Isilon variable expansion is a feature to dynamically create SMB shares for windows users home directories.

To understand this feature you should first understand how windows user home directory works.

With Windows user home directory we need to create an SMB share with personalized permissions and security settings for each individual user.

In a small organization this process can be done manually as number of users and shares are manageable, however in an enterprise size organization this is can be considered a long and confusing process as the number of users and shares are in the thousands.

For example if an organization contains 40,000 employees, instead of the IT department creating 40,000 user SMB shares with unique personalized permissions, Isilon can manage all this process dynamically with no visible shares.

To implement variable expansion we need to do two modification one in Isilon Cluster and the other in Active Directory environment:

  1. Change in Isilon Share settings
  2. Change in Windows Active Directory Users and computers settings

 

  • Changes in the Isilon Share settings:

Navigate to Isilon share that we needs Variable Expansion enabled on it and change the following:

  • Add %U at the end of the shared directory
    Note: “%U” represent the user account in this case.
  • If needed enable the automatic directory creation for new users when logging to that share
  • Changes in the Windows Active Directory Users and Computers:

Navigate to Active Directory users and Computers and select the user you want to move to Isilon Variable Expansion share.

Navigate to the users properties and select “Profile” tab

  • Add the Isilon link and the users main share but not the users name
    Example: \\isilon\users

As you can see above we did not specify any client account, but we just pointed the client profile to the main users home share and the Isilon cluster will take care of the user account redirecting, this will make the AD management easier as now we can change all users account to the same settings.

Below is how the above example is going to be presented from the client machine:

On the backend “in the Isilon cluster” a new directory will be created automatically called “testuser” which is the account we are using in this example and the path will be \\isilon\users\testuser