Best practise to keep profiles backed up..
Windows server 2008
Windows 7 Clients / Windows XP Pro clients
What is the best practice to keep some sort of backup on the user profiles without having to buy a backup software to actually do the job? (i do back up the server but don't have budget for anything above that)
- Roaming profiles (so that i can backup the roaming profiles off the server)?
- Make their my documents a server folder instead (so that the filder physically resides on the server)
- Find some freeware folder synch program and keep a synced folder on the server.
How do you guys do it, and what is the best practice?
Windows 7 Clients / Windows XP Pro clients
What is the best practice to keep some sort of backup on the user profiles without having to buy a backup software to actually do the job? (i do back up the server but don't have budget for anything above that)
- Roaming profiles (so that i can backup the roaming profiles off the server)?
- Make their my documents a server folder instead (so that the filder physically resides on the server)
- Find some freeware folder synch program and keep a synced folder on the server.
How do you guys do it, and what is the best practice?
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In those cases, I would train the users to use an external hard drive and backup their documents.
The simpelest way is to raid your drives that the profiles are stored on. Granted these are not removable, but with raid 1, you autmatically create a mirrored backup.
Another thing you could do is turn on Shadow Copy on the drive wher ethe profiles are stored. You then have a role back copy of your raided drives.
Another thing you could do is turn on Shadow Copy on the drive wher ethe profiles are stored. You then have a role back copy of your raided drives.
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@Eskimo - I assume you mean roaming profiles?
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@dstewartjr - not feasible in an organization of any size over a handful of users. Also, "train your users"?
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Yes Roaming Profiles
I don't like roaming profiles, you need to be careful and set them up right. At my workplace we don't have folder redirection on "My Documents" so our roaming profile users can have very slow logon/off times. I can't change this cos I am not high up enough in the food chain. One user saved an Office 2007 installer file to her desktop and then wondered why it took so long to log on to PCs! It's cos she was copying 500 MBs everytime she logged on to a different PC since downloading that file! Other issues we run into are any errors in user's profiles get propogated back to the server and then on to any other PC they touch. Then to fix any issues we need to fix the PC they are on, fix the server profile and then find out which PCs they have touched and fix all of those! Messy.
Despite what I have just said, I guess I it would be easiest to use roaming profiles to backup your user's profiles. But be aware of the pitfalls and ensure you DO use folder redirection for their "My Documents" folders provided they are always on the network.
Despite what I have just said, I guess I it would be easiest to use roaming profiles to backup your user's profiles. But be aware of the pitfalls and ensure you DO use folder redirection for their "My Documents" folders provided they are always on the network.
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@andrewrnz - what happens if they have re-direct and they take the laptop out? I could have sworn that there was some feature that made a local copy on your computer and then synced it... what was that feature called?
About the roaming users - does it really copy EVERYTHING every single time? Surely there must be some sort of incremental solution to that?
About the roaming users - does it really copy EVERYTHING every single time? Surely there must be some sort of incremental solution to that?
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indeed...
You can also exclude folders from being copied over
http://blogs.sepago.de/helge/2008/11/17/how-to-reduce-the-size-of-roaming-profiles/
http://blogs.sepago.de/helge/2008/11/17/how-to-reduce-the-size-of-roaming-profiles/
Yes, I am sure it is incremental, I don't think everything gets copied every time. If you are referring to my example of the user saving a 500 MB file, I was saying that this file gets copied on every new PC that she logs into since the file was saved on the original PC. Our users log on all over the place and experience massive delays at logon and logoff because of examples like I gave with the 500 MB file.
No, it is not a incremental process. It is a copy/replace process. All the files are copied from the server to workstation during logon and back to the server at logoff
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Lot's of good options, but nothing concrete...
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