Roaming Profiles

[ElroyCarbon]

I am setting up a new Domain with roughly 150 user profiles. We currently run local profiles on an NT domain. As I read up on roaming profiles I seem to get mixed reviews. I am running CAT 5E with gigabit switches and cards in place. Minasi covers this in his 2003 server administration book. He feels it may be in question for a 10/100 network; however, he didn't say not run it. I am in the preliminary design stages so my knowledge is limited. If I say or ask somthing goofey I apologize. In the meantime any insight would be appreciated. I will be reading up on this in the meantime. Thanks! EC

[ErikD]

Well there are defenite benefits to running profiles off of a server on a domain. The main one is that a user can login to any PC an dhave the same resources and desktop available to them. With local profiles though you are limited to the one PC that has your profile setup, logging into any other PC will get a generic profile.

So the question becomes does anyone have the need to login to various PCs, or is it basically one PC per person? What is your main concern with running roaming profiles, bandiwdth or computer resources on the server? Have you considered folder redirection as an alternative? This just keeps the profile stored or other folders stored on the server rather than always transferring back and forth.

[ElroyCarbon]

I just built new servers. they are running dual 248 Opterons, RAID 10, with 4-8 Gigs od memory. As I stated above we do have the bandwidth too....from what I have gathered anyhow. I do feel it would be advantagous for us as right now we have 30-40 machines with 15+ local profiles. Man it is time consuming to create all of those. I just thought it would be nice to never have to go create these on the fly as we do now. I'll keep digging, bandwidth seems to be my biggest concern right now. I certainly don't think it's worth bottlenecking the network though. Thanks for the points.

[gorilly]

it should work, and not be that hard either.

think about it...

-exchange server, PST is stored on server not local machine
-my documents redirection to a network resource
-mapped drives, can be done using a script in the users logon folder
-they should be saving all docs on server anyway

all you have left is applications and printers....

just load ALL computers with the same apps,

use active directory to install the sam eprinters on all computers using automatci detection... soudns easier than it really is...

i run local profiles on the computer i deal with, the more users you get the more hassle it is to keep track of

[ErikD]

I don't know about installing all printers to all PCs, it really would depend on how many and what type of printers you have. Sometimes giving users too much choice is bad, you will end up with people printing to wrong printers, etc. If you only have a couple of printers than it will work just fine though.

You shouldn't have any problems with banwidth in the netowrk as I see it. The only hits will be when a user logs on or off, other than that things don't really get transfered for profiles. If it is anything like where I am working most users will log off as little as possible anyway.

Honestly I see no real reason not to use roaming profiles or folder redirection in an AD network. Just be aware that they are two different things, and look into which one will work best for your situation. Doing things this way basically forces users to store everything on servers instead of locally.

[AMD Phreak]

I have configured my users machines similar to what you are doing, however on a much smaller scale.


The workstations use mydoc redirection, plus startup scripts for mapped drives and what not. I also use roaming profiles.

However, as we do not use Exchange I have configured each outlook client to store the pst file in a folder on the server that only each specific user can access. This removes the issue of lost pst files if a machine craps out.

I am still fighting with the issue of user ignorance/stupidity/just being dumb in that they dont understand that they NEED to work off the server when it comes to documents and other important items.

[Burnout01]

Are you having to create local profiles on each machine before they log in? With AD you won't have to do that if they do or do not have a roaming profile. When they first log in, the profile is created then. Roaming profiles are nice only when you have alot of people using multiple pc's. Just remember that they add to troubleshooting steps.

[gorilly]

I have configured my users machines similar to what you are doing, however on a much smaller scale.


The workstations use mydoc redirection, plus startup scripts for mapped drives and what not. I also use roaming profiles.

However, as we do not use Exchange I have configured each outlook client to store the pst file in a folder on the server that only each specific user can access. This removes the issue of lost pst files if a machine craps out.

I am still fighting with the issue of user ignorance/stupidity/just being dumb in that they dont understand that they NEED to work off the server when it comes to documents and other important items.


i've always read its a bad idea to store a pst on a server, if you intend to do that you were supposed to use exchange? how does that fair out? is it slow?

when you say about NEEDING to work from the server for important docs?

i tell my users to never store stuff locally as the server is the point of back up... do you mean save a copy locally and use it then update with save as the old copy on the server?

[ErikD]

Very simple solution to the problem of user stupidity/ignorance in regards to storing stuff locally. Just don't give then permission to write to the C: drive, setup enough permissions to use the computer for what they need, and that is all. So maybe you would need to give read/execute to like Program Files, and some temporary folders for IE and such. This is what is done where I am working, so I can go and pull out any users PC and replace it with a freshly imaged generic PC and they will never notice anything missing.

I do the Outlook redirection thing on my home network, mainly just because I have a couple of PCs I use and want to always have access to my emails. I have never noticed any slowdown or anything. Might be a bit different in a major network with lots of users, but it is better solution than having things kept local.

To me the idea of maintaining local profiles in an AD network just doesn't make sense. Even if you pretty much have one user using the same PC, what if that PC craps out? You will need to rebuild the users profile from scratch, or do regular backups at each PC. Keep everything on a server, backup the server regularly, and you shouldn't have any problems with this. Replacing any computer for any reason just becomes a matter of installing any applications and connecting it to the network.

[AMD Phreak]

With the number of users that are on the network its easier for me to relocate the pst file. I have not found it to be slow.