W7 clients on 2003 domain

Banzai_Joe · 29 Jan 2010 at 14:27

Hi all,

I'm about to put forward a business plan to the boss for 6 new cad/rendering desktops full of i7 6Gb ram goodness.

We are on a 2003 R2 domain, with Exchange 2007 (on 2008 server). All clients are currently xp pro.

However the new cad stations will likely run Win 7 x64. I also want them to utilise roaming profiles as the designers will constantly move from one station to another.

Has anyone experienceed any issues with:
a) W7 on 2003 domains
b) roaming profiles used in this way

I know a lot of folk don't like roaming profiles, but adding the same local profiles to each station is not practical.

Any advice appreciated, thanks

Django x2 · 29 Jan 2010 at 14:43

no, its fine.

You gain a lot more functionality using 2008/2008 R2 with Windows 7 (from a GPO POV).

Other than that, you'll be fine.

neil_g · 29 Jan 2010 at 14:48

no issues over here

Banzai_Joe · 29 Jan 2010 at 15:00

Thanks so far guys.

Thinking about the cpu to furnish the machines with.
I've shortlisted 3, with the 4th (Q6600) is what we're currently using, listed for comparison.
Tom's Hardware - Benchmark SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP3 Cryptography

The stations will run; AutoCad, Photoshop, Sketchup, with the possibly of 3d studio max.
Our current Q6600 2gb ram setup don't seem to cut it very well. Maybe its the lack of ram, but we're currently on xp pro x32 bit.
Any opinions please?

derkaderka · 29 Jan 2010 at 15:42

Yeah in our company I am one of the victims testing this out
So far the 32bit win 7 is fine
the 64bit will NOT work correctly with 2003 server when syncing home drives/my documents
But will work with 2008 server ( way to go MS marketing dept)

Banzai_Joe · 29 Jan 2010 at 15:58

derkaderka said:
Yeah in our company I am one of the victims testing this out
So far the 32bit win 7 is fine
the 64bit will NOT work correctly with 2003 server when syncing home drives/my documents
But will work with 2008 server ( way to go MS marketing dept)

Hmm....any idea why you think it does that?
The 64-bit requirement is to take full advantage of 6gb of ram for rendering software etc.
Currently all pc's on the network have 'My Docs' redirected, although manually, not through GPO, so it may work as i've heard there are GPO issues with W7 and server 2003.
Home drives aren't used/mapped so that's not an issue.
What do you think?

derkaderka · 29 Jan 2010 at 16:03

In our company my docs are synced to network
I have xp sp3 , win7 32bit and win 7 64 on my laptop ( I do software compatabilty testing at the moment)
Under win7 64 , I cannot change anything in my documents ( can read them tho)
But we currently use 2003 server not 2008 , this will work fine once we upgrade
to 2008 server .. but I dont know when the powers that be are going to do that.

theheyes · 29 Jan 2010 at 17:21

W7 x64 works fine on our 2003 R2 network, but I strongly advise you grabbing a copy and trying it for real on a spare PC or something. It's the only way to properly test it really.

BlueMhz · 29 Jan 2010 at 20:55

k.Jacko said:
I know a lot of folk don't like roaming profiles, but adding the same local profiles to each station is not practical.

If you use full roaming profiles, then the larger the profile gets, the longer it takes to copy down from the network (and so longer to logon) and copy back up to the network (and so longer to logoff).

UncleBensSauce · 30 Jan 2010 at 13:13

BlueMhz said:
If you use full roaming profiles, then the larger the profile gets, the longer it takes to copy down from the network (and so longer to logon) and copy back up to the network (and so longer to logoff).

Surely thats only if your logging onto a different pc to your last logon? only changes move?

EDIT: Sorry you did say full roaming (in which case you'd probably want a teeny size limit for user files! - not gona work for large renders)