How to Centralize Application Settings?

[ctoledo]

I am currently setting up a brand new W2K3/AD/EX2K3 + Citrix Environment to migrate all my users to in a few months. Things have gone very well for the most part and nightmarish at times. I want to offer a Citrix environment primarily for remote users and for our general office user who only needs MS Office apps and their Home Folder. My question is, how do I go about centralizing the user's application settings so that no matter what Citrix server they log onto they have the same Outlook profile, etc. Is that under the user's account Terminal Services profile option or should I be ReDirecting the Folders through GPO's? At the moment I am ReDirecting everyone's My Docs so we can enforce backups but although I want to centralize the user's application settings I do NOT wish to backup as it is not critical in time of disaster. Sorry this is long winded but between playing around with GPO Folder Redirect's, Terminal Services Profiles, Limiting Profile Size, Deleting Temp Profile Caches from Citrix Servers, etc, I am pulling my hair in trying to come up with a sensible setup. Thanx much.

 

[Philly44]

I would go with roaming profiles. Where I work that is what we use and it works fine. We have 1 server that holds the profiles, home shares and groups shares and 3 Citrix servers that are load balanced with each other to publish full desktops. We rarely encounter problems with this setup. Everything is Centralized and there is only 1 server that needs regular backups.

 

[ctoledo]

Roming profiles is what I am leaning towards. But instead of setting it at the user account level, I set the Roaming Profile on a GPO attached to the OU where the Citrix Servers reside. This way I only have roaming profiles for Citrix sessions only and minimize profile sizes. Since we only intend to use Citrix as a CyberCommuting option I dont envision publishing a full desktop and just necessary appz and HomeDrives. As I write this I just realized that I put my Home Folders in the same volume as my Network Shares, which means cant do quotas as it will also limit Network shares, DOH! Anywayz, thanx for the feedback.