Question : Pro and Cons of Roaming Profiles

  I am just throwing this out for general discussion. I have several Windows 2003 Server networks. I move people's "My Documents" to the server alond with their Outlook data file but that is about it.

   I have been thinking about going back through all my networks and chaning everyone to roaming profiles but want to run it by the experts first. What are the pros and cons of doing this? Thanks!

Answer : Pro and Cons of Roaming Profiles

Folder redirection is great, use it (like you are).

You can use roaming profiles, but I do not recommend doing so without some customizations.  Specifically, configure them to EXCLUDE just about every profile directory.  

So what's the point of having a roaming profile if you exclude all the directories?  Acctually, I consider it more like roaming registries.  Basically, the user registry will roam with the user.

Why?  Roaming profiles, if you don't exclude directories could end up filling up hard drives on systems with relatively small drives if multiple users log in to them.  Windows keeps every profile it sees, so each time a new user logs in, more space is taken.  Now if everyone worked appropriately and no one saved large files, this might not be a problem.  But if you don't use folder redirection on the desktop, and "joe smith" downloads 4 Fedora Core CDs and puts them on the desktop, he's now got 3GB+ of data sitting on his desktop.  Each computer he logs in to before removing those CDs will get a copy and eat 3 GB.  Get 10 users like that, and 30 GB is gone.  EASILY filling up 10,20,30, and possibly even 40 GB drives.  And once the drive gets full, the profile (more specifically, the registry) corrupts.  Then you have to figure out which system corrupted it to prevent it from happening again.

Then of course, there's the logon time.  Assuming "Joe Smith" did download 3 GB of ISO images, now he has to WAIT every time he logs in because that 3 GB has to be copied to his local system and wait when he logs out because it has to be copied BACK to the server.  This creates MUCH unneeded network traffic and potentially slows your users down (even if it weren't a network bandwidth issue, you have issues on the server with disk contention as 3 GB is needlessly read or written).

And even if large files like this weren't an issue, the small ones aren't all that much better.  Large files tend to copy FAST, small ones SLOW.  Test.  Get yourself 200 MB of 1K files and a 200 MB single file.  Now copy them.  The 200 MB file should copy on a 100 mbit line (assuming little to no fragmentation, no other network traffic and the server isn't responding to other requests) in about 25-30 seconds.  Copying the 200,000 1K files will probably take closer to 5-15 minutes.

Now 200,000 small files might be pushing it, but I've seen RECENT folders with 1000 recent entries plus people with TONS of shortcuts, and then there's other small files that may end up being copied.  The small files will cause a logon delay and the large files will cause a logon delay.

Finally, I know this from setting it up at what was my "day job" for nearly 10 years until I left to pursue consulting 2.5 years ago.  These are the problems we had.  It wasn't so bad in general, except on communal machines - which were VERY problematic.