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136 Chapter 8 Managing Portable Computers
Considerations and Strategies for Deploying Mobile Accounts
Before you deploy mobile accounts, carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages
of using mobile accounts and strategize how you will configure them.
When you properly configure mobile accounts, you can create a work environment
where users effortlessly access their latest files from several locations, keep their
managed preferences while offline, and retrieve file backups if they lose or damage
their computers, all while requiring less network traffic than network accounts.
If improperly configured, mobile accounts can overload the server, force users to wait
for long periods of time to log in or log out, and potentially cripple client computers by
using all available hard disk space.
Advantages of Using Mobile Accounts
Mobile accounts have several advantages over using local or network accounts:
 Applications locally cache temporary files.
 Mobile accounts create less network traffic than network accounts.
 You can manage individual mobile accounts.
 Users can access their accounts and files when disconnected from the network.
 Users can recover data if their computers or external drives are lost or damaged.
Applications locally cache temporary files
When mobile account users run applications, those applications cache temporary files
on the local computer. When external account users run applications, those
applications cache temporary files on the external drive. When network account users
run applications, instead of caching, the applications transfer temporary files over the
network.
Because mobile accounts are not repeatedly transferring temporary files, they tend to
be faster than other account types and also offer improved application stability. Some
applications don’t work with network home folders and temporary files that are not
cached locally. Using mobile accounts, these applications run as if the user had a local
account.
Mobile accounts create less network traffic than network accounts
When network account users save files, they transfer the files over the network. When
they open files, they also transfer files over the network. With a mobile account, files are
stored locally (on the client computer or in an external drive) and are only transferred
during syncing.
Syncing only transfers files if the modification time of a local or network file is different
than the last time the files synced.