ceebster Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 Hi Guys What is the breakdown of you guys out there using roaming profiles v's mandatory profiles. Trying to get it in my head the best way forward relating to thin clients and fat clients, so my users get the best expereince when logging in? Any ideas greatfully accepted Thanks Chris
ceebster Posted July 3, 2009 Author Posted July 3, 2009 Cheers Steve The issue i have is i am moving to roaming profiles, which will have the icons for their local apps already installed. The thin clients don't have any local apps they use our terminal servrs. just stuggling to come up with an Idea for suite both Chris
stevenlong1985 Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 have a look into desktop icon relocation, this will change the way what Icons users can see
Potato-Peeler Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 I hate thin clients, the amount of power the server has to hold for medium to high end applications is ridiculous. Don't forget what you save in price of desktops, youll probably lose in paying for servers to run them. Oh and networking
Dos_Box Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 I hate thin clients, the amount of power the server has to hold for medium to high end applications is ridiculous. Don't forget what you save in price of desktops, youll probably lose in paying for servers to run them. Oh and networking You also save on power consumption, ease of management and a whole raft of factors.
elsiegee40 Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 Mandatory profiles for the kids Roaming for the staff... though TBH, I wish I could getaway with forcing mandatory on the staff too.
Potato-Peeler Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 Will the server power consumption edit out that though? As to run it you have to have some pretty beefy servers to do this kind of thing won't you? Like 8 GB RAM and two xeons? I'm not sure on that one. Also if one application becomes corrupt or fails for whatever reason on the server, e.g. MS Word, will it not mean the entire room can't use it, instead of one P.C?
fil_b Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 Mandatory profiles for the kids Roaming for the staff... though TBH, I wish I could getaway with forcing mandatory on the staff too. how do you work with fat clients that have apps and thin clients that dont have apps How would you force the icons on to a thin client?
fil_b Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 Will the server power consumption edit out that though? As to run it you have to have some pretty beefy servers to do this kind of thing won't you? Like 8 GB RAM and two xeons? I'm not sure on that one. Also if one application becomes corrupt or fails for whatever reason on the server, e.g. MS Word, will it not mean the entire room can't use it, instead of one P.C? you take the TS server out the pool, fix the problem then put it back - just have more than one server to run apps
elsiegee40 Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 how do you work with fat clients that have apps and thin clients that dont have apps How would you force the icons on to a thin client? Fat clients only - no thin here
Willott Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 how do you work with fat clients that have apps and thin clients that dont have apps How would you force the icons on to a thin client? Terminal servers in separate OU in Active Directory, possibly separate OU/GPO for Fat clients - setup a User Policy Loopback on the Computer configuration of GPO, then setup different desktop and start menu redirection for each GPO. I'm planning to have mandatory profiles for students (and remove ranger in the not too distant future), and have roaming profiles for staff, storing their desktop bits in a folder within their my docs (so they can add stuff to the desktop, and not cause insane profile size... my staff like to leave videos on their desktop, or folders...), and redirect desktop to there. Other GPO settings will allow all user's desktop and start menu to show up, so for my staff, on their laptops, I will let them just have their current start menu, on the TS I'll be setting them to a standard start menu. Need to finish fully testing this, and gradually start moving staff onto the system after the summer, but I think it should balance network speed and give the user's a more consistent environment.
elsiegee40 Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 How would you force the icons on to a thin client? My desktops at school have very few icons - just well-structured start menus. Room-specific software is found by going to Start > Science Room or Start > ICT Suite It's more flexible for me that way.
Andie Posted July 3, 2009 Posted July 3, 2009 Mandatory profiles for the kids Roaming for the staff... though TBH, I wish I could getaway with forcing mandatory on the staff too. Mandatory for both here. I've just told them that's the way it is with a network! All fat clients, and very few icons on desktop. Must be a primary school thing?
