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Mickelonis
Contributor
Contributor

Understanding "User Data" settings....

Ok folks... I have a question about the following screenshot:

In our company, we use a 'folder redirection' GPO to redirect the users "My Documents" folder to their homedrive. With that in mind, can you think of any reason at all that I would use a different setting other than what it selected above? I just don't understand why I would redirect to a separate disk.... Can anyone provide a use case scenario for me?

Thanks in advance!

-Pete

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

This lets you save the full profile, not just My Documents, in a separate virtual disk. When recomposing the OS image, the user data disk is preserved.

Since you already use folder redirection, this may not be as useful.

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mittim12
Immortal
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This lets you save the full profile, not just My Documents, in a separate virtual disk. When recomposing the OS image, the user data disk is preserved.

Since you already use folder redirection, this may not be as useful.

This may be a stupid question but I have never used the User Data disk. If you select to use the different disk you say your full profile is stored on the seperate disk. Do you have to tweak your template image to point all profile settings to this new disk? You can only use the seperate disk option when using a persistent pool, correct?

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KFM
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

If you select to use the different disk you say your full profile is stored on the seperate disk. Do you have to tweak your template image to point all profile settings to this new disk?

No need to point any setting to the user data disk - it is done transparently through the View Connection Server / VirtualCenter settings. It works automagically.

You can only use the seperate disk option when using a persistent pool, correct?

Yes, that is correct.

I personally do not see much point in using user data disks especially if you are using roaming profiles. You are essentially double-handling your data. The way I see user data disks being pitched is for profile acceleration. If you are not using roaming profiles then you will have to think of a way to back up your user data disk contents - this may involve using VCB to then mount the user disk VMDK perhaps. More administrative hassles? I think so IMHO.

The only reason I can think of using user data disks is in a persistent pool where users don't using roaming profiles and you would like to periodically refresh/recompose their desktops. That way, you retain all their user settings after a recompose/refresh operation.

If anyone else can think of a compelling reason to use user data disks I'd be happy to hear!

mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

I agree that I don't see much use for this in environments that have already implemented roaming profiles but in our case we have a couple of offices that have yet to be converted. Something like this would work great except I wanted to make use of the non persistent pool and from what I understand the user data would be blown away when I recomposed.

Thanks for the info

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Mickelonis
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the help!

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Mickelonis
Contributor
Contributor

Ok so more 'hours' taken up on this....

First, why did VMWare make it so you had to make a "Data Disk" on the VM?! Why can't we put in UNC paths instead? Either way, here's the problem I'm having...

When a non-admin user connects to their VM, the guest operating system is seeing the new addition of the drive for user data... I'm not sure how to get around this... We don't make users administrators within our company so I'm a bit confused on how I can get around this.

Any ideas would be great!

Thanks,

-Pete

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KFM
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

First, why did VMWare make it so you had to make a "Data Disk" on the VM?! Why can't we put in UNC paths instead? Either way, here's the problem I'm having...

Well if they made you use a UNC path then there wouldn't be any differentiation from roaming profiles! Well except that the data is being redirected via the network to the local user data disk, so they figured they might as well use an absolute path to redirect the My Documents folder and the user profile. You can see this by examining the location of the My Documents folder in its properties.

When a non-admin user connects to their VM, the guest operating system is seeing the new addition of the drive for user data... I'm not sure how to get around this... We don't make users administrators within our company so I'm a bit confused on how I can get around this.

I don't get a prompt asking for authentication to install the drive. My user data drive gets installed automatically, however I have to reboot for the changes to take effect - not sure either why this is and it kinda breaks the whole seamless user experience. Do you have any GPOs applying some kind of policy which says that non-admins cannot install any devices?

Mickelonis
Contributor
Contributor

@KFM....

What permissions do your users have on the local box? If they are "Power Users" then they won't get an authentication prompt to add the new "Data Disk".... In our environment however we add "Domain Users" to the "Users" group on the Parent VM. Obviously, "Users" don't have permissions to add new hardware devices, thus the root of my problem..... I'm wondering how I can get around it =\

On another note, I'll change the LDAP path to point the new VM's to go to our "No Policy" testing OU just to ensure that we have no policies messing things up. I'll post back here when I have results, thanks for your suggestion!

-Pete

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KFM
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

My users only have normal user access, they're definately not Power Users. They inherit the builtin Users group when they login, so just plain user access. I only have one GPO related to group membership and that is the Restricted Groups which sets Domain Users to be members of the Remote Desktop Users group on each machine (which is standard anyway for allowing non-administrators to RDP onto a XP machine).

I look forward to the results of your testing!

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