Roaming Profiles Good Advice

[pQi]

Hello,

I hope someone can assist me with some good advice on roaming profiles.

I have three domain controllers on my network with roaming profile directories on each, now when I have users travelling through different sites, they tend to run into a problem waiting for their desktop to load on the computer usually 4-6 min. at times could be worse depending the size of the their profile.

I also have a citrix server for thins that I like to have people use for published applications, which still is a problem when they log in while their profiles takes for ever to load onto the desktop.

I am not sure if this works or is recommended; but is it a good idea to have their profiles in their home directory?

Will this solve the problem of taking 6 min or more to load their profiles?

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to increase the speed of the network log on when using roaming profiles?

Would it be wise for me just to not have a roaming profile in their properities settings when creating their accounts?

I hope someone can help, as this has become frustrating for some of my users on the network

Any suggestions is appreciated!
Gwizard

 

[spork]

I have the profiles in the homedirecotories and it does nothing to help the speed. There really isn't anything you can do as far as I know. Increasing network speed doesn't help the fact that the computer can only write to the Hard Drive so fast. If I were you I would look into something called "Folder Redirection." Its a feature of active direcotry group policies. I have that running for the administration at the school I work at and the logon time was decreased dramatacly.

 

[pQi]

Thank you for your response spork!

I will test this out...

 

[yawnbob]

The reason it's probably taking so long is because of the sheer amount of data that has to be redirected to the local drive from the profile on the server. The two things I usually see that cause this are (1) the Internet Explorer cache growing larger every day because users don't clear it and (2) users creating folders on their desktop and dumping all sorts of things there instead of their user directory. If it's on the desktop, it will get written back to the server when they log on and off. You can set a GPO to ignore saving temp IE files back to the server but the desktop issue has to be solved with user education or disk quotas (which will tick them off too). Be careful with the quotas, they have to have profile space x 2 to be able to save the profile when they logout.

 

[pQi]

Thank You yawnbob!

 

[Mturner]

how do you set the gpo to ignore the ie stuff? Marc Turner
Network Manager

E-Mail: Mturner@turnerm3.fsnet.co.uk

 

[pQi]

have'nt set the gpo yet to ignore any IE files yet. I am undecided as of now on what to do with the roaming profiles issue...If this is just for desktop and wallpaper settings, then I may just disable it completely. I am just plain confused...will work with it more this upcoming week...

 

[Mturner]

can anyone give me advice of any good websites explaining group policys etc? Marc Turner
Network Manager

E-Mail: Mturner@turnerm3.fsnet.co.uk

 

[Aslamvs]

hi Mturner,

Here you will get the documentation for GPO

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/howitworks/management/grouppolwp.asp

http://search.microsoft.com/default...i=07&i=08&i=09&qu=GPO documemtation&siteid=us

check this out.

HTH Aslam

 

[Mturner]

thank you Marc Turner
Network Manager

E-Mail: Mturner@turnerm3.fsnet.co.uk