We have users in 3 locations and for the most part, they all work on their own files. They are set up with roaming profiles, which is fine when they log on to another machine in their current office, but when they visit a different office and log on, it can take up to an hour for the profile to load for some users!

We are also having more inter-site co-operation, which means sharing large files between sites. Some of the users on the remote sites use Citrix and I am trying to encourage them to use it more for this sort of thing (and possibly replace their aging computers with Windows Terminals in the long run).

In the meantime, I want to look at replicating profiles and key home directories and project directories between the PDC and the two DCs out on the remote sites - we currently have 2mbps SDSL at HQ (looking to boost that to 10mbps as the users do a lot of printing from Citrix, which is blocking the bandwidth at the moment) and 2mbps up, 0,75mbps at the two satellite offices.

I'm guessing the best was would be to take a backup of the three servers, play all the profiles etc. onto the PDC, then back that up and take it to each satellite site and restore there, followed by some form of syncing.

Edit: We are running W2003r2 servers throughout and the Exchange server at HQ is also the SDC.

Is this at all realistic? Setting profiles to sync over night, for example, as most users won't be traveling between sites on the same day, but having high frequency directories synced in near real-time.

Well its the way I would have approached it.

Thanks, that's a good start...

Does Server 2003 include any tools for this? Or do I need to look elsewhere?

I'm currently scouring Technet, but their terminology either isn't the same as mine or they are being incredibly cryptic about it!

DFS (Distributed File System) can do folder cloning IIRC (and make everthing seem like it's at one location)

Thanks Saspro, at least I know what I am looking for now.