Adding a Printer with Group Policy Preferences

You can add printers using Group Policy Preferences which is new in Server 2008 provided you have the Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions installed on the client machines.

Group Policy Preferences are added though the normal Group policy Console.



You can Create, Replace, Update, Delete as required. You can also set as the default printer.

 

If more granular control is required click the Common Tab.
You can apply the setting only once and use the Targeting Editor to get really specific

 

Migrating Data between Servers

Robocopy is a good option when migrating data to another server.

It has a number of switches that can preserve attributes, timestamps, security, owner info, auditing info, etc...
Also it can include, exclude, add attributes, rerun and much more.

For a full list of operations type robocopy /? at the command prompt.

I recently migrated data to a new server using the following...
robocopy source destination /E /DCOPY:T /PURGE /COPYALL /TEE /LOG+:c:\robocopylog.txt

/E :: copy subdirectories, including Empty ones.
/DCOPY:T :: COPY Directory Timestamps.
/PURGE :: delete dest files/dirs that no longer exist in source.
/COPYALL :: COPY ALL file info (Data, Attributes, Timestamp, Security, Owner, Auditing).
/TEE :: output to console window, as well as the log file.
/LOG+:file :: output status to LOG file (append to existing log).

The method I used was to copy the data over and checked that everything was OK.
I then disconnected the users on the source, reran the command, and pointed the users to the new location.

Using this method the second run only copied over the changes (and removed anything that was no longer there) so took alot less time than the first run.

How to reclaim Disk Space using Vmware Thin provisioning

If your drive is thick provisioned
You will need to use either Vmware Tools, Shrink or sdelete

 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443) to zero out unused disk space.

Vmware tools Shrink

 

Sdelete

 

Then migrate to a new datastore.

Note: there is currently an issue where you will need to migrate to a new datastore with different block size.

If your drive is already thin provisioned

Vmware Tools Shrink isn’t available.

You will need to use sdelete to zero out disk then migrate to new datastore.

Warning: using sdelete will expand the thin provisioned disk to it’s full provisioned size so make sure you have enough space on the datastore free.

Note: there is currently an issue where you will need to migrate to a new datastore with different block size.