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Roaming Profiles
Afternoon,
Our current environment uses redirected folders for all our users and so we can make it easier for people to hot desk/log in from home using a VDI we want to switch to roaming profiles, we are however keen to avoid the long login times that are likely when it syncs (Our company's brass are quite particular about an 'open IT' set up - there are very little restrictions on our PC's/firewalls so they can browse facebook etc and also plug smart phones into charge - this inevitably results in people syncing photos)
What I'm currently looking into is having a split between folder redirects (photos and anything else likely to use a lot of space) and then having all their settings and documents on a roaming profile - this should sort most of the problems however, I'm unsure of any ways to pull the info down from the file server which houses their current redirected data and place it onto their local machines to then be synced as a roaming profile (other than going round each and every PC and copying it manually which will simply take too long)
Would anyone have any suggestions on how we could make this work?
Thanks.
Our current environment uses redirected folders for all our users and so we can make it easier for people to hot desk/log in from home using a VDI we want to switch to roaming profiles, we are however keen to avoid the long login times that are likely when it syncs (Our company's brass are quite particular about an 'open IT' set up - there are very little restrictions on our PC's/firewalls so they can browse facebook etc and also plug smart phones into charge - this inevitably results in people syncing photos)
What I'm currently looking into is having a split between folder redirects (photos and anything else likely to use a lot of space) and then having all their settings and documents on a roaming profile - this should sort most of the problems however, I'm unsure of any ways to pull the info down from the file server which houses their current redirected data and place it onto their local machines to then be synced as a roaming profile (other than going round each and every PC and copying it manually which will simply take too long)
Would anyone have any suggestions on how we could make this work?
Thanks.
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I suppose to answer his question accurately, it'd be helpful to know what current issues you feel you have that roaming profiles would solve. Why are you considering them over your current solution/setup?
I've often set up customers to have roaming profiles for their local settings, and a network home directory for documents.
One risk is the danger of profile corruption. I would have to restore a roaming profile every few months.
Another risk is that XP/2003 have one profile format and 2008/WinVista/Win7/Win8 have another profile format. If you have a mixed environment, then you may want to do some additional testing.
As always, the CIFS protocol is latency bound, so any latency during file copies will absolutely kill performance.
One risk is the danger of profile corruption. I would have to restore a roaming profile every few months.
Another risk is that XP/2003 have one profile format and 2008/WinVista/Win7/Win8 have another profile format. If you have a mixed environment, then you may want to do some additional testing.
As always, the CIFS protocol is latency bound, so any latency during file copies will absolutely kill performance.
When you first enable roaming profiles, the system will use a local profile if no roaming profile has yet been saved.
Then when the user logs off, it copies the roaming profile to the server. It isn't necessary to touch each client in order to copy the roaming profile to the server.
Then when the user logs off, it copies the roaming profile to the server. It isn't necessary to touch each client in order to copy the roaming profile to the server.
what are you redirecting at the moment? we often do reedirection for large share of the files and often dont roam the appdata section which can run into many 100Ms of Mb or more. that way the user gets their settings transferred to new machine, other files follow them from redirect but n huge profiles. not all data follows them then though of course.
one thing that doesnt is the quick launch buttons at the bottom -worked the details are in registry but lnk files in appdata so the icons roam but they dont work unless you copy lnk files on logoff/logon...
you are going to have some manual if you want to move to roaming, im not sure if windows will create a fresh blank profile at login once set , or just write it on logout - I always either setup roaming to start with, or not at all.
one thing that doesnt is the quick launch buttons at the bottom -worked the details are in registry but lnk files in appdata so the icons roam but they dont work unless you copy lnk files on logoff/logon...
you are going to have some manual if you want to move to roaming, im not sure if windows will create a fresh blank profile at login once set , or just write it on logout - I always either setup roaming to start with, or not at all.
Why are switching from folder redirection to roaming profile its paoin see this downsides of roaming profile:http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/681d221d-9f92-4d42-b07a-c3a3b3dd699e/incremental-roaming-profile?forum=winserverDS
However if you still want to switch remoev the folder redirection policy so that the profile is redireted to local path and then once done create raoming profile policy for usres.http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/de21d8d3-4465-4228-bf7e-d50e11e6747c/stopping-folder-redirection-return-to-local?forum=winserverGP
However if you still want to switch remoev the folder redirection policy so that the profile is redireted to local path and then once done create raoming profile policy for usres.http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/de21d8d3-4465-4228-bf7e-d50e11e6747c/stopping-folder-redirection-return-to-local?forum=winserverGP
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