{"id":1181,"date":"2011-04-01T13:57:33","date_gmt":"2001-01-01T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inswwdev.azurewebsites.net\/au\/insights\/uncategorized\/ive-got-99-problems-and-folder-redirection-is-every-one-of-them-2015-testing-results-part-1\/"},"modified":"2023-08-07T04:51:27","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T04:51:27","slug":"ive-got-99-problems-and-folder-redirection-is-every-one-of-them-2015-testing-results-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/insights\/geek-speak\/modern-workplace\/ive-got-99-problems-and-folder-redirection-is-every-one-of-them-2015-testing-results-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve Got 99 Problems and Folder Redirection is Every One of Them! (2015 Testing Results) Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0a multi-part article detailing our testing results and presentations for the 2015 series on Folder Redirection:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve Got 99 Problems and Folder Redirection is Every One of Them. 2015 Testing Results. Part 1.\u00a0(this article)<\/p>\n

Last year,\u00a0<\/span>Helge Klein<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Shawn Bass<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and myself presented the results of around of testing on Folder Redirection at events such as Citrix Synergy and BriForum and via\u00a0<\/span>a series of blog posts<\/span><\/a>. This year, we again delved into various testing scenarios, presented to well attended sessions and this blog post summarises our 2015 results.<\/p>\n

Why Folder Redirection?<\/h3>\n

Why does Folder Redirection continue to a topic of discussion? With the release of Windows 10, Folder Redirection will continue to remain a component of the enterprise desktop, as the basic architecture in Windows that requires it, has not changed. A Windows profile still contains user folders such as Documents, Desktop, etc. that need to be protected. Additionally the basic structure of the profile has not changed.<\/p>\n

From our perspective, we\u2019re interested in providing our audience with an overview of the pitfalls and challenges involved in implementing folder redirection, providing tips and tricks for managing folder redirection performance effectively and putting forward some potential alternatives.<\/p>\n

Just as we continue to discuss printing in VDI and SBC environments because users still print, so to shall the discussion around folder redirection continue.<\/p>\n

Folder redirection remains a popular method of user data and profile management because it can improve the user experience by achieving two things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Faster logons \u2013 redirecting AppData out of the profile reduces the amount of data required to be copied locally at user logon<\/li>\n
  2. Abstracting user data \u2013 moving user data out of the profile to a home folder ensures data is available on any desktop and allows IT to protect that data<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    However, by implementing folder redirection, we\u2019ve moved data that applications constantly interact with from the local machine to a shared resource. This means that good\u00a0user experience now requires your storage back-end and network to be responsive and highly available.<\/p>\n

    Those shared resources (network, storage, hypervisor, CPU etc.) contend for resources, especially in today\u2019s data centre with traditional shared storage and with most applications and file services on a virtualized platform. This is what has driven us to to do this testing and present the results to the community \u2013 many organisations don\u2019t consider the ramifications of implementing folder redirection. Performance on day 1 may be good, but as an environment grows organically and resources become further contended, user experience suffers.<\/p>\n

    2015 Testing Focus<\/h3>\n

    This year, we focussed our testing on several areas:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Comparing SMB 2.1 with SMB 3.02 \u2013 last year we tested primarily with Windows 7 as the client. In this round we\u2019ve used Windows 8.1 as the client to\u00a0see whether SMB 3.02 provides any improvements over SMB 2.1<\/li>\n
    2. IO performance \u2013 does SMB 3.02 improve raw IO performance and throughput over SMB 2.1?<\/li>\n
    3. Workload simulations \u2013 we\u2019ve used the File Server Capacity Toolkit to model how users work with home folders to demonstrate the performance profiles of various scenarios and show you how you can do performance modelling for your file servers<\/li>\n
    4. Folder redirection alternatives \u2013 newer file sync and share solutions that have been popular of the past several years may make interesting alternatives to folder redirection. I\u2019ve\u00a0<\/span>written about one of these previously<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and we have covered several more alternatives. I\u2019ll cover some additional alternatives in seperate articles.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      All of our testing this year was performed with Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 on the client end, with Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 R2 on the server end.<\/p>\n

      Utilising a specific version of SMB requires that both the client and server are capable of speaking that particular version of the protocol. If you want to read a thorough explanation of SMB versions and how they are negotiated, this article is recommended reading \u2013\u00a0Windows Server 2012 R2: Which version of the SMB protocol (SMB 1.0, SMB 2.0, SMB 2.1, SMB 3.0 or SMB 3.02) are you using?<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

      I\u2019ve already covered the tools that we\u2019ve used in our testing in this blog post \u2013\u00a0Replicating Our 2015 Folder Redirection Performance Tests In Your Own Lab<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

      In my own lab, all of the testing was done on the following hardware and software:<\/p>\n