[THIN] Re: Profile redirection
- From: "Joe Shonk" <joe.shonk@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 10:29:27 -0700
You're right; a simple redesign of roaming profiles will go a long ways.
There is a reason why Microsoft doesn't pick and choose which settings to
save and which to not. Basically everything in the profile is important
therefore it all must go. However, for some customers, certain settings are
no longer important therefore we now have the option to pick and choose what
we save and what we don't.
The challenge with and the power of flex is dealing binary data like
StuckRect2 or machine specific user data such as Bags (ShelllNoRoam). I
find it comical in that the customers that are using Flex are the ones that
want it save everything. They want the clock, the background, secondary
passwords, Desktop Icon location saved, etc. The organizations that are
only deploying a few apps via Citrix are the one that don't want to use
flex/mandatory and they are best candidates! Others are deploying 100-500
applications, that quite a bit of work in Flex alone.
For the most part, standard roaming profiles do work (with UPHClean) and to
manage the orphaned profiles you've described I use a script I wrote
(http://www.theshonkproject.com/index.php?option=com_content
<http://www.theshonkproject.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25
&Itemid=1> &task=view&id=25&Itemid=1).
Now, with Application Virtualization, profile management gets really
interesting. One of these days I may get around to writing a how-to flex
with softgrid.
Joe
_____
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of TSguy92 Lan
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2007 7:00 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Profile redirection
Another flex fan here.
As a consultant I would always lean twoards the use of Flex for a client
build just because when it was setup right there's very little TS profile
maintience that needed to be done. If the install was a replacement of
traditional roaming profiles, flex was always an instant hit because login
times generally dropped from minutes to seconds.
All the same, Joe's quite right about the many many admins out there, who
would rather not have to know more about their installation than just
"change user /install".
The flex prof kit is an advanced tool set to be sure, and it's requirements
for use are a solid understanding of your terminal server hosted
applications and what settings within them your staff will need saved
between their sessions. Without knowing what's going on in the background on
a terminal server, or proper training of how to use and setup Flex profiles,
the only way that Flex profiles could be implimented by some admins would be
if it was robust enough to provide some type of Wizard based setup. IE -
"flex discovered the following applications are installed, put a check next
to the applications with settings you need to preserve for users". (I'd
imagine if they go this route with the Flex Kit, they may opt to start
charging for it, maybe even provide support for it ;) ).
/rant on..
Frankly, I think a change to windows profiles as a whole has been a long
time comming, and I hope that MS looks to address the mess someday. The
model for profiles really hasn't changed from the days of NT 4.0, aside from
being migrated out of C:\winnt\profiles to the documents and settings
folders. Management of traditional user profiles with native tools is still
an utter joke, at best you define where they go, and some limited
restrictions of what does and doesn't get saved to them via group policies.
If you don't know any better, and you just do a basic setup with roaming
profiles, you'll find orphaned profiles stuck on servers, and you'll see
your profiles grow drasticly in size over time.
Sure there are ways around these issues, but my point is that they shouldn't
be issues to begin with. Considering that windows profiles (either TS or
desktops) encompass almost all the settings that an end user needs when they
login to a computer, it would seem a logical approach to provide windows
admins with better native toolsets to help them setup user profiles in an
efficient manner, and manage them.
The Flex kit started as just a binary mod of the Office settings and profile
wizard (created by MS) to allow the wizard to save files / folder and reg
strings outside of office specific values. Such a simple change to a tool
made by microsoft, and no one over there in Redmond has sat up yet and
said... "wow that's a great idea for keeping user profile data down to just
the bare minimum required, I wonder if we can build on that and improve how
profiles data is handled for all of our customers across all our
platforms..."
Of course to a certain degree, MS always "plans" for it's solution's
partners to fill in the gaps and offer 3rd party solutions that allow for
options not available with native MS toolsets. So if MS were to ever look to
adjust how profiles are handled in their OS's they may be treading very
close to how solutions like "tricerat's" do it. But MS has been playing the
"features" game with it's solutions providers for years now, so I'm sure
they could make improvments to the format of profiles in general and still
leave room for 3rd party solutions to cover any new gaps in the design.
/rant off..
My $.02
Lan
On Dec 29, 2007 11:23 AM, Berny Stapleton <berny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is where the person implementing needs to ensure that they know
what needs to be changed / setup between logon and logoff so that
nothing gets lost, business testing obviously needs to be included as
well.
