Moving from RDS Farm to Roaming Profiles on PC's

Hello,

I inherited an RDS farm with thin clients. Currently have roaming profiles with folder redirection.
We are required to move to workstations in order to comply with vendor software requirements.

Currently, as it is set up now, I can add a pc to the domain, log onto the domain and see that the user has folder redirection of his Documents and Pictures etc..
*What I would like is to have the redirected folders download to the pc and then synchronize on logoff in case there is a loss of network connection to the users files.

review:
RDS users need to migrate to pc
DC, TS's and File Server are Server 2008r2
PC's are Windows7


Thanks for your time
Jurgen

I highly recommend staying away from roaming profiles and synchronized files. I'd be more concerned with beefing up the redundancy of the file server and network.

/usr/home said:

I highly recommend staying away from roaming profiles and synchronized files. I'd be more concerned with beefing up the redundancy of the file server and network.

Click to expand...

MAJOR +1

When I first got into doing server/client stuff I thought roaming profiles and folder redirection were THE SHIT. I quickly learned that it leads to many problems.

I now believe that simply giving users some network storage and a mapped drive is the superior method. That way most garbage stays on the clients and it also simplifies the server and configuration stuff. I set up folder redirection at one site and wish I could go back. I won't do it again unless it's a very specific need.

I think, in an RDS environment, you have to have roaming profiles or a third party alternative. Otherwise, users settings won't be available when they log onto machines, unless you're forcing them onto a specific machine each time (which is bad).

If you really are against roaming profiles, then look at something like Microsoft's User Environment Virtualization so you can at least roam some of the settings.


Slightly off topic -- if everyone is so against Roaming Profiles, what are you guys using instead? Remember, this is for an RDS (Terminal Server) farm where the user will most likely not log into the same machine twice.

Demon10000 said:

I think, in an RDS environment, you have to have roaming profiles or a third party alternative. Otherwise, users settings won't be available when they log onto machines, unless you're forcing them onto a specific machine each time (which is bad).

If you really are against roaming profiles, then look at something like Microsoft's User Environment Virtualization so you can at least roam some of the settings.


Slightly off topic -- if everyone is so against Roaming Profiles, what are you guys using instead? Remember, this is for an RDS (Terminal Server) farm where the user will most likely not log into the same machine twice.

Click to expand...

I agree with the above post. I don't really see the alternative in an RDS/Citrix environment. You could roam the profile but re-direct some items out of it to save space. But not roaming stuff is going to cause user isues.

I am not a fan of roaming profiles on regular desktops though. I would maybe just re-direct favorites, My Docs, etc.

Demon10000 said:

I think, in an RDS environment, you have to have roaming profiles or a third party alternative. Otherwise, users settings won't be available when they log onto machines, unless you're forcing them onto a specific machine each time (which is bad).

If you really are against roaming profiles, then look at something like Microsoft's User Environment Virtualization so you can at least roam some of the settings.


Slightly off topic -- if everyone is so against Roaming Profiles, what are you guys using instead? Remember, this is for an RDS (Terminal Server) farm where the user will most likely not log into the same machine twice.

Click to expand...

We redirect the My Documents to a network drive. If they save shit to the desktop and lose it, too bad and they know that.

Demon10000 said:

Slightly off topic -- if everyone is so against Roaming Profiles, what are you guys using instead? Remember, this is for an RDS (Terminal Server) farm where the user will most likely not log into the same machine twice.

Click to expand...

In this type of environment you're right, it's needed. My argument is why set up an environment like that to begin with?

/usr/home said:

We redirect the My Documents to a network drive. If they save shit to the desktop and lose it, too bad and they know that.

Click to expand...

Ouch.

You can redirect the desktop, too. That way you can roam it.

I'm not talking about just data -- obviously all files should be redirected out of the profile. But there are so many other things that you're missing:

* Any registry setting change by a program. Could range from a registration key to a configuration.
* Files that save configurations in the profile, like Outlook Signatures and that (pos) NK2 file.

How do you handle those with just redirecting the documents?

Demon10000 said:

Ouch.

You can redirect the desktop, too. That way you can roam it.

I'm not talking about just data -- obviously all files should be redirected out of the profile. But there are so many other things that you're missing:

* Any registry setting change by a program. Could range from a registration key to a configuration.
* Files that save configurations in the profile, like Outlook Signatures and that (pos) NK2 file.

How do you handle those with just redirecting the documents?

Click to expand...

redirect the entire profile directory, exclude the temp folders.

Ruffy said:

redirect the entire profile directory, exclude the temp folders.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I follow:

First off, I'm not sure how you would do this for a terminal services farm. It would have to be automated, use some sort of logic to point to the network share, and make the redirection for each user as they log into a random machine.

Second, when you do the redirection, you're going to have to get the temp folders. So you're going to have to poke holes in HKCU to point the temp folders back to local disk. Doable, but a pain in the ass to maintain.

And finally, you're also going to get a bunch of shit you don't want in the profile. Right off the top of my head, lots of stuff in localdata. Of course, you might need SOME of this, so you'll have to pick and choose and I'm not aware of anything, save for third party profile tools, that let you do this. And if you're using a third party profile tool, you don't need this type of a configuration.


This would be fine for a single user on a single desktop, though... just not for a large number of users logging into a random server each time.