[gptalk] Re: Roaming Profiles at remote site

  • From: "Omar Droubi" <omar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <gptalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 10:44:32 -0700

Mike,
 
Roaming profiles are always a pain to manage for some of the issues you noted 
in your message- plus several other problems that users encounter like IE temp 
folder size which is easily managed through GPO.
 
Here are a few suggestions- not gpo related:
 
option 1. Move to a terminal server / workstation solution to support the 50 
users. (on the workstation install only the line of business applications that 
are not certified to run on a terminal server)(on the TS server install 
everything else and have your users use the TS as their primary desktop 
environment.)
 
 
option 2. Upgrade your servers in the home and remote site to Windows server 
2003 R2 and make use of the new distributed file system replication features.
 
My guess is that your users do not work from more than 1 office in a single 
day- so the roaming profile folders can be replicated once or twice a day.
 
The My docs folder redirection data shares  - can be replicated more frequently 
as the DFS in R2 replicates only changes after the initial sync- which you can 
prestage.
 
The only issues with option 2 is the server upgrade or licenses as well as the 
storage requirements in each office but it works pretty darn good.
 
option 3. There are many network devices available now that can compress data 
in real time between office (mostly called WAFS devices- wide area file 
service). You would have to implement these in the home and each remote office 
and this solution also works great but very expensive.Here is one of the 
vendors that have a good product as an example: www.riverbed.com
 
 
Simply turning off roaming profiles at the remote sites breaks the requirements 
that you probably started using roaming profile for anyway. but without turning 
it off I bet you have some users that do not wait for the profile to get loaded 
all the way back to the home server and you may encounter data loss- but that 
is another story.
 
Also- Redirecting the desktop across a WAN link - many users will notice the 
objects on the desktop to blink and have some slow desktop response.
 
hope this helps some.
 
Omar

________________________________

From: gptalk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of mike kline
Sent: Mon 5/7/2007 7:03 AM
To: gptalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [gptalk] Roaming Profiles at remote site



We are using roaming profiles for about 50 users that use different machines 
routinely and everything works fine on our local LAN with a very fast pipe. 

 

These users will occasionally go to a remote site where the connection sucks.  
Even a small 10 MB profile can cause unacceptable login times (> 10 minutes) 

 

What I'm thinking of doing is this.

 

1.      Prevent roaming profiles at the remote site by setting the "only allow 
local profiles" setting via   a GPO 
2.      Since they will still want access to data back at the home office I 
will redirect their my documents folder to a file server 
3.      Use the "Do not automatically make redirected folders available 
offline" setting.    I don't want the redirected files to be pinned and slow 
down their login.  The connection at the remote site is slow but seems to be 
reliable, I'm not worried about them working offline. 
4.      Use "Allow processing across a slow network connection" for folder 
redirection 

 

I was also thinking about redirecting their desktop since a lot of them seem to 
save to their desktop too.   I'm not going to redirect application data

 

I think this should still allow them to use roaming profiles at the home office 
like normal and it should solve the problem at the remote site.   

 

What do you all think?  Is this an OK plan or would you do something different?

 

 

Thanks 

 

Mike

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