User profile allows the user to have a customized virtual desktop environment when using a nonpersistent virtual desktop. The user profile is normally stored in C:\users in a Microsoft Windows physical machine and can be redirected to a CIFS share for use in a nonpersistent virtual desktop environment. There are many profile management solutions in the market that simplify management, improve reliability, and reduce network requirement over standard Windows folder redirection. Using a profile management solution will help speed the migration process from a physical desktop or laptop by first virtualizing the profile and then virtualizing the desktop. This will improve login times over folder redirection alone, and centralize the end-users profile for better backup, recovery, and disaster recovery of this data.
| Best Practice |
| Recommends using a profile management solution such as Citrix User Profile Management (UPM) or Liquidware Labs ProfileUnity, to allow end users to customize their experience in a nonpersistent desktop environment. |
Profile Management
The ability to save user desktop customization is paramount when transitioning traditional desktop users to a VDI environment. For cases in which read-only desktop technologies such as PVS are used, the ability becomes even greater to allow successful adoption of the new desktop.
Multiple profile redirection software products are available. Liquidware Labs ProfileUnity and Citrix User Profile Management were used to test profile redirection in functionality and in performance testing. Overall, the I/O characteristics to storage are roughly similar compared to Liquidware Labs and Citrix UPM. Since both applications synchronize user profiles and data folders to CIFS and perform roughly equivalent tasks it would be expected that I/O characteristics would be similar.
It should be noted that the LoginVSI user profiles were not very large, so the results might vary depending on user profile size. Tests performed by Citrix show the effect of the number of files in a profile on user login time. This data is for a single user with varying number and size of files.
More information regarding setup and deployment can be found on the Liquidware Labs homepage. For more information about Citrix UPM, go to: http://support.citrix.com/product/upm/v2.1/ – tab-doc.
For further investigation regarding many of the existing products as well as their capabilities, see the UEM Smackdown located at: http://www.pqr.com/images/stories/Downloads/whitepapers/user%20environment%20management%20uem%20smackdown.pdf
| Best Practice |
| Create a CIFS share for user data and profile redirection. Take care while choosing the drive types if profile redirection software is used since a slower drive may slow down the user login time during login storms. |
Last I want to share the market adoption of each profile management solution:
Rachel Zhu Blog 