Roaming Profiles - Advice Please!

[rjones]

Hi,

At the moment I have folder re-direction setup for My Docs and wanting to setup roaming profiles.
I have attempted to set them up and they work but...

What would you recommend?!

Set the profile to point at \\server\users directory\user and the home directory \\server\users directory\user\My Documents?? or the same as profile address.

I have noticed the within each profile there are system files (which are hidden) and not sure if it's wise to allow pupils / staff to see that directory?

What do you folks do?!

Is there a recommended way to do this?!

Thank you once again for your support.

[maniac]

Firstly don't have the my documents folder within the profile folder, or it will copy it to and from the workstation everytime a student logs on or off, which makes logon times unbarable.

I have two shares to handle roaming profiles, which we only use for staff here - students use a super mandatory profile.

\\storage\staffprofiles$\username - stores the profile information
\\storage\staffhome$\username - is where mydocuments is re-directed to
\\sotrage\staffhome$\username\desktop - is where I redirect desktop folders to.

It's all done through one share, much easier that way than sharing each folder individually.

Also one massive tip if you're using roaming profiles, make sure you enable the computer policy 'allow administrative access to userprofiles' or when it creates the profiles it locks everyone out of it except the user who created it, which can cause all sorts of problems managing them.

Mike.

[rjones]

Hi Mike,

Do you mind telling me more about "super mandatory profiles"?!

[elsiegee40]

As maniac says, the idea with roaming profiles is to keep them as small as possible otherwise you need a calendar for logon speed.

Redirect as many folders as possible... search on here, and look in the wiki and there is plenty about it.

Like maniac, we only give the staff roaming profiles. The pupils are stuck with mandatory, meaning that any changes they do manage to make don't get saved back to the server and everything is the same every time they logon. again, it's covered in the wiki and this thread is good Creating a small mandatory profile

I'm not sure what he means by a super profile, other than making sure when you create it that you've used everything to make sure it all works before locking it as mandatory.

[rjones]

Hi,

Thank you for the info. We have laptops that pupils are allocated a laptop for them to use. My problem is that we allow pupils to save to there desktop and I need to be able to have to option to check what they are saving easily.

Now thinking that roaming profiles may slow the network down to much!

Any ideas?

[mikedoubleu]

Hi RJones,

Our configuration pretty much echo's what Maniac's does for staff, but we also give students roaming profiles. A lot of our student in the college need their own profiles due to the nature of the courses, and we find that group policy prevents them from breaking too much :-)

The layout we use is as follows:

Staff Roaming Profiles -> \\server\staffprofiles$\%username%

Staff Personal Documents -> \\server\staffhomes$\%username%\Documents
Staff Personal Desktop -> \\server\staffhomes$\%username%\Desktop
Staff Personal Pictures -> \\server\staffhomes$\%username%\Pictures

Student Roaming Profiles -> \\server\studentprofiles$\%username%

Student Personal Documents -> \\server\studenthomes$\%username%\Documents
Student Personal Desktop -> \\server\studenthomes$\%username%\Desktop
Student Personal Pictures -> \\server\studenthomes$\%username%\Pictures

We also map an O: drive for all users that points to the root of the home drive, so \\server\staffthomes$\%username% or \\server\studenthomes$\%username%

I've actually set up seperate group policies for Windows Vista and Windows 7 to allow folder redirection of the additional supported folders in those operating systems, which works better than having a shared group policy for XP, Vista and 7

Hopefully thats of some help

Thanks

Mike

[maniac]

Hi Mike,

Do you mind telling me more about "super mandatory profiles"?!

Super mandatory profiles stop users logging on when the server is un-available. With a normal mandatory profile a user may still be able to logon if the authenticating server isn't there if their details are cached on the local machine, a super mandatory profile stops this.

From this article on the MSDN
Mandatory User Profiles

User profiles become super-mandatory when the folder name of the profile path ends in .man; for example, \\server\share\mandatoryprofile.man\.

Super-mandatory user profiles are similar to normal mandatory profiles, with the exception that users who have super-mandatory profiles cannot log on when the server that stores the mandatory profile is unavailable. Users with normal mandatory profiles can log on with the locally cached copy of the mandatory profile.

Mike.

[rjones]

Sorry another question...

I have 110 Student Laptops with individual users for each laptop. I want to try and keep the laptop so they can save to the desktop (need to keep it as close to a home laptop). I need to be able to scan / check easily what they are saving on the laptop as the laptop get to go home some times etc...

What would you suggest to be the best option?!

Kindest Regards