SharePoint Document Library Sync to DFS?
Posted by wraith8015@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 6 comments
My organization uses SharePoint document libraries for file storage, and it works really well. We've trained users to go into SharePoint and click the Sync button when they want a particular library to show up in File Explorer, because the rollout via GPO has been very hit or miss. There are super long delays, some users don't log into OneDrive correctly, etc.
The current system isn't terrible, but I had a thought today that maybe we could use a service account to sync down the shares to a DFS server share on our on-prem equipment (with Keep Offline checked), and then have that share provisioned via GPO for users in the office.
This way we would still have local file access during an internet outage, users would all have stable drive mappings, and remote and traveling users would still have access the traditional way.
Has anyone ever done this before? It sounds like the worst possible thing to do, but I'm having trouble coming up with many reasons not to do it. If anyone has a "holy hell, don't do this" reason, I'd love to talk myself out of it.
techoatmeal@reddit
Did this for a client and it was pretty bad with versioning. They ended up basically abandoning SharePoint and using IT as emergency access/guest access as a last resort.
wraith8015@reddit (OP)
Versioning didn't even cross my mind. Wouldn't a change to the local file sync up to SharePoint as a change and create a new version in the cloud? Historic versions shouldn't come back down to the drive, since they wouldn't be directly listed as a file under the sync folder...
Am I misunderstanding something about how that works?
techoatmeal@reddit
We mostly had done it wrong but we synced the root of the SP drive and then shared those folders out to users on the local network.
wraith8015@reddit (OP)
It sounds like even if that was done "correctly", it might result in the same issue. I don't think you necessarily deployed that wrong.
Thanks, I don't really want to go down that route lol. I'll do some light testing just to play around with it a bit more, but I don't think production is the way to go with this idea.
You probably just saved me a headache
bbqwatermelon@reddit
This will likely not work because what OneDrive pulls down is in the accounts context. If you attempt to open the files using another account, you may run into the error "cloud provider not running." You would have better luck using a third party drive mapper and using FFS to DFS or a scheduled copy.
wraith8015@reddit (OP)
Very interesting, thanks for the answer. That's something to research and think about. I wouldn't have thought OneDrive would put specific permissions for the files themselves (I assumed they would inherit the folder permissions), but that does make some sense.