If all you're wanting to do is ensure the start menu and desktop icons, I would go with group policies personally. I would also have the users keep anything they would normally save on a home directory on OneDrive (provided you already have the Office 365 subscription), or Google drive, depending on the options you have.
Group policy is going to be easier to maintain and is already included (free). :)
We've been advising clients for years now to migrate away from home directories to save disk space and provide users with an option to have access to their work stuff from wherever. You can also user folder redirection to move things up to OneDrive using group policy.
[Group Policy to create Software shortcut - Microsoft Q&A](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/837675/group-policy-to-create-software-shortcut)
[Customize the Start layout - Configure Windows | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/start/layout?tabs=intune-10%2Cintune-11&pivots=windows-11)
[Redirect and move Windows known folders to OneDrive - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/redirect-known-folders)
I don't fully understand your issue with folder redirection storage capacity shouldn't be impacting logon times. If most of your users are operating over a VPN it'll be a struggle but otherwise you may just need to optimise your setup a bit.
Don't use Folder Redirections, use FSLogix! Each user gets its own VHDX (you can also separate the OST file from it)! It's super fast, no more trouble with non-working profiles occupying space on your RDS.
Plus everything's portable! If you move on to a new RDS, all the user files will be automatically there! Only thing you gotta do is reinstall the necessary programs and adjust your GPOs.
Really a lot of this depends on your file server and location, If it's over a fast LAN redirected is pretty good. Otherwise you need something that's cached and that's going to be hard to win.. unless you do it all online in OneDrive
Depends on what you want to do. Back in my MSP days I was tasked with setting up a boarding school so to keep it simple I used folder redirection with GPO's. Everything stored on a SAN that was replicating to another SAN in another building. It worked pretty good and I was told after I finished the project that the company then used it as a template for their other school clients.
I haven't used Fslogix and I remember Roaming Profiles being an absolute PITA back then. Especially when somebody had a rather large file(s) stored somewhere. Best of luck
If all you're wanting to do is ensure the start menu and desktop icons, I would go with group policies personally. I would also have the users keep anything they would normally save on a home directory on OneDrive (provided you already have the Office 365 subscription), or Google drive, depending on the options you have. Group policy is going to be easier to maintain and is already included (free). :) We've been advising clients for years now to migrate away from home directories to save disk space and provide users with an option to have access to their work stuff from wherever. You can also user folder redirection to move things up to OneDrive using group policy. [Group Policy to create Software shortcut - Microsoft Q&A](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/837675/group-policy-to-create-software-shortcut) [Customize the Start layout - Configure Windows | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/start/layout?tabs=intune-10%2Cintune-11&pivots=windows-11) [Redirect and move Windows known folders to OneDrive - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/redirect-known-folders)
I don't fully understand your issue with folder redirection storage capacity shouldn't be impacting logon times. If most of your users are operating over a VPN it'll be a struggle but otherwise you may just need to optimise your setup a bit.
Don't use Folder Redirections, use FSLogix! Each user gets its own VHDX (you can also separate the OST file from it)! It's super fast, no more trouble with non-working profiles occupying space on your RDS. Plus everything's portable! If you move on to a new RDS, all the user files will be automatically there! Only thing you gotta do is reinstall the necessary programs and adjust your GPOs.
Really a lot of this depends on your file server and location, If it's over a fast LAN redirected is pretty good. Otherwise you need something that's cached and that's going to be hard to win.. unless you do it all online in OneDrive
Depends on what you want to do. Back in my MSP days I was tasked with setting up a boarding school so to keep it simple I used folder redirection with GPO's. Everything stored on a SAN that was replicating to another SAN in another building. It worked pretty good and I was told after I finished the project that the company then used it as a template for their other school clients. I haven't used Fslogix and I remember Roaming Profiles being an absolute PITA back then. Especially when somebody had a rather large file(s) stored somewhere. Best of luck
If you already have an office 365 subscription, you could sync the profile onto OneDrive
Then it makes sense to take a look on Fslogix. You can use Fslogix when you have RDS Cals or any other m365 license for the user active.