redirection folder uncovered

Before starting : I am not spealing about My Documents 's redirection.

Redirection folder may seems a great solution to US. Logon/logoff is fast, but data remains on the server, which means protected.

As we have been using redirection of both Application data, desktop and start menu, i would like to explain the downside which made us going back to standard roaming profile.

We encountered 4 main troubles:

1/When the file server is not available, users feel it immediately:

Redirection:Desktop

consequence:all files on the desktop disappear

Redirection:Application Data

consequence:softwares using it don't work anymore. Quick Launch icons disappear

Redirection:Start Menu

consequence:all shortcuts disappear

2/A lot of software use relative path, which doesn't work with application data

With redirection folder, the local profile doesn't have an application folder. Many software, once in the user profile, issue a nice "cd ..\Application data", which fails.

3/Even clustered, when doing a failover, users feel it

Same consequences as 1/. They have to issue a refresh to get the desktop back

4/ redirection & Internet Explorer maintenance issue

Having both IE maintenance (proxy settings) and redirection was an issue. Even if splitted into 2 GPO. We had to apply an hotfix for Windows XP SP1 and SP2.

For now, we just have roaming profile and My documents redirection + offline.

Hope it helps,