No more hiding in the server room
Dealing with 'Orphaned data' - any best practices out there?
Hi All,
Orphaned data = files / folders which their owner no longer exist in the organization.
I was wondering how do people handle orphaned data in their environment?
Are you using any commercial products? home-grown scripts?
I ran into a handy one today on http://www.techcolumnist.com/wp/2009/07/07/script-check-for-orphane...
Orphaned data = files / folders which their owner no longer exist in the organization.
I was wondering how do people handle orphaned data in their environment?
Are you using any commercial products? home-grown scripts?
I ran into a handy one today on http://www.techcolumnist.com/wp/2009/07/07/script-check-for-orphane...
Views: 15
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McGrath on -
At my site, we back up the home directory for long term storage.
I work for a Pharmaceutical corp, so our retention policies are on the longer side (7 years mostly,15 years in some cases).
It really depends on the sensitivity of the of data being stored, and whether it collaborative data used by group(s).
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Permalink Reply by Chris Wooton on -
I hadn't even considered an automatic method for discovery like the script you linked to employs. As part of my termination processes, I archive the files to DVD and shove them in the safe. I put an expiration date on the bundle, and theoretically at some point I'll go through and purge old ones. Theoretically.
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Permalink Reply by Tsahy Shapsa on -
Chris,
How do you find these files/ folders? Are you looking at (terminated) employee home directory? what about other areas on the network that employee has files & is the owner?
Also, what do you do with ACEs to folders / files that used to have that employee username and would now show-up as an SID? (not being able to resolve a username to an SID slows down ACL enumeration)
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Permalink Reply by Chris Wooton on
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We are only interested in the user's home directory. Anything else they created and placed in one of the shared folders is likely still in use or relevant to the remaining users.I make a habit of not directly assigning users access to folders (with the exception of home folders), but instead use groups for everything. There are a number of groups with a single individual, but it still eliminated the SID issue. This way, when a replacement employee comes in, I can just assign them to the same groups, and they are in.
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Permalink Reply by Tsahy Shapsa on
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Neil,
What tool are you using to 'skim off unopened files older than 12 months'? .
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