Deploying Terminal Services

Using Home Directories

It is important that you plan to use home directories in a Terminal Services environment because most applications must install user-specific information or copy configuration files for every user. To keep user profiles to a reasonable size (less than 2 MB), it is recommended that all Terminal Services users have a network home directory and a network My Documents directory in which application-specific information is stored.

By default, Windows 2000 defines a home directory for each user. The default user's directory is under the documents and settings directory. This directory contains both user documents and settings. The user documents are stored in the user's home directory or My Documents folder. Terminal Services writes user-specific application files, such as .ini files, to the user's Windows directory and by default refers any application seeking the system Windows directory to the user's Windows directory.

Users typically use their home directories to save their personal files. This can be a problem if roaming profiles are used and the home directory is located within the user's profile directory. Windows 2000 copies everything in the user's profile directory to the profile cache each time the user logs on. This can take considerable time and resources, particularly if the roaming profile is stored across the network.

It is recommended that you use Terminal Services–specific home directories which are available automatically through the MMC snap-ins. One approach would be to create a directory on the file server called Homedirs and give Change permissions to Everyone. Then specify the Terminal Services home directory location as p:\Homedirs\%username%. Terminal Services automatically creates the username subdirectory and gives it the appropriate permissions. By default, each user has full access to his or her own home directory and administrators can copy files into the directory, but not read or delete files there.

It is helpful for all users to have the same virtual drive letter for their home directory redirection point to facilitate the use of application compatibility scripts. The first time you run an application compatibility script on a server, it prompts you to set the drive letter that references the root of the user's home directory. This drive letter is used for all subsequent application compatibility scripts. It is essential that the same drive letter is used on all Terminal servers within a server farm.

Folder Redirection is a unique feature of Windows 2000 that allows users and administrators to redirect the path of a folder to a new location. The new location can be a folder on the local computer or a directory on a network share. Users have the ability to work with shared documents on a secure server as if they were based on the local drive. Using this option, an administrator can redirect the user's My Documents folder to a private server share that can be accessed from either their Windows 2000 Professional client computer or their Terminal Services session. This feature is managed using Group Policy.