I'm developing a remote desktop services in Windows Server 2008 R2. It's going on one server but in the future it's possible that another server could be added to the farm.
I'm creating roaming profiles and folder redirection to save space. I have some doubts… if I'm redirecting all the folders I can do that through GPO (start menu, desktop, appdata, My Documents, Videos, Music…), does it make sense to use roaming profiles?
I mean, I'm redirecting almost everything. So, if I don't use roaming profiles, what kind of data is not shared/roamed?
Perhaps it is not necessary and if I set roaming profiles, I will add more unnecessary complexity to the infrastructure.
Do you have and advice or recommendations?
Best Answer
The profile of a user contains the personalizations that the user configures in their user interface as well as the HKCU registry hive. If you don't use roaming profiles and have multiple servers users are logging into, a new profile will be created that will not contain any of the previously configured settings from any of the other servers.
IMO, roaming profiles along with redirected data folders are a good strategy for keeping all user data apart from servers that the users interact with. That way, if you ever lose a server or pull one from the farm for any reason, its pretty much plug a new one in and go forward.