Roaming profiles promise that any desk becomes your desk. They also make login speed depend on how much junk a profile has collected. Choose with the trade-offs in front of you.
Synology Directory Server supports roaming profiles through Group Policy, and the video shows the feature working. Working is not the same as advisable. This page weighs roaming against plain local profiles - and against the option most small offices should actually pick: local profiles plus folder redirection.
Local profile: the user's settings and files live on the PC they use. Fast, simple, but their desktop is that PC's desktop. Roaming profile: the profile is stored on the NAS and copied down at every login and back at every logoff - log in anywhere, get your environment. Folder redirection: the profile stays local, but chosen folders - Documents, Desktop, Pictures - are redirected to a share on the NAS, so the files follow the person and live on the backed-up server, while settings stay put.
Roaming profiles copy everything in the profile that is not redirected - and profiles grow. App data, caches and forgotten downloads can push a profile to gigabytes, and every byte travels at login and logoff. On a busy NAS at 9 AM, that means slow logins for everyone, profile corruption risk when a copy is interrupted, and users keeping the very files you wanted on the server inside the roaming blob instead. Roaming earned its bad reputation honestly. It still suits one real pattern: staff who genuinely hot-desk all day - a clinic counter, a shared workshop terminal - with disciplined, small profiles.
Most staff sit at one main PC. What they actually need is not a roaming desktop - it is their documents safe and reachable. Folder redirection gives exactly that: Documents and Desktop live on the NAS (backed up, permissioned by group, available if their PC dies), logins stay instant because profiles stay local, and a replacement PC shows their files the moment they log in. Set it once in Group Policy - User Configuration > Windows Settings > Folder Redirection - pointing at a per-user folder on a NAS share.
Redirect folders anyway (a roaming profile plus redirected Documents is far lighter), cap profile size expectations with user education, keep the NAS share fast and local, and never let the profile share fill up - a full profile share means failed logoffs and corrupted profiles. Test with two pilot users for a fortnight before rolling it to everyone, and measure a Monday-morning login before declaring victory.
Fixed desks: local profiles + folder redirection. True hot-desking with small profiles: roaming becomes defensible. Laptops that leave the office: local profiles, with files handled by redirection when on-site or your normal sync tools - a roaming laptop profile fighting a hotel connection helps nobody.
Watch the video set up profiles on the Synology domain, then choose your pattern from this page's scorecard before you roll it out.
Watch Full VideoThe profile is copied from the NAS at every login. Large profiles - gigabytes of app data and caches - make that copy slow, especially when many users log in together. The standard cure is folder redirection for the big folders and profile hygiene, or dropping roaming for fixed-desk staff.
Yes. It is a standard Group Policy feature, configured in RSAT and applied by Windows clients, with the target folders stored on a share on the Synology NAS. It is the profile feature most Synology-domain offices end up using.
Yes. Profile behaviour is set by Group Policy, so you can scope roaming to the OU or group that hot-desks and keep everyone else local with redirection. Mixed is normal; uniform is not required.