Ghost Solution Suite

I just finished the 2.5 GSS course and I am wondering this. If Out look is closed on a client machine and I know that there is only one client o that machine, can I simply backup (migrate) the user whole profile, which shold give me everything including the local pst file. Is this correct?

Thanks for your time.

Yes, but this is not a good idea - I assume you are talking about backing up an entire user profile folder.. If you backup the entire folder it will also backup number of system files that could be OS dependent as well as being potentially locked too (like user registry hive). Those files could be incompatible between OS versions - for instance desktop.ini has changed from XP to Vista completely. There are other files that simply copying from one OS to another will not work. Outlook as classic example in terms of the worst registry settings design - every single version of Outlook on every single version of OS differs in storing its settings...

Generally it is better practice to capture individual application settings and user files, eg. $Documents$, $Music$, $Desktop$ etc. Of course you can use paths like $Profile$ (entire user folder) but I wouldnt recommend it for reasons stated above.

The reason I am asking is... we are striping out pst files as a backup to begin an introduction to Exchange. So really the profile goes back to the same OS and same sp level and same version of Mail. Does that make it okay??? I'm not sure. Or how about just the PST file?

If you are migrating to exact same version of everything then just including PST files would be fine. I would recommend a very simple template that migrates just Outlook and nothing else. This way you'll ensure that not only PST comes across but all other accompanied settings as well. If for one reason or another you happen to restore this package to a different version of OS or Outlook it will still work.

Cheers.

Thanks Eugene. I will document this for others as I test it this week and next.