibility to know and to archive their own files if it is important to them. By locally backing up the data on the external device, the user can help decongest the network traffic and allow more important business traffic to flow.

Tim, I differ with you in your earlier post. What is your definition of "business traffic" in your post? What if the business traffic that you are referring to is been generated by the end users? I believe that end users are as important as any critical network node we tend to protect. If your business type is based on end yours that are directly part of the same network on which your critical systems reside, they should be treated with some preference. Better to backup the end user critical data and make sure that you have it than to allow the end user to store critical business data on the local computer which can be easily compromised or lost.

in an environment where the user's rights and permissions are managed by the server, the client's desktop or home directory should automatically synchronize with the server. that way backup is performed from one place. On the other hand software can be installed on workstations that will either bak the computer up or synchronize data to network path or drive.