I am looking at the possibility of DeepFreezing some Windows Terminal Servers I have as they generally do not have data in the sense of user files on them - those are stored on separate file servers on the network - and are not updated frequently e.g. new programs being added so if there was a problem rebooting would be a quick and simple way to get back to our last known working configuration. If we did have to install a program/update we would simply unfreeeze, install the app and then refreeze. If in fact the installation/update did not require a reboot we wouldn't bother unfreezing as leaving it frozen would give us a simple way of returning the system to square one before the installation should the program/update cause grief. My concerns are the following:
Authentication/credentials
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There's a time-stamp feature with AD whereby if a computer does not log into a domain in some period of time it's credentials will have expired and we wil have to rejoin it to the domain. So for example if we go 6 months before we reboot a Terminal Server, its credentials will have expired. What, if anything can be done about this?
Roaming profiles -
As we have several Terminal Servers and users may wander from one to another - let's say one is down - we have roaming profiles stored on a separate computer and when people log in their last profile is loaded from their if applicable. If they are logging into the same server - which is the case most of the time - they will simply load their last profile from the Terminal Server they're logging into. However if they're logging into a different one or they made quite a few changes last time, the roaming profile will be called into action and I anticipate that there will be additional loading time the first time they log in after a frozen Terminal Server reboot as the profile will be six months out of date. Any workaround for that?
Tie-in to Acronis True Image Echo Server -
We want to as another line of defence use Acronis True Image Echo Server to back up the Deepfrozen Terminal Servers 'live' perhaps on a daily basis. Would the 'Deepfreeze' be part of that image - in other words if we had to restore from the image would the restored system be 'Deepfrozen' right off the bat?
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