Minimising student logon times

[_Adam_]

I am looking to see what people have found best for the unique school environment where you have hundreds of users logging on/off at the same time several times a day and specifically at profiles.

 

Testing last year found that on a 7 PC the initial logon from password to ready-to-go varied between 40-50 seconds for roaming/mandatory/local all with folder redirection and subsequent logons around the 11-15 second mark if the profile existed under Users. The folder redirection only does Documents. Interestingly taking folder redirection to the maximum options available (2008 domain) the initial logon time came down to the 11-15 second mark. However hundreds of users all hitting the same server for everything did not appeal.

 

So we used a 4MB mandatory profile (not super at this stage) on a teamed NIC server dedicated to storing Documents for folder redirection and the profile. Our 7 boxes are frozen with Deep Freeze which means users must do the initial logon each time (and the extra 30 second delay). The server does not come close to being stressed on either the CPU/Memory/Disk or Network. Some users log on within the 50 seconds to 1 minute, but a few always seem to hit the 1-5 minute logons.

 

What are other people doing for student computers in regards to profile selection and setup and what times are you getting from the password being entered up to ready-to-go? Is there a way to beat that initial logon delay?

[bossman]

@_Adam_:

 

Using roaming profiles with just home folder redirection and mapping of shared drive on RM CC3 network:

 

New profile on workstation login time 35 secs.

Cached profile, login time between 5 and 10secs.

 

350 workstations lowest spec pentium4 3.0Ghz plus 2 Gb Ram.

 

Workstation OS XP pro

Server OS windows Server 2000 SP4

[danrhodes]

@_Adam_:

 

Using roaming profiles with just home folder redirection and mapping of shared drive on RM CC3 network:

 

New profile on workstation login time 35 secs.

Cached profile, login time between 5 and 10secs.

 

350 workstations lowest spec pentium4 3.0Ghz plus 2 Gb Ram.

 

Workstation OS XP pro

Server OS windows Server 2000 SP4

 

Tiny mandatory profiles FTW every time. Our logons are about 5 seconds even for a new profile pull down as everything is redirected, inc the start menu, desktop, app data, the lot.

 

D

[maniac]

Super Mandatory profiles here, and my login times are around 30-50 seconds depending on the age of the machine. I don't let cached profiles build up on the machines, keeps everything working better.

 

We don't re-direct app data, as we find it causes all sorts of problems, but we re-direct start menus, and desktops to local folders on the machine, and My Documents to the students network share.

 

I've always set a target time of 1 minute for login, I think that's acceptable in most circumstances.

 

Mike.

[danrhodes]

 

I've always set a target time of 1 minute for login, I think that's acceptable in most circumstances.

 

Mike.

 

Yeah anything under 1 minute seems a acceptable time at busy periods in my eyes. were lucky we log on almost instantly, but our machines are rather new, with the excetion of some rooms that have been known to take a few minutes.

 

D

[Jamo]

Wow our CC3 logons vary hugely. Seems to be very much related to HDD + RAM speed as some of our older machines are over 5 mins still. Our awesome laptops for teachers (1.7celerons + 256 RAM) border on the 20 minute mark!!

 

Even on the new machines the HDD thrashes for a good 30 secs on the initial logon. Subsequent logons are similar to yours though, 10 - 15 seconds.

[Mr.Ben]

How about start up times?

 

My login time is around 10 seconds (25 for staff that have laptops)

 

I refresh GPO's every 8 hours, so when a PC is rebooted it can take 3-5minutes to be ready, even though it has been told to process 'asyncronously'

[featured_spectre]

Login time is around 2 minutes, however I have everything redirected (apart from desktop)

[danrhodes]

Our awesome laptops for teachers (1.7celerons + 256 RAM) border on the 20 minute mark!!

 

 

 

Do you not get barraged with complaints about this, surely this eats into the start of their lesson?

 

D

[Jamo]

They dont use them for lessons any more, I would put more RAM in them but its not up to me

[_Adam_]

Thank you for the replies, it appears an initial logon between 45 sec to 1 min is acceptable on older hardware (I don't bother checking on the newest PCs as it's not the ones teachers complain about).

 

@danrhodes - if you redirect everything (which I said in the OP was our fastest result) how are you going for storage space? Or do you have tight quotas?

 

If it helps anyone I discovered Offline files were syncing despite GP telling it not to, so over time the logon times have increased and even more so for students who download lots of videos, etc. On old hardware this sync was killing them.

