Folder Redirection vs Roaming Profiles

[InlineFour]

both have their advantages and disadvantages, but which is more common in a corporate office?

 

[V00D00]

I find that roaming profiles kind of suck. They don't always work right. Maybe I need to upgrade to Server 2003 though. That's how microsoft gets you. Bastards...

By the by, what do you mean by folder redirection? Redirect the profile folders to somewhere on a server??

 

[InlineFour]

win2003 folder redir

Folder redirection allows you to save portions of the user?s profile in a different location on the network. The advantage to using folder redirection is that once a folder has been redirected to an alternate location, it no longer has to be copied every time that the user logs on or off.

 

[RebateMonger]

Roaming profiles are a convenience sometimes, but the downside is that logon can take a LONG time, especially if you aren't careful about what goes into your profiled folders. Same thing is true in a large company if many people are using roaming profiles.

Folder redirection of user's "My Documents" folder is the default in Windows Small Business Server 2003. The point is getting important user files onto the Server, where you can do easy backup of everybody's data in one pass.

One interesting new feature in Windows Server 2003 R2 is the ability to restrict the folder redirection, so that .mp3 files, etc., aren't redirected to to your server. This avoids copying "unimportant" files to the server and having to back them up.

 

[GeekDrew]

As an admin, I greatly prefer folder redirection... saves tons of bandwidth, and serves just about every purpose possibly required.

As a user, I slightly prefer roaming profiles, just because *everything* goes with you then.

 

[gsellis]

They are really two different solutions.

Folder Redirection - We adopted this corporate wide on this premise - We in IT are responsible for making sure that our users do not need to be IT experts. It is our job to backup their data and give them a location that they can access across the campus if needs require it. By using folder redirection, we move the data, that also belongs to the company, where we can protect it with daily backups. The user is no longer required to backup key files as long as they use the my documents structure for their working files and the shared work folder for workgroup data. Remember, your non-IT customers have a job that they do best. Making them IT folks also is not necessarily in anyone's best interest. They hired us to make sure that even if someone in their department does click on that file attachment, it will do no harm. (I know - I too wish they wouldn't, but it is easier to design a better security config than upgrade the users.)

Roaming User allows a customer to go from set to set with their settings. If used with Folder Redirection, it can be managed, but the roaming has a high cost in maintenance as the roaming profile is easily damaged if logging out has issues (write back occurs at log out and is not journaled.) But, it also requires tight management of the profile policies and IE as the profile can become overly large if it is not finely tuned. Large profiles can increase log in time greatly, especially where bandwidth is 'challenged'.

 

[spyordie007]

I find that roaming profiles kind of suck. They don't always work right. Maybe I need to upgrade to Server 2003 though. That's how microsoft gets you. Bastards...

It doesnt matter what server type you're using for the roaming profiles share (you could even use Linux); it's a feature of the OS (XP).

Just thought I would mention some other things that I havent seen on this thread yet:
1. Folder Redirection is great for machines that are always connected to the network; but for machines that are frequently offline it means you've got to do offline caching which can sometimes be problematic. As others have mentioned it also doesnt get all of the data (i.e. your appdata directory or desktop)
2. With XP and 2000 Roaming profiles just do differential pulls of data. Even if you have a large profile login/out can still be reasonably quick so long as there isnt a large amount of data that has changed (granted it still has to check to find out what has changed and this can take time, but it's much quicker than it was under NT4 as that offloaded the entire profile to the server on every logoff).

I had a discussion with one of the MSFT User Data PMs a couple months back and at the time the plan is to "integrate" the 2 under Vista. Using a roaming profile but to use folder redirection and the new sync engine to push the changes up while you are logged on (which you're not supposed to try with roaming profiles today). Granted all this is still subject to change; I've had a few issues with the sync engine under the current builds so I havent gotten around to playing with this yet.