Mandatory or Roaming

[Hightower]

Currently our users get a roaming profile as part of CC3, but I'm just wondering should we go mandatory on Vanilla? At the moment the kids can't touch their desktop (can't change wallpaper, save to it etc), and all profiles are much the same so should we just go mandatory and save the hassle of roaming?

 

What do you suggest?

 

EDIT: By the way, I just mean for students - staff will still be a roaming profile.

[sted]

mandatory a a bit more of a pig on win7 as you have to sysprep a pc to get the profile off. Ive started going to local profiles deleted after x days unused not like workstations dont have the spare hdd space and saves having roaming profiles take up server space

[3s-gtech]

You don't need to sysprep

 

(Super) Mandatory, in my opinion, is well worth it on Windows 7. Not had much hassle with it in use.

[LiamH]

Mandatory for kids and teaching staff, roaming for admin staff.

 

Teaching staff are trying to push for roaming profiles but the number of problems we have had with admin staff dropping DVD Rips (legal ofc) onto the desktop for quick access then wondering why their computer takes an age to login/off while dragging gigabytes worth of data down from the network puts us off that idea

[sted]

You don't need to sysprep

 

(Super) Mandatory, in my opinion, is well worth it on Windows 7. Not had much hassle with it in use.

 

ive tried windows enabler and im not 100% sure it works i still get odd messages complaining that it cant do something quoting the name of the account i used to create the profile so i gave up and tried local profiles apart from initial logon time being slower than id like seems to work for me and lock everything down with gpo

[sted]

Mandatory for kids and teaching staff, roaming for admin staff.

 

Teaching staff are trying to push for roaming profiles but the number of problems we have had with admin staff dropping DVD Rips (legal ofc) onto the desktop for quick access then wondering why their computer takes an age to login/off while dragging gigabytes worth of data down from the network puts us off that idea

 

if you redirect their docs/desktop etc shouldnt be too bad as it dosent need to be copied to the pc at logon. i had that last place i worked someone turned on roaming profiles and i had gb's of drivers etc on my desktop downstairs went upstairs to log on took hours lol

[mrbios]

I 100% swear by mandatory profiles, i find it hard to even consider it a question for kids

[webman]

Go for roaming - works well on CC3 and CC4. And users can't save anything to their desktops.

[teejay]

Roaming here, we have a policy to allow students the freedom to customise their desktop etc. It's worked really well since we introduced this in September, we get far fewer problems than when we took the lock everything down approach as the students feel they have more ownership of their account and therefore don't fight against the system so much.

[Hightower]

Go for roaming - works well on CC3 and CC4. And users can't save anything to their desktops.

 

@Webman - that's why I'm asking the question, because it does work well on CC3. I know I can still lock the desktop down with GPO and such, but does it provide an overhead or is it no different overhead to mandatory?

 

Also, I'm concerned at the handful of 'profile resets' we need to do each day on CC3 - if we go roaming on Vanilla this may still be the case right, where as with mandatory these problems should be eliminated right?

 

Cheers for all responses

[teejay]

If you're also planning a move to Windows 7 as well, we've found our profile resets have dropped from several a day to 1 every couple of weeks with roaming profiles.

[Hightower]

If you're also planning a move to Windows 7 as well, we've found our profile resets have dropped from several a day to 1 every couple of weeks with roaming profiles.

 

And with Vanilla its just a case of deleting the contents of the profile folder isn't it, and the profile will be redownloaded from the template at logon? Is that right?

 

Not planning Win7 yet - gonna be a big enough move as it is.

[teejay]

And with Vanilla its just a case of deleting the contents of the profile folder isn't it, and the profile will be redownloaded from the template at logon? Is that right?

 

Not planning Win7 yet - gonna be a big enough move as it is.

 

Yep, as long as they've remembered to log off that is ;-)

Why not get it all done in one big move, if you're going from CC3/4 to Vanilla you're going to have to rebuild most of it anyway I presume. Might as well move to W7 at the same time rather than having another big upgrade in a year or 2.

[Hightower]

Yep, as long as they've remembered to log off that is ;-)

Why not get it all done in one big move, if you're going from CC3/4 to Vanilla you're going to have to rebuild most of it anyway I presume. Might as well move to W7 at the same time rather than having another big upgrade in a year or 2.

 

I understand the logic with doing it all at the same time, but we are happy to stay with XP until we know the network runs smoothly. Then we can look at moving the machines with Win7 licences across to Win7 a room at a time. Will leave XP on the older machines (the ones without Win7 licences) until they are end of life anyway. I've been told by my colleague there's a lot of education software that doesn't work on Win7, so would prefer to leave this headache on the back burner for now, and also, won't have time to deliver staff training in Win7 etc etc.

 

Just too much for one big sweep

[teejay]

Fair enough, what O/S you putting on the servers?

On software with W7, we have over 200 various bits of software (don't ask!) and out of those we had problems with in total 3 bits of software, one we binned and 2 we upgraded to the latest version. We did stick with 32-bit though, 64-bit yes you are going to have fun and games ;-)

[zag]

Mandatory for students for sure. Edited February 8, 2011 by zag

[Dos_Box]

Roaming. Folder redirection coupled with GPO's. IMHO, we should not still be employing NT4.0 techniques. Correctly setup roaming/gpo setups are far better (admittedly niggly little programs running their own individual setup routines can be a pain though!).

[Hightower]

Fair enough, what O/S you putting on the servers?

On software with W7, we have over 200 various bits of software (don't ask!) and out of those we had problems with in total 3 bits of software, one we binned and 2 we upgraded to the latest version. We did stick with 32-bit though, 64-bit yes you are going to have fun and games ;-)

 

Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 as the host, running Server 2008 R2 Std vm's

[sippo]

Mandatory for All staff and students. So much easier to manage.