Step 8: Determine Where to Store User Data
Published: February 25, 2008
A Terminal Services user may have both a standard user profile on the Windows Server 2008 server and a Terminal Services profile. This allows the user to maintain different settings for his or her logon to the server operating system and to the terminal server. For roaming users, these profiles should be stored on a fault tolerant file server. When the user logs off, any profile data should be removed from the terminal server’s hard drive and registry. This ensures that the terminal server stays clean and that users receive their profiles, no matter what servers in the farm they connect to. Where users may log on to more than one farm, they may need a different Terminal Services profile for each farm. These can be stored on a file server with a path like \\fileserver\share\Farm1\username where Farm1 is the name of the farm. There would then be a similar path for the profile that is used on Farm2, and one for Farm3, and so on. The path would be set up as \\fileserver\share\%FarmName%\username in the user account, and an environment variable created for %FarmName% on each farm. At logon to a particular terminal server farm, the environment variable would be automatically substituted with the actual name, like Farm2, in the Terminal Services profile path, and the correct profile would then be available. While user profiles are generally quite small, user data can require significant storage. Separate the user data (in My Documents and Application Data files) from the profile, and store them on a separate network drive, which can be replicated if the user travels. User profiles and data should not be stored on the terminal server. If they are stored on a particular terminal server and the server becomes unavailable, then the user may be able to establish a new session on another server in the farm, but his or her profile and user data will not be available. The objective of this step is to determine where to store the user data and profiles so that they are always available to all the servers in the farm. Task 1: Decide User Profile Policy and Storage LocationDetermine the following about user storage and record the information in the job aid in Appendix C.
Record the location where user profiles will be stored and the sizing of the store in the job aid (Appendix C). Task 2: Decide User Data Policy and Storage LocationDetermine the following about user storage and record the information in the job aid in Appendix C.
Record the location where user data will be stored and the sizing of the store in the job aid (Appendix C). Task 3: Design the Storage for User Profiles and User DataNow that the storage requirements for user profiles and user data have been determined, the two storage locations should be designed. As explained above, in an environment where a user connects to more than one farm, he or she may have different profiles and data on each farm, and so the following work must be completed separately for each farm. For the user profile and the user data stores, address the following areas to ensure that the solution will meet the requirements of the users and business:
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) can be used to provide fault tolerance and to improve performance of disk arrays. Common RAID options for production file servers include RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring), RAID 5 (Disk Striping with Parity), and RAID 0+1 (Mirror Stripe Sets). Each option offers a different portfolio of capacity, performance, and cost. By mapping this disk capacity requirement plus the RAID configuration to the size of disks in the selected subsystem, it is possible to determine the number of actual drives required for performance. The choice of disk redundancy levels such as RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 affects the IOPS calculation. By mapping this IOPS requirement to the selected type of disk subsystem and the drive characteristics of that subsystem, it is possible to determine the number of actual drives required to achieve the performance objectives. The actual number of disks required is the greater of the number determined necessary for capacity or the number determined necessary for performance. Usually that will be the number determined by performance. Document the storage design in the farm design job aid, like the example in Appendix C, then proceed to the scaling assessment in the next task. Decision SummaryDecisions have been made about what type of user profiles will be allowed, where they will be stored, and how much storage space they will require. The users’ data storage requirements have also been determined and addressed in the same way. This will ensure that the users’ profile(s) and their data are available on a consistent basis. Additional ReadingStep-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node File Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008, available at https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=518D870C-FA3E-4F6A-97F5-ACAF31DE6DCE&displaylang=en. |
|