It's never a simple straight forward task such as double clicking on
an MSI and knowing that everything is going to go swimmingly, but at
the same time, although there can be some hassles, the benefits are
fantastic. There is a lot of documentation out there for it especially
for the applications that most of the people use. The rest of it's not
that hard to figure out if your mindset is right.
I personally haven't used Tricerat before, I have heard of it as a
product, but haven't seen it implemented.
Most of the time I find that the applications on TS / Citris that
users are using these days are your standard office apps (Lotus Notes,
MS Office), or store their data in databases so that they only have a
reference in an TSNAMES.ORA (Usually stored again on the network) or
alternatively have an ODBC reference.
This usually makes the implementation a lot simpler.
A more junior admin still needs to understand what they are doing,
agreed, if they don't know what they are doing enough, then yes,
something with a support contract with someone to fall back on is a
great idea, but anytime I have rolled out flex profiles, I have been
able to explain enough in a couple of hours to ensure that the people
I leave flex with don't need to call me. Maybe I have just been lucky
enough to deal with admins who have a good idea on what they are doing
and might just be short staffed.
Berny
(And let the out of office avalanche begin....)
On 29/12/2007, Joe Shonk <joe.shonk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I like flex a lot, but it add quite a bit of complexity to an already
> complex solution. Many administrators still do not grasp the basic
> concepts of Terminal Server such as Shadow Keys, Application Compatibility
> Scripts, root drive (Compatibility Drive), usrlogn1.cmd vs usrlogn2.cmd,
> \Windows in the home directory, etc. So given that, it is difficult to
> teach a new administrator the concepts of profiling an application to
> determine which registry keys/file s to import and export when they do not
> have a clear understand of how profiles themselves work.
>
> As SBC becomes more prevalent it is also becoming more a commodity of
which
> companies are having to higher lesser skilled admins as the higher skilled
> ones are already taken.
>
> Anyone can type "change user /install" in a command prompt and install an
> application. And that's the type of thinking many managers have. But
what
> happens when something goes wrong, terribly wrong? Who's has the skill
> sets to troubleshoot and fix it then? What about the "one" LOB app that's
> not working after it was installed because all the users are referencing
the
> same .ini (not in the Windows directory) that also happens to have a
station
> Id embedded in it.
>
> If you can get roaming profiles w/ folder redirection to work on its own
> (and for the most part it does) that's the best route to go. At least if
> something goes wrong, you can call Microsoft for Support.
>
> Flex may be free, but there is no vendor support (not with out a
consulting
> agreement). If a company needs/wants to go down the flex path then it is
> preferable to point them to a third-party product (Tricerat for example)
as
> then you'll have vendor support.
>
> If a company wants flex, does not want to spend money, and has the
necessary
> skill sets then I will suggest login's flex profiles.
>
> Don't get me wrong, Login Consultant's flex profile is an great tool. I
> know a few of the guys there too and they are great too. It's been fun
> having this discussion with them as well.
>
> Joe
>
>
>
> On Dec 29, 2007 2:17 AM, Berny Stapleton < berny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >
> > My vote for profiles (For medium to large installs) has always been
> > flex profiles.
> >
> > If the customer only has two servers, there really isn't a requirement
> > for flex from what I have seen, just decent profile management is
> > enough.
> >
> > If you have multiple Citrix servers, and more than say 50 users, I
> > would start looking at flex profiles for your Citrix servers, and
> > quite possibly your desktops. Roaming profiles in general are the root
> > of all evil IMHO, so flex tends to tidy this one up nicely.
> >
> >
>
http://portal.loginconsultants.nl/forum/index.php?board=16;action=display;th
readid=1144
> >
> > Berny
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 28/12/2007, Medeiros, Jim <Jim.Medeiros@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Correct. If you want to redirect then you are saying that you want to
> put
> > > them some place else (in effect).
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > >
> > >
> > > From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf
> > > Of Evan Mann
> > > Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 11:25 AM
> > > To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Subject: [THIN] Profile redirection
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > This is a pretty newbish question, but I just want to confirm. If you
> are
> > > doing roaming profiles (be it for TS/Citrix or fat clients), you
> wouldn't
> > > want to redirect (via GPO) your My Documents/Desktops/Application Data
> into
> > > the location you are using for roaming profiles, correct? If you did
> that,
> > > then those redirected folders would copy with the roaming profile?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
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