Roaming Profile

[brotj7]

Not sure if this is the right place...

Goal:
Set up roaming profile for my wife(and eventually our kids) to be able to use any of the PC's in the house with her own profile. Dedicate and map a drive in our Vista Ultimate media server, so she can use it like a drop box and not need to store anything local to each machine.


Available Resources:
2x copies of Win Server 2008 R2
1x copy of Win server 2003(not sure of the version)
2x socket 939 athlon x64 4200+dual cores
6x 3yr licences of Kaspersky IS
VMWare Workstation
VMWare player


Household PCs:
media server Q6600 w Vista Ultimate
netbook with xp pro w/atom processor and 2g ram
s939 athlon x64 4800+ desktop with XP x64
Asus G72 17" notebook with Win 7 x64 Home Premium
2x Core 2 Duo E6300 towers with XP x86 I use to back up family pictures/videos to


Possible Steps:
1. Purchase and update all household PC OS with of Win 7 pro.
2. Set up a domain server
3. Replace the netbook with a laptop if not useable


Unknown:
1. I believe I need a domain server to set this up, what else?

2. How would security work, does each machine still have KIS installed in the Admin account and her account will just be limited? What if she gets a virus, does it travel with the profile or stay with the machine?

3. How does Office work? We have office XP, 2003???, and 2x office 2007. Does office move with the profile, or stay with the hardware?

4. I believe I will have to turn off local file saves, what does this do to auto saves for documents?

Thanks in advance all,
Robb

 

[Quantos]

Well first of all you'll have an issue with the laptop that's got Home Premium on it. You can't join a domain with that version (or any Home version, regardless of the OS).

 

[TheSlamma]

Unknown:
1. I believe I need a domain server to set this up, what else?

2. How would security work, does each machine still have KIS installed in the Admin account and her account will just be limited? What if she gets a virus, does it travel with the profile or stay with the machine?

3. How does Office work? We have office XP, 2003???, and 2x office 2007. Does office move with the profile, or stay with the hardware?

4. I believe I will have to turn off local file saves, what does this do to auto saves for documents?

Thanks in advance all,
Robb

1: Domain controller yes, you will have to setup domain user accounts for each of your family members. Each PC or User has to have server 2008 CALs too in order to legally login to that server.

2: You install Kaspersky on each machine with the admin account yes, the whole machine will be protected. Virus's can infect the user profile and follow them yes, but that is why you run the AV on all of your PC's. If it does get uploaded to your server then the profile would have to be cleaned by AV on the server or by scanning it from a client over the network.

3: Office stays on the system it's installed on and does nto roam.

4: You have quite a few of options here, depending on your comfort level. Just to list only a couple are, portable storage like USB HD or Flash, Folder relocation or my fav if you know what you are doing with Group Policies is to use folder redirection along with the roaming profiles. Setting up Home Folders in the user accounts under the "Profile" tab will really help you in this. You will need a share location like on your Domain controller or a NAS which I suggest have drive redundancy and backups done.

 

[brotj7]

1: Domain controller yes, you will have to setup domain user accounts for each of your family members. Each PC or User has to have server 2008 CALs too in order to legally login to that server.

2: You install Kaspersky on each machine with the admin account yes, the whole machine will be protected. Virus's can infect the user profile and follow them yes, but that is why you run the AV on all of your PC's. If it does get uploaded to your server then the profile would have to be cleaned by AV on the server or by scanning it from a client over the network.

3: Office stays on the system it's installed on and does nto roam.

4: You have quite a few of options here, depending on your comfort level. Just to list only a couple are, portable storage like USB HD or Flash, Folder relocation or my fav if you know what you are doing with Group Policies is to use folder redirection along with the roaming profiles. Setting up Home Folders in the user accounts under the "Profile" tab will really help you in this. You will need a share location like on your Domain controller or a NAS which I suggest have drive redundancy and backups done.

1. Thank you, that was not clear to me. I believe I purchased 5 CALs per Server 2008 install.

2. Gotcha.

3. Gotcha.

4. Folder redirection is what I had imagined. Is it safe to have the data reside on the same physical machine as the DC? I set up active directory with Ubuntu and Samba for classwork ~1-2yrs ago, but it was more hands on "this is how to do it" than why it needs to be set up a certain way. Is there a best practices guide or anything I shouldn't do with the DC?