Advice on mandatory profiles in a mixed Windows environment

[aitchgee]

We’ve just had 60 new laptops delivered that I have to deploy for use by our 6th form students. We are currently running Windows 7 on all clients but these laptops will be running Windows 10. All students/staff are currently use roaming profiles.

 

I want to move away from roaming profiles to mandatory profiles. Testing with Mandatory profiles has worked fine so far. BUT! 6th form students will also still have access to Windows 7 clients and my concern is how setting a mandatory profile on their account will affect their experience on Windows 7 clients.

 

Our current environment:

- We have a Windows 2012 R2 domain

- Desktops are currently Windows 7

- Profiles are currently Roaming profiles

- GPOs are used to lockdown the desktop

- Profile folders (My Docs, etc) are redirected to network file shares

 

I plan on imaging the laptops with Windows Education (1803)

- Students will be configured to use a Mandatory profile

- GPOs will lockdown the desktop

- User profile path (in Active Directory account) will be set to \\server\foldershare\mandatory (changed from roaming profile path)

 

It will be months (maybe years!) before the entire school is Windows 10 so students will be logging into both Windows 7 and Windows 10 PCs for some time.

 

I’m hoping some of you have suffered the pain I’m about to go through and have some pearls of wisdom and advice you can offer me! Any potential gotchas? Should I even by taking the approach of using mandatory profiles in a mixed OS environment?

[synaesthesia]

I would recommend against using either roaming or mandatory in 10 as support is waning for it, however what you're doing is easy; the profiles are not compatible, so that \\server\foldershare\mandatory folder will actually be mandatory.v2 for windows 7, and mandatory.v6 for windows 7 (if memory serves). So they would effectively have 2 profiles per user whilst you transition like that and naturally what's contained in each profile won't transfer to the other; I can't imagine that'll be a huge problem as long as everything else is stored in the correct place i.e. home drive.

[aitchgee]

I would recommend against using either roaming or mandatory in 10 as support is waning for it, however what you're doing is easy; the profiles are not compatible, so that \\server\foldershare\mandatory folder will actually be mandatory.v2 for windows 7, and mandatory.v6 for windows 7 (if memory serves). So they would effectively have 2 profiles per user whilst you transition like that and naturally what's contained in each profile won't transfer to the other; I can't imagine that'll be a huge problem as long as everything else is stored in the correct place i.e. home drive.

 

I've heard the same about support for roaming/mandatory profiles. But I need a quick and dirty solution right now (I'm filling in for our long term absent network admin)!

 

Is local profiles and UE-V the recommended way forward now for profiles?

[synaesthesia]

Yeah pretty much. I'm still in two minds about enabled UEV for students but certainly will be for staff. As said though, quick and dirty, as long as users are aware settings won't roam between w7 and w10 profiles you won't have an issue.