I have tried to setup roaming profiles on Windows 2008 R2 Server running with all Win7 client PCs. I have setup folder redirection for My Documents, Desktop, Favorites and AppData.
Have two questions
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The folder redirection part seems to be working as expected. The user and all folders under it get created and I see files in them. But the roaming profile does not seem to work. The roaming profile folder does get created with a .V2 appended to the username but it shows empty with nothing in it. I have logging on as that user a couple of times (BTW: The roaming profile is setup in AD and not in Group Policy). I have doubled checked the Share and NTFS permissions as in other threads on this site and they look correct.
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How is roaming profile different than redirecting My Documents, Desktop, Favorites and AppData. In other words what else gets shared/centralized by enabling roaming profiles.
Best Answer
Can you tell us specifically what the Share and NTFS permissions are?
Roaming profiles and Folder Redirection are two independent components but are often used together. Folders that you redirect that are normally a part of the user profile are separated from the user profile when you use Folder Redirection. The use of Folder Redirection serves to decrease logon and logoff times by reducing the size of the roaming profile. All components of the profile other than those folders that are redirected become centralized on the server share where you've configured roaming profiles to be created. When a user logs on, a copy of the roaming profile is copied locally to the machine the user is logging on to. When the user logs off, the profile (and any changes to the profile) are copied back to the roaming profile share on the server. Roaming profiles use a "last writer wins" mechanism to determine what changes should be copied to/from the roaming profile share.