Posted: 2/8/2008 7:58:58 AM EDT
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I am trying to set up roaming profiles on my office network (Windows 2000 server and Active directory). My main purpose for this is simple user profile backups since everyone saves everything in either "my documents" or their desktop. What I want to happen is, when a person logs off, any changes they made locally gets saved to the server. When they log back on I do no want anything to synchronize. The server copy is just a backup should a hard drive fail on a workstation. This is not a backup againts 1D10T errors like deleting a file by mistake. These are some problems I'm running into and I'm not sure if it is a configuration issue or if this is how roaming profiles are supposed to work. When a file is delete locally and the user logs out, the file is not deleted from the server. When the user logs back in the deleted file reappears(very very annoying and may blow up space usage.). If a file were deleted from the server, when the user logs in the local copy is delete as well(very very bad). Can these "problems" be fixed or is this working as intended? |
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I think folder redirection would work if I were going to back up the NAS. I'm not backing up the NAS as the NAS is the backup of the local computer(I highly doubt the office would spring for 2 new servers). The NAS will have a RAID 1 configuration so should a drive fail I'm covered. Is there anyway to setup the Windows backup utility to run at logoff? The only option I saw was running at logon. |
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Implementing roaming profiles is problematic, at best, and allowing users to store things in their My Documents folders and trying to sync that across the wire makes the whole situation worse. It is possible on small (one switch) networks with lots of bandwidth, but anything larger than that gets very cumbersome, and the more your users stick in their folders, the worse it gets. You would be much better off giving them a private drive and redirecting their desktops to that share. The problems you're having is because the roaming profiles are not syncing successfully, most likely because you don't have enough bandwidth or your server is too wimpy (or your users are shutting down their computers before the sync completes). Once the profiles get out of sync, they (almost) never get back into sync again, in which case the server copy takes precedent over the local one. The only way to fix the problem (that I know of, anyway) is to go around and delete all the local copies of the roaming profiles and then resync with the server. Of course, if you haven't fixed what was causing the corruption in the first place, then it will happen again. |
Can that be changed? I want the local copy to the THE copy. The server pushes NOTHING to the computer. The copy on the server will only be used if/when a user's computer dies and we need to restore all of their files. External backup drives are not an option. Too much of a secruity risk as anyone could walk off with the drive. The reason why I'm trying to use a roaming profile for this is because all I need to do is edit 60 - 75 enteries in active directory and the end users won't notice any changes. If I have to go around to manually configure a backup utility on this many computers it will never happen. |
I found a program called Microsoft SyncToy. This program does exactly want I , except the end user would need to run it manually  With SyncToy you select a folder pair. A "left" folder and a "right" folder. You then select your sync action. What I'm trying to do for my backup plan would be an "echo". New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right. Is there anyway to setup roaming profiles to do the same, or is there something else that would let me do this? If not, I'll just install this application on everything workstation in my office and configure it for each user. I will teach the end users how to run the the sync. It's not the best option but it's much better than what we have now(no real backup system to speak of.) |
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Maybe you can script the synctoy app? I found this page: blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2005/09/02/459912.aspx |