windows roaming profile alternative from the local admin perspective

Question

i have to login daily to multiple (30) windows servers.

while i am not a domain administrator, i do have admin rights for these 30 servers.

sometimes i have to make changes to my home folder, like add a new shortcut do my desktop or a new snapin to mmc.

since roaming profiles are not enabled in the domain, i need a "client side" alternative to sync my home folder across my 30 servers.

would something like owncloud or a DFS replication group break my profile?

feel free to suggest anything. there's no bad answers here.

Answer 1

If you have a network home drive configured (mapped) for your user in Active Directory, you can redirect some or all folders from your local profile to point there, depending on your needs.

This feature is called folder redirection

Folder redirection is independent from roaming profiles. It can also be configured using policies (local or domain). Note that this must be done for all your local profiles on all servers you are using but it can be scripted very easily.

If you have more complex requirements, you will have to use some additional tools. Microsoft provides a very powerful and free tool (USMT, User State Migration Tool) to deal with user profiles during migrations scenarios, but it can be used to address your need.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usmt-overview

Finally, there are other tools available on the market that are more user friendly than USMT (which is a command line tool) but most of them are not free and I cannot recommend any of them myself.