Staff Profiles

[kevin_lane]

just wondering how other schools deal with staff profiles

 

in the past we tried to create a MAN profile for staff but every time they logged in outlook kept screwing up and no matter how much I moan and tell staff to keep stuff in there N Drives, they wonder why there computer is slow to load when its loading a 5GB profile!

 

what do other school have in place to battle this ?

[Disease]

We use Mandatory Profiles and Staff use OWA for their email, although I am thinking of moving everything to Office 365.

[kevin_lane]

i know what your saying but i'm not sure if that's an option and I have thought about it I'm in the process now have creating a quota limit to stop it going any higher

[SYNACK]

Just use roaming plus redirected folders to keep the size under control.

[Sam_Brown]

Local profiles while removing the right to save to the desktop. Not had any issues with this as most people have their own laptop or their own workstation.

[witch]

Just use roaming plus redirected folders to keep the size under control.

 

This is what we do. Redirect EVERYTHING

Occasionally there is an issue with something putting itself in AppData, bloating the profile

[DEvans]

Redirect everything out of the profile.

 

Though we do not redirect AppData (ironically the folder that gets large). We don't do that because that would rely on 3rd parties to know how to create software properly.

 

Microsoft just want a 1:1 relationship of computers, if a computer isn't shared then regardless of the profile size it will always load from the local machine first, getting people logged in and working in less than 5 seconds.

 

From my experiences, a lot of the time it isn't always about your server setup, it is about your infrastructure.

 

Flat Networks and no stacking in the cores is why it gets stupidly slow. A true 1Gb/s link downloading a profile of 5GB (crazy example) for the first time ever, should technically take not a second more than 45 seconds. I've seen people on here saying they are taking 15-20 minutes! I'd be sacked on the spot.

 

Lot of networks are setup as a Gigabit, but are not setup for a Gigabit.

 

Even on a flat network, with redirection setup as mentioned above you should really be able to get logins down to less than 10 -15 seconds. Regardless of their size. Redirecting the AppData is purely based on your environment. In mine it breaks a certain application that (apparently) is used all the time.. yet I never see anyone using it.

 

I would recommend it if it doesn't break stuff haha.

[themightymrp]

We redirect everything except for AppData and then use the 'exclude these folders from roaming profiles' GPO to trim out the excess waste from the AppData itself. This leaves staff profiles around 25 - 30Mb in size and logons are usually sub 15 seconds.

[SYNACK]

A true 1Gb/s link downloading a profile of 5GB (crazy example) for the first time ever, should technically take not a second more than 45 seconds. I've seen people on here saying they are taking 15-20 minutes! I'd be sacked on the spot.

.

 

You are forgetting how much file transfers slow down with thousands of little files like the junk Firefox or itunes spews out as a matter of course.

[DEvans]

Valid point Synack, but anything more than a minute and a half should be questionable really. Depends on the speed of the Hard Drive as well of course but realistically they are normally standard SATA.

 

I haven't dealt with itunes on PCs for a while, so i did forget about that whole issue. Users.. eh. Get an ipod for goodness sake.

 

There is a reg tweak you can do to firefox to put it in a hidden folder in the documents. Users don't see it, don't see a difference yet because it is then redirected out, its a quicker profile. I'll have to hunt that down again.

 

iTunes however is just a royal pain.

Edited July 3, 2014 by DEvans

[geraintpowell]

We've found that multiple logons has caused massive profile sizes, or leaving themselves logged on over the 6 weeks holidays :@ we've restricted them to 1 logon (that was fun) and thats seemed to cool the situation down.

Multiple logons was also causing a print spooler crash which froze all office applications and explorer.exe so they lost all unsaved work (so all work) and generally made life difficult.

hope this helps.

[Davit2005]

No Roaming profiles, we have redirected desktops and documents here.

 

Students have a fixed redirected shared desktop.

 

At a previous employment both staff and students had roaming profiles and it was a complete PITA. We gave Students a mandatory and staff kept roaming.

[Arthur]

iTunes however is just a royal pain.

I just exclude the entire "Apple Computer" folder from roaming profiles (along with lots of other junk). Problem solved!

 

AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook
AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Flash Player
AppData\Roaming\Adobe\PatcherLogs
AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer
AppData\Roaming\ATI
AppData\Roaming\com.adobe.formscentral.FormsCentralForAcrobat
AppData\Roaming\Dropbox
AppData\Roaming\EPSON
AppData\Roaming\Garmin
AppData\Roaming\HP\ScLogs
AppData\Roaming\HpUpdate
AppData\Roaming\InstallShield
AppData\Roaming\LogSys
AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Corporation\Standard User Analyzer
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Bibliography
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Document Building Blocks
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office\Recent
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports
AppData\Roaming\NT-ware\MomClient
AppData\Roaming\Oracle\Java
AppData\Roaming\SCORIS\Logs
AppData\Roaming\Wireshark

[3s-gtech]

Local profiles with everything redirected. Works nicely alongside super mandatory profiles for students.