Profiles and remote sites

[Guest]

Hi all,
I have a remote site which is connected to our main office via a 1mbit link.
We have installed a domain controller down at that site to allow for faster
logins.
Each user on our network is a roaming user and in Active Directory and Users
we have set up the profile path for them. However, we have a significant
proportion of users who are based at the remote site and they frequently come
to the main office to login. This works fine except that if there profile is
on the remote site, it takes ages for them to login while their profile is
downloaded. This also happens for users who's accounts are based at the main
office and they try to login at the remote office.
Is there a way where we can set a profile path on both remote and main site
and when they login, the machine detects the nearest server and downloads the
profile from there?
Thanks

 

[Odhammar]

Just a quick answer, have you ever tried a DFS area for the profiles? A DFS
area could you sync between servers.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Odhammar
I can see where you're coming from. However, in the AD Users and Computers,
uder the profile tile for each user there is a profile path. In there I can
put only a specific server path to a profile. I need the profile to be picked
up at the server local to the site the user is at.
Any ideas?
Thanks

 

[Guest]

Hmm, Odhammar expalined exactly what you need.
After you setup DFS your UNC to your prifiles will be something like

\\domain\dfs_root\profiles\user

this is going to be virtual link to both "real" places
\\server1\profiles
\\server2\profiles

Depending of where your user is logging on it will pickup nearest location
(I assume you corretly installed AD Sites). After user finish session DFS
will synchronise all changes between two locations.
This is all in theory. In practice if your logging servers are doing
something else aside user login it may be painfully slow. We had 1.5Mb
connection and really busy servers. It is hard to explain your boss sometime
that his 2GB profile is well ....too big for quick sync. Unfortunatelly for
us our next location was just two blocks away. Convinient for him but not for
busy server.

Anyway go for DFS, it sure can solve your problem.

 

[Guest]

OH!! Sorry.. I'll have a look.. thanks for all the help! Will keep you posted
if I have problems.. many thanks