 

A colleague looked into it further and we suspect a couple of restarts are required for the policy to take effect and with Deep Freeze the machines only had one. Testing to come on this theory.

[danrhodes]

 

@danrhodes - if you redirect everything (which I said in the OP was our fastest result) how are you going for storage space? Or do you have tight quotas?

 

 

Storage space is a constant battle, our backup has grown 200GB in a few months. We have just installed a new Fujitsu Eternus to cope with demand. Hopefull this will keep us going a while!

 

D

[tmleafs]

less than 10 seconds Mandatory profile with redirected documents

[elsiegee40]

As others. Mandatory profile (1Mb... I made sure its small) with redirected My Documents, Desktop, Start Menu...

 

Staff are on Roaming profiles and are altogether more problematic; caused by growing profile sizes. Script that auto deletes cookies helps

[prad]

I've managed to get login times for all users down to about 10 seconds. I use local profiles for everyone. Redirecting MyDocs, Desktop, Cookies, Favourites, and using 'Rich Profile' to create an outlook mail profile. Printers are created using 'pushprinterconnections.exe' so I can ensure users have printers installed based on the computer OU.

 

I've been battling with logon times for an age and seem to have finally got it down using the above method. The cookies and fav redirection requires a non Microsoft gp template.

[kennysarmy]

Mandatory Profiles here too....

 

Initial logon to clean PC for first time by users is around 45 seconds on mid range PC.

Drops to around 12 seconds for subsequent logons...

 

Can anyone point me in a direction to troubleshoot reducing the initial logon.

 

The default user folder in netlogon is only 7.19 Mb - does nt seem large to me....so what's happening to cause an extra 30 seconds of delay?

 

Cheers.

[themightymrp]

We use Mandatory Profiles too, the default profile is around 4Mb.

 

We use group policy to cut out certain things from the profile i.e. desktop/IEhistory etc. Users pick up the All Users desktop from the workstation, My Documents and IEHistory are redirected to their homedrive (I use a free program called IE History Viewer for when we need proof of 'dodgy' surfing)

 

There is also a small VB script set on the OU of each IT suite that adds the network printer connection for that room and the central colour laser when they login.

 

Logins vary mainly on the age of the machine, not whether they have logged in before. The oldest PCs roughly 1 to 2 minutes, new ones around 10 seconds.

 

Storage is a bit of a problem as we have used roughlyu 1.5Tb on student H: drives but after doing a search a lot of kids love backing up their USB sticks and iPods to the network grrrrrr

[mjs_mjs]

Storage is a bit of a problem as we have used roughlyu 1.5Tb on student H: drives but after doing a search a lot of kids love backing up their USB sticks and iPods to the network grrrrrr

 

wooo same here - except we were backing up the heads 70GB itunes collection....

[featured_spectre]

I chipped my profiles down to 1.91MB, and login times to 35seconds (to the second for EVERY login), and thats over wireless!

[zag]

Mandatory profile here of just over a megabyte stored on a profile server with an SSD drive

 

Login takes about 45 seconds maximum.

[techie08]

I chipped my profiles down to 1.91MB, and login times to 35seconds (to the second for EVERY login), and thats over wireless!

 

Hi nephilim

 

Whats your current setup to acheive this? Our loging times are awfull over the wireless. We dont use roaming profiles, just folder redirection. All students desktops are redirected to one location and is read only, the same with the start menu and Application data is local.

Desktops are ok with login time but laptops can take upto 15mins!!!! The problem most of the time is the startmenu not showing up for ages!

 

Thanks

Edited July 12, 2010 by techie08

[featured_spectre]

What wireless system are you using? I found that our Ruckus system makes all the difference!

[techie08]

We use extricom but i cant help think i may be a problem with the way the users profiles are setup? do you think its because all the students are trying to access the same location for the start menu and desktop? Should these folders have write access to them?

 

Thanks nephilim

[featured_spectre]

Folders should not have write access...atleast they dont here. Extricom isnt as good at handling the amount of traffic as Ruckus can, and I did quite a large test last year on various different systems.

 

Try doing a staggered log in, try a set of 5 then another set etc. Or test how long it takes for one laptop to do and see if it is feasible to do a staggered login like that

[techie08]

Do you redirect your start menus, desktop to a central location? Im not sure if it is just purely the amount of traffic as we have a 12 port extricom switch with around 20 staff laptops connected and then 30 students laptops are also trying to connect.

 

Thanks