Profile guidance for several thousand users?

[cajuntank]

I had played with roaming profiles for a few friends some years ago and due to quirkiness, opted to switch back to local profiles.

In my current position, I need to revisit using roaming or mandatory profiles as I'm going to be creating individual domain accounts for every middle and high school grade student. In the past we had just generic accounts, but due to tracking/auditing and issues of cheating, individual accounts will be created.
I already have GPOs for folder redirection so when a new user signs in, their "My Documents" folder is automatically created and appropriate rights are assigned. I will also be limiting their usable server space with quotas.

So my question comes back to some guidance, best practices, etc... for using other than local profiles? I have read some and am a little confused on what is best practice now as compared to that of a couple of years ago. With the GPO folder redirection, I don't have to specify a "Home" directory path in ADUC or login script but yet I see mentioning of that in some older best practice information. So in a nutshell, just trying to see what's current best practice for Server 2008 and what's deprecated for roaming and/or mandatory profiles.

 

[cajuntank]

Anyone?

 

[thec0dy]

We tend to map the H:\ drive as the users home directory path. We then redirect the documents to that location. It seems to work fine on older and newer systems. It also is less confusing for some. I am sure the methods you have seen will work well for the students. It's always good to keep the profiles small so login times will be quick.

 

[cajuntank]

Do you just do a drive mapping of are you populating the "Home Folder" under the Profile tab in ADUC?