Folder redirection \ appdata \ roaming profile considerations for 7?

[gshaw]

We need to sort out our home folders and roaming profiles as they were set up in a strange way here a long time ago and as a result the server has 1 share for every user and very slow logon times as appdata is bundled in with the profile as well.

 

At some point in the not too distant future 7 will probably be making its presence felt so with that in mind I want to make sure whatever I do now to fix the userdata on XP will work fine with 7.

 

I've been reading about the way 7 lays out the appdata folders and so on now. Did you need to make any changes to your folders for roaming profiles and so on when moving over?

[Psymon]

Personally I redirect the AppData to remove it from the users profile.

 

When we moved to 7 I took the oppertinuty to re-arrange everyones Data by just changing the Folder Redirection policy, all info is then moved from its current location to the new point of storage. (Beware that this turns most logons into 20mins+ depending on amount of storage used)

 

By using Advanced you can set it per group, we actually have a dedicated GPO to folder redirection.

 

Profiles in XP are not compatable with 7 anyhow, you will be starting fresh on that front. ("Username" as opposed to "Username.V2" for Vista/7) Keeping both of the profiles will allow your users to log into both OS's however there will be no settings carried across that are profile-related.

 

Simon

[gshaw]

Interesting you should mention that as we need to migrate user home folders into a proper structure i.e. a single share with the folders being created underneath. I was wondering if the GPO would do the trick i.e. on logon it creates the new folder under the share then shifts the data across. Sounds like it does but could be a slow process, although if only done once might not be so bad.

 

Edit: just tried it and not looking good so far... when you did the move was it from one network folder to another or from local user profile to network?

 

I'm aware of the .V2 profiles, just tried it with some test users and it seems to work OK as long as users remember the caveat you mentioned. Found a few useful MS documents as well on it as well.

 

One thing I'm guessing needs to be there for any of this to work is the newer admx templates running on Server 2008 (or the kludge to make them work with 2003 although I'm not so keen on doing that tbh)

Edited January 5, 2011 by gshaw

[Psymon]

We introduced ADMX templates when we were a 2003 Functional domain.

 

All you need is a single machine that is already Server 2008R2 / Windows 7 / Vista to manage the GPO's.

 

The central template store is a harmless task, and the majority of the ADMX are all available on a Win7 machine.

 

From memory you just create a folder in \\DOMAIN\SYSVOL\Domain.name\Policies named "PolicyDefinitions" and put everything en there, you can add a folder for each language if your native language is not English.

 

Simon

Edited January 5, 2011 by Psymon

[mrbios]

The way we do it here is mandatory profile for kids and general teachers. Start menu and desktop redirection from a DFS share which is on all DCs local to each building. Appdata is redirected to student and teachers home folders. Roaming profiles have their desktop, documents and appdata redirected to home folders.

 

Keeps all profiles small (less than 2mb for teachers and students, generall max of 30 seconds to login and apply all GPOs, and apart from the odd adobe CS5 bug putting a 900mb folder into appdata > local on the odd occasion it also keeps the roaming profiles as small as possible) Keeps start menu and desktop shortcuts all in one place and everything is still accesible to the user.