Outlook 2010 on RDS Server Farm - Profile not xferring

I have a Remote Desktop server farm (Windows Server 2008R2 config) with 3 servers that users log on to.

They open Outlook on "Server 1". Create a contact named Sally. This saves into an outlook data file in their documents folder, which is set to redirect to a single server, "File Server". It saves as "outlook.pst". Pretty cool.

Now, we log off.

Round Robin redirection, on next login, sends poor old Joe to "Server 2".

Opens outlook, it doesn't immediately recognize any data file - it goes through the initial setup, and voila, no Sally.

Go to File > Open > Open Data File.

Look here. Now in the "Documents" folder, which is redirected from "File Server", it has not one, but two .pst files! "Outlook.pst", and the newly created "Outlook1.pst".

So the .pst file transferred properly with folder redirection, but wasn't chosen or loaded, now leaving two .psts.

Log on to "Server 3", and you will have 3 .psts.

What the hell.

I also redirect AppData to "File Server" as well. On my folder redirection policies on the Domain Controller, I redirect every damn thing.

What am I missing? You would think this would be simple, considering Windows Server and Outlook are two prime Microsoft products. Eco-system, anybody?

dthree

Posted 2014-05-24T21:47:33.830

Reputation: 213

Answers

Outlook stores its settings in AppData Local. Folder Redirection redirects AppData Roaming. It sounds like you're not using roaming user profiles. Therefore, the user profile for each user is local to the server that the user is logged on to. When you log onto each server for the first time for each user Outlook will run the first run wizard because that is in fact the first time Outlook is being run for that user on that server, again because there is no roaming user profile for the user. Outlook doesn't know it should use the existing PST file because that PST file wasn't created with the local user profile except for the server that it was originally created on.

You need to use roaming user profiles. That will solve your problem.

joeqwerty

Posted 2014-05-24T21:47:33.830

Reputation: 5 259

Thanks and very informative! Now, I might be wrong, but doesn't roaming user profiles imply that those user files have to copy to each server respectively whenever someone logs on? – dthree – 2014-05-24T22:55:09.753

Yes. That's the point of roaming profiles, to maintain a consistent user profile across multiple servers. You can continue to redirect AppData Roaming if you want and it's advisable to also redirect My Documents/Documents to keep the roaming profile from getting too large. – joeqwerty – 2014-05-24T23:06:36.203