This article guides you how to assign Home Folder to Active Directory users. Home Folder also called as Network folder in some documents. Home Folder make it easy administrator task by providing users to backup their files some times entire user’s files are residing on single location or NAS. The most useful feature I have found is that home folder can roam to any computer within the domain where user is log in. Here I would like to discuss how to setup home folder to Active Directory user and assign disk quota per user.

Environment :- This is done at Windows Server 2012 R2

So let’s look at how to setup Home Folder per user. Tutorial is divided into two part to make it more clear to understand the process.

[01] Configure Disk quota

1) “File Server Resource Manager” should be installed on Windows server. If it is doesn’t

i) open Server Manager
ii) Go to “Add roles and features”
iii) Inside “Add Roles and Features Wizard” you have to NEXT each until reach “Server Roles” , I skip those steps here but remember you need to set some values there.

iv) In “Server Roles” expand “File and Storage Services“, again expand “File and iSCI Services“, then tick “File Server Resource Manager” and click “next” to install.

2) configure disk quota for user network folder

i) Create shared folder ex:- D:\HOME
ii) Open “File Server Resource Manager”
iii) Expand “Quota Management” , you can configure “Quota Templates” if you wish or you can use existing template like here I did.
iv ) Click on “Quotas” –> “Create Quotas” from right hand side.
v) On then “Create Quota” window, browse and set Quota Path, select “Auto apply template and create quotas on existing and new sub folders” radio button, and make sure to select previously configured template from the drop down menu (200 MB Limit Reports to User – existing template).

[02] Configure Home folder / Network Folder

Open “HOME” folder properties

1) Set folder sharing

i) Click on “Share” button and activate folder sharing
Find shared folder path ex:- “\\YOUR-SERVER\home\”

2) Disable inheritance

i) select “security” tab and then open “Advance Security”
ii) Please make sure inheritance is disabled like below.

3) Attach Network folder to Active directory user

i) Open “Active Directory Users and Computers”
ii) Right click on user and open “properties” , then browse “profile” and set following Network path there.

“\\YOUR-SERVER\home\%username%”

iii) Re-login to machine and Home folder should be appeared like below