gshaw Posted July 6, 2009 Posted July 6, 2009 Mandatory for student accounts to keep the user experience constant (used to use HDGuard to do this before... what a nightmare!) Also combined with redirected Start Menu, Desktop and wallpaper etc set via BGInfo Staff have had roaming since before I was here so can't be taken away now but tbh roaming ones are a bloody pain when they corrupt, which they seem to like doing on a fairly regular basis
zag Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 (edited) Mandatory for the kids with redirected start menus, desktops and user areas. Also use bginfo for other stuff. Recently changed staff from roaming to mandatory and its been so much better. No more corrupt profiles and login times have improved around 300%. Most people can logon in 20 seconds now. I simply create a roaming profile when the user is new, configure outlook, smart board, office and acrobat. Then make the profile mandatory read only. I also changed lots of the group policies to stop silly baloons popping up or first time usage dialogues. Works well and makes a huge difference over wireless. The staff don't know the difference. Edited July 7, 2009 by zag
Chuckster Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 Why do most of you use mandatory profiles? Here, all staff and student have roaming profiles and not any one of them are using 3MB - all under 2 1/2 meg. For admin, I've redirected the Application Data, Desktop, My Documents, Favorites to their user area. Startmenu is redirected from a share. Teaching staff and students have redirected start menu and desktop from a share. Their Application Folder, Favorites, and My Documents are redirected to their user area. My school and the network has had no problems this way. Sure, the app data folder is over 50MB+ in size but like I said, profiles are all under 3MB. Logging on times are less than 15 secs; just the way my NM and I like it.
ceebster Posted July 9, 2009 Author Posted July 9, 2009 Why do most of you use mandatory profiles? For admin, I've redirected the Application Data, Desktop, My Documents, Favorites to their user area. Startmenu is redirected from a share. Teaching staff and students have redirected start menu and desktop from a share. Their Application Folder, Favorites, and My Documents are redirected to their user area. Hi Chuckster How does this affect your logon times? I take it your users are able to save favourites and changes to apps they make and it saves them? Did you use GPO to re-direct? Thanks Chris
PEO Posted July 9, 2009 Posted July 9, 2009 mandantory here for staff pupils and technician accounts.. profiles are backed up both on and offsite like everything else.
Chuckster Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 Hi Chuckster How does this affect your logon times? I take it your users are able to save favourites and changes to apps they make and it saves them? Did you use GPO to re-direct? Thanks Chris My logon times are definitely under 20 seconds. Under 15 seconds for Teaching staff and students, and 20 for admin. Our cabling is all Cat5. I used a script to redirect the Favorites folder to users home area, i.e. My Documents\Favorites I used a GPO to direct the Application Data folder to users own area so that whatever changes they make will remain that way. This is true for every user in school. (My Documents\Application Data) However, I must tell you that if you try and set a desktop wallpaper and you have the Application Data folder redirected, the wallpaper doesn't get set and users are left with a bright blude desktop wallpaper. The only way I could combat this was to use BGInfo to set users desktop wallpapers at logon and this has given me no problems. Hope this helps.
zag Posted July 16, 2009 Posted July 16, 2009 I used a GPO to direct the Application Data folder to users own area so that whatever changes they make will remain that way. This is true for every user in school. (My Documents\Application Data) Can you give me a quick screen shot of how you do this? I'm in GPO at the moment and have found the place to redirect, but totally confused how to target the users home directory. Do I choose simple or advanced?
Chuckster Posted July 16, 2009 Posted July 16, 2009 (edited) It depends on how you want it configured. I chose Advance because I've based it on the security groups that I've created and put users in. I have a security group called Teaching Staff, Non-teaching Staff, Pupils, SIMS Users etc. In each security group has all the relevant users in there. On my server, I simply don't have all users plodded in just the one folder. They're broken up into sub folders, e.g: \\servername\users$\staff\teaching staff \\servername\users$\staff\non-teaching staff \\servername\users$\staff\admin \\servername\users$\pupils etc In a GPO I redirect using the advance option based on the security group and location of users home folders. The reason why I've done it this way is because I didn't want many different GPOs doing the same thing, hence the above and hence I went for the advance option. Hope this helps. Edited July 16, 2009 by Chuckster
danrhodes Posted July 16, 2009 Posted July 16, 2009 Personally I have worked with both Fat and Thin, but its Fat FTW for me everytime! D
gshaw Posted July 17, 2009 Posted July 17, 2009 (edited) Looking through this I just had a quick check to see where AppData was redirected to... just seen it was set to land in the profile folder No wonder the profiles are always so huge and take ages to logon aaargh! (it wasn't me who set these up!) As for thin vs fat... I'm still watching VDI with much interest... apparently there's a new protocol being developed that will finally sort out the graphics issue with thin clients once and for all... Edited July 17, 2009 by gshaw
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