- Roaming profiles on Windows server 2003 AD
- Posted by Kaddie on July 23rd, 2007
Hi,
We got a request from a director to give everyone in our org a roaming
profile. About 500 users. Some on a slow network link that we dont want to
roam. We are assigning the Roaming Profiles via OU's. We use a GPO that
does folder redirection. This is placed on each of the OU's with each users
properties/profile tab has the Profile path set to the location on the
network where the profile is stored. So this does 2 things creates a folder
for each user called user data and user profiles.
The user data folder stores application data and desktop. The user profile
folder stores all the roaming stuff like folders, deskop as per how roaming
profiles work.A specialist technical company came in and set this up for us.
Our HUGE issue is that since implimenting the Roaming profiles loads of
applications no longer work such as Autocad style programs.
Ive created a temp OU and removed anyone who cannot have a roaming profile
into it so they dont get the GPO and removed the profile path from user.
Anyway this is messing up our AD Structure. Can someone point me to
information/articles on how to have all users in say the Engineering OU that
has the folder redirection policy applied to it. But if someone in the
Engineering OU cannot have a roaming profile how do I turn of the Folder
redirection without moving them to the temp OU. I have heard somewhere that
users can all be in the same OU with a GPO applied but exclude some of the
users from the GPO somehow. Is this a loopback or something. Sorry this was
longwinded but hard to explain
thanks
--
Kath
- Posted by Anthony on July 23rd, 2007
Kath,
If you want to exclude a few people from a general policy, you can create a
security group for them and then Deny them access to the policy. You do this
in the Security tab of the policy.
It is best to limit the use of Denies, as they can get difficult to
troubleshoot, but if you have a policy you want to apply to everyone except
a specific group, then this is the easiest way.
What exact problem are you having with AutoCad? You may find there is a
better solution for the specific problem,
Anthony
http://www.airdesk.co.uk
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- Posted by Kaddie on July 24th, 2007
thanks for the info. With Roaming Profiles the Autocad program would not
work. Within the program itself it has some sort of User profiles and they
failed. I backed the users out of the Roaming Profile policy and they still
had to reinstall the Autocad program to get it to work again. We have had a
similar issue with a program called CivilCad. These are both design drawing
programs.
Thats why I wanted to know how to exclude users from a Roaming profile
policy since management wants us to have roaming profiles on our entire OU
structure it makes it a bit hard. Your suggestion should help nicely.
--
Kath
"Anthony" wrote:
- Posted by Anthony on July 24th, 2007
Kath,
There's a notice on the AutoCad website about using AutoCad with roaming
profiles. You can configure the path to the AutoCad profile with a parameter
at startup.
Maybe also you don't need to redirect Application Data, just leave it in the
profile. Redirecting and Roaming are two different things, not necessarily
connected. You would usually redirect My Documents, but not necessarily
Application Data or Desktop.
Anthony -
http://www.airdesk.co.uk
"Kaddie" <kathied@tweed.nsw.gov.au(donotspam)> wrote in message
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- Posted by Kaddie on July 24th, 2007
If you don't redirect Application Data folder how do they get all their
settings at the computer they roam to. In the Application data folder is
stuff like Outlook settings such as signatures etc. I thought it was
important to make sure the Application data folder was included as it is
where most of the computer application settings are stored or am I wrong
about this folder.
thanks
--
Kath
"Anthony" wrote:
- Posted by Anthony on July 24th, 2007
Kath,
Roaming and redirecting are two different things.
Roaming stores a copy of the profile on the server and syncs it with a
cached copy on the computer. You can have a roaming profile with no
redirection.
Redirection moves the folder out of the profile altogether and stores it on
the server, where it can be backed up. You can have local profiles (not
roaming) and use folder redirection to store user data on the server.
The reason you redirect folders out of a roaming profile is to keep the
profile smaller and enable a faster logon.
The main %username%\Application Data folder will roam by default if you use
a roaming profile.
You need to look at the specific reason that AutoCad has a problem and find
a way to fix that,
Anthony -
http://www.airdesk.co.uk
"Kaddie" <kathied@tweed.nsw.gov.au(donotspam)> wrote in message
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- Posted by Kaddie on July 25th, 2007
Thanks, excuse my ignorance but which application data folder roams and does
not need to be redirected. There are 2 under documents and settings and is
there much of a difference between the 2 folders as shown in my example below.
C:\Documents and Settings\"Username"\Application Data
C:\Documents and Settings\"Username"\Local Settings\Application Data
--
Kath
"Anthony" wrote:
- Posted by Anthony on July 25th, 2007
Kath,
Local Settings don't roam. MS provided the two folders for stuff that does
and does not roam, e.g the temp files are in Local Settings. Dictionaries
and pst's are in Local Settings because they are too large to roam as part
of a profile. Where other vendors put their user data is up to them.
Have a look at this thread for AutoCad. The problem is that the AutoCad
profile is stored in Local Settings and so does not roam.
http://discussion.autodesk.com/threa...hreadID=395279
Anthony -
http://www.airdesk.co.uk
"Kaddie" <kathied@tweed.nsw.gov.au(donotspam)> wrote in message
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- Posted by Jeremy Schubert on July 26th, 2007
This is an interesting thread to me because our school is doing just the
opposite. Striking roaming profiles for the teachers. Although they do
work on multiple computers, we find the transfer of data, even with
redirected folders, bogs down the network.
A quick aside to you Kath. IMHO, I hope the 'special technical' company
your boss hired to set up your roaming profiles is giving you a reduced
rate. From your post, it seems like your company uses autocad as a primary
program and they should have had that working for you with the new setup
before they left!
Anthony, my downtown techs told me that it would be easiest for everyone to
keep everything in their Home drive. Analyzing what the teacher's use the
computers for (email, Google research, grading program and word processing),
I think that the only real positive of roaming profiles is the redundancy
provided for the desktop settings, printer settings and favorites and
cookies. If I redirect the desktop folder and favorites to the H drive, do
you think I'll see less network congestion durring logins?
Thanks,
Jeremy
- Posted by Anthony on July 26th, 2007
Yes. You can redirect the folders out of the profile and set the maximum
profile size to be quite small. This will make the profile synchronisation
very quick.
Anthony -
http://www.airdesk.co.uk
"Jeremy Schubert" <jscc-nospam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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- Posted by Jeremy Schubert on July 27th, 2007
OK, but I don't quite get it yet. For example, if I redirect the users'
desktop folders to their home shares, doesn't it still have to copy down to
the workstation even though it's in a different share?
Jeremy
- Posted by Anthony on July 27th, 2007
Redirecting puts the folder on the network. You are working on the network,
same as for shared network files. In the background it performs a quick sync
of recently changed files to the local cache (so that they are available
offline if necessary). It performs a full sync at logoff.
Anthony -
http://www.airdesk.co.uk
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