Explain in detail the roaming profile. Address the following points: i. What is

Question

Explain in detail the roaming profile. Address the following points:
i. What is the purpose of a roaming profile?
ii. Settings that have to made, folders that have to be created, configuration of the folders.
iii. Describe the sequence of events when logging on as a user with a roaming profile as described in the Week 5 / Walkthrough 2 exercise but in your words.
iv. Describe what happens when logging on and the network resource for the roaming profile is not accessible.
v. Describe what happens when logging off and the network resource for the roaming profile is not accessible – there was no exercise in the weekly walkthroughs, but you could simulate it. Logon with the roaming profile from XP then switch to Server 2008 and disable the share then logoff from XP.
vi. The advantages and disadvantages of roaming user profiles.

Explanation / Answer

I.

How to Configure a User Account to Use a Roaming User Profile in a Windows-Based Domain

\server_nameshared_folder_nameuser_profile_folder_name

\Server1Profiles%username%

Folder redirection with mandatory profilesEdit

Folder redirection may be used with mandatory profiles, and is useful in situations where it is desirable to "lock down" the general desktop appearance but still allow users to save documents to the network. For example, this can be used as a generic account for anyone to use without a password for temporary use.

Redirecting My Documents and the Desktop in a mandatory profile will allow documents to be saved, but at logoff, any changes to the desktop appearance such as the desktop picture, Internet Explorer cookies, Favorites, and the Recent documents opened list are reverted to the original state.[10]

Folder redirection with mandatory profiles is accomplished by denying write access to the central copy of the profile. When users log off, they may expect to regularly receive an error that the profile could not successfully be copied back to the server. A user should also be aware that storing data in certain locations may cause their data to be lost. For example, if the desktop is reset every time a user logs on with the mandatory profile's desktop, then although it seems fine to save files on the desktop, when the user logs off, the profile does not get copied to the server, and when the user logs back on, any work saved on the desktop is permanently lost without any advance notice other than the error on logout that the profile could not be copied.

Occasionally a users profile may need to be reset if the profile becomes corrupt or to resolve an issue with an application, a reset would normally be performed by a systems administrator or helpdesk staff. To perform a reset the affected user needs to log out of the system and then the folder where the users roaming profile is stored on the server is then renamed, the user profile must also be deleted from the local workstation the user logs into otherwise the user will take the locally stored profile on next login. When the profile has been cleared from the local machine when the user logs in a new profile will be generated using the default profile stored on the workstation, when the user logs out the profile will be copied back to the location where the users roaming profile was stored. ADVANTAGES :

Each time a user logs into a workstation, all of the files and settings are transferred over the network; the result is that the login process takes longer than if the user were to use a local profile. This is particularly the case if the profile is large in size. The login time may be reduced if the profile is cached as some files can be loaded from the local workstation and by using folder redirection to redirect folders that can grow to a large size, like My Documents, to a network share.

However, this limitation has been addressed in Windows Server 2008 Active Directory by allowing folder redirection of almost all folders that were previously stored in a user's profile (including My Music, Favorites, and others) to a centralized and secured network share. This means that a user's roaming profile can easily be reduced to size smaller than 20MB, thus eliminating the long login times that were experienced with previous versions of AD. When using folder redirection and automatic caching of offline files, all of a user's files and preferences are available offline and synced in a much more efficient manner than previously possible when the computer is reconnected to the network using Remote Differential Compression (RDC).

Another problem is related to different set of applications installed on machines, applications stores information into Local Settings and some into the registry, but only the registry is transferred across. It can corrupt application functionality under roaming profile.

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