Do you know anything about Roaming Profiles? When you are in a windows domain network, you can use roaming profiles so every user in the network can have its own desktop experience no matter witch workstation he or she is logging on to.
Local Profile's data are stored in the local system hard drive. And typically, it's in the windows drive. In the opposite side, in roaming profile user's data is stored in a centralized place, typically a domain server.
Local Profile's data are stored in the local system hard drive. And typically, it's in the windows drive. In the opposite side, in roaming profile user's data is stored in a centralized place, typically a domain server.
Roaming profile has its own pros and cons of course.
Let's see some pros first.
- Allows users to log into multiple computers with their own personal data. This works great in an environment where people don’t have designated desks, such as an open lab.
- You as an administrator can easily backup user's data, because all the user's data are in a central place. Or you can setup an automatic periodically backup. It will reduce the data loss.
- If a system suddenly crashed, until the system is being fixed, user can temporally use another workstation yet having his/her own user data.
- If a user gets a new pc, usually you have to move his/her data to the new pc. but with using roaming profiles obviously there's no need to do that.
Ok, let's see some cons either.
- user logon time will be increased due to user data size and network traffic.
- loading and synchronizing user data consumes the network bandwidth and reduces network performance.
- Users does not have understanding of how it works may make trouble! for example, there are times that workstation is getting the user data from server or times that workstation is synchronizing the user data with the server, that it means it's sending user data back to the server. If users put unusual data (for example video files with large size) on personal directories like "my documents", it will reduce the network performance dramatically. and even it can lead to user data corruption too! In this case, we need a huge bandwidth due to the number of users. duhhhh!!
- Using roaming profiles force you to share directories on the server, so it increases the risk of malware infection for server. As you know, when a domain server is infected by a virus, things are different rather than just a regular workstation.
- Users does not have understanding of how it works may make trouble! for example, there are times that workstation is getting the user data from server or times that workstation is synchronizing the user data with the server, that it means it's sending user data back to the server. If users put unusual data (for example video files with large size) on personal directories like "my documents", it will reduce the network performance dramatically. and even it can lead to user data corruption too! In this case, we need a huge bandwidth due to the number of users. duhhhh!!
- Using roaming profiles force you to share directories on the server, so it increases the risk of malware infection for server. As you know, when a domain server is infected by a virus, things are different rather than just a regular workstation.
There are much more pros and cons, but if you wanna know more , use the links bellow.
So you as a network administrator should know everything about roaming profiles and decide to use or not to use it in your network, or maybe you choose just a group of users to have roaming profiles. I don’t know .it depends. Right?!
I put some useful links at the end like before. I hope it does help.
1 comment:
I think many people are not aware of Roaming Profiles. so good post!
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