Redirecting App Data

[Bruce123]

Has anyone had any experience of redirecting Application Data? We already redirect My Documents and Desktop quite successfully (well 99.5% of the time). I think that you'd have to me mad not to whether you use roaming profiles, local ones or mandatory ones.

 

I tested it a couple of years ago, enabled it for a user, but when I logged the user onto two PCs at the same time and opened Word/Outlook, I found that the computers just ground to a halt when in Office 2003. Some research revealed that this was due to Office opening and locking a file in the app data folder. Both instances of Office needed to open and lock the file, but of course they are unable to when it is centralised.

 

A great shame, as it would have really helped with our logon times; the app data does tend to get filled up with all sorts of rubbish.

 

We recently upgraded to Office 2007, and I was always hopeful that the issue may have been resolved with this version, and on testing I found that it was. No problems at all. I've now tested with with 40 staff users and their logon times improved substantially (by 60-80%). I have also now redirected the Cookies folder.

 

The logon times will also improve when our multi-site network links are upgraded to 100Mbit.

 

I just wanted to share our experience of folder redirection. What do other people do in this regard?

 

Thanks,

 

Bruce.

 

Leeds, UK.

[kmount]

Hi Bruce,

 

Yes, have done this a few times where logons have been slow (mostly due to the way computers are used in schools, ie, ~400 logons in a short period of time every hour) pulling from a storage device over the network. (Average of 25MB 'large' profile's, 400 of those gives us a nice 10GB to move around in a 3-5 minute space)

 

Be careful though, as AppData normally resides within the roaming profile you won't notice a benefit until this directory is removed (as whilst it's not used it will still be carried around!).

 

We've not noticed any sharing issues but then our systems are normally configured to resume existing sessions so everyone is logged on only once. (Terminal Services).

 

Good luck with it.

[rh91uk]

We use Roaming Profiles here, but with an initial redirected start menu. AppData is held in the users Home Directory.

[Bruce123]

Hi Bruce,

 

Yes, have done this a few times where logons have been slow (mostly due to the way computers are used in schools, ie, ~400 logons in a short period of time every hour) pulling from a storage device over the network. (Average of 25MB 'large' profile's, 400 of those gives us a nice 10GB to move around in a 3-5 minute space)

 

Be careful though, as AppData normally resides within the roaming profile you won't notice a benefit until this directory is removed (as whilst it's not used it will still be carried around!).

 

We've not noticed any sharing issues but then our systems are normally configured to resume existing sessions so everyone is logged on only once. (Terminal Services).

 

Good luck with it.

 

Ahh Terminal Services - You slipped that in at the last moment. Do you use TS extensively?

 

Have you considered using local profiles, located on the TS server itself? Probably not a good idea, but just wondered as it would reduce the sudden load on the network / disc IO.

 

Re removing/moving the old App Data folder. To avoid this issue, I would use a VBScript to move the folder for all users and add them to a group which applies to a folder redirection policy (actually using a custom template which enabled me to redirect to a sub-subfolder of their Home drive*). This group also enables a policy that excludes the app data folder from the roaming profile, which removes any redundant app data folder which may get merged back into the roaming profile when users log onto PCs which contain old cached copies.

 

The reason for this is that we found the automatic move feature of folder redirection to be inefficent and unreliable (e.g. if it fails part way through the folder move after the user turns the PC off after getting fed-up after waiting for so long).

 

*Documentation I found stated that the %homepath% cannot be used for the ShellFolder registery key which the GP Folder Redirection feature uses, as it's value is set after ShellFolder paths are expanded/processed. Now, I am not so sure if this was correct. I might look at this again and remove our custom template if possible and set the paths using GP (e.g. using the %homepath%\system\my documents).

 

Thanks,

 

Bruce.

[Bruce123]

We use Roaming Profiles here, but with an initial redirected start menu. AppData is held in the users Home Directory.

 

Forgive me, but how did you redirect app data to their home directory? Is this feature available in the the Group Policy Folder Redirection setting? We created a custom template to do this (e.g. My Docs -> "H:\system\my documents") becuase we didn't think that there was a way to do it.

 

Thanks,

 

Bruce.

[kmount]

We've considered and implemented solutions with Mandatory Profiles but found them too inflexible for some scenarios as some behaviour needs to persist between sessions.

 

Still considering how to use redirection & a mandatory profile to give the 'feel' of a roaming profile without the burden!

[gotenks1321]

We've considered and implemented solutions with Mandatory Profiles but found them too inflexible for some scenarios as some behaviour needs to persist between sessions.

 

Still considering how to use redirection & a mandatory profile to give the 'feel' of a roaming profile without the burden!

 

Immidio Flex Profiles is something I've used with mandatory profiles before moving over to Roaming. Might do what you need There is a free version by Login Consultants but I can't seem to find that now. Let me know if you want it and I'm sure I can ping it over to you.

Edited December 20, 2009 by gotenks1321