New to horizon

[JFGagnonS3]

Good day experts!

I have a question regarding how the user profiles are being presented to the user. We currently use XenApp and one issue we are having is that when a user logs in the Roaming Profiles are, for an unknow reason, are (sometimes) recreated with an iteration number instead that the system see that there's one existing and load that one. We don't know what's causing this but obviously it re-create a default set of parameters for all applications.

So my question is, does Horizon use the same time of Roaming profiles or is it, somehow, encapsulated in something else. So, would that issue be likely resolved with VMware VDI solution (because I doubth that Citrix XenDesktop use again Romaing PRofiles)

Thank you very much

[darcidinovmw]

Hi there and welcome to the wonderful world of VMware Horizon!

So, there are a few options for you with regard to user profiles. If you are using just the basic components for Horizon 7 desktops with a simple deployment then what you will want to use is persona management. The persona management agent stores the user's profile on a network server and is basically just Microsoft roaming profiles done right. When the user logs into the desktop it downloads only the information that is needed to run the startup and login apps. Placeholder files replace items that have not been accessed yet so your users will still see shortcuts for apps or files that have not been downloaded yet. So if your user has an excel spreadsheet on their desktop there will be a myspreadsheet.xlsx file on the desktop but it's just a dummy shortcut. When the user clicks on the file, it's immediately pulled down from the server and opens. Obviously, depending on the file size there could be a slight delay but that delay didn't exist at login which I think is a lot better. Persona Management also syncs the data back up to the server every 10 minutes so logoffs are fast as well. The time for resync is also configurable by GPO. Please see the administration documentation here.

Configuring User Profiles with View Persona Management

(I work for VMware in their End User Computing Professional Services Org so obviously, I'm a little biased)

These boards are genuinely quite friendly so feel free to keep posting questions. Don't forget to check out the Hand On Labs as well. http://labs.hol.vmware.com

[JFGagnonS3]

Sorry for the delay, and thank you fr your answer. Although it seems you only explained one options and you are saying that there are few others. Can you kindly explain what are the other options?

Also, would one of them fix that issue we are having with Citrix ?

Thank you very much

[darcidinovmw]

The other alternative is to do standard roaming profiles. Those are the two real options. I have never seen the issue you are referring to in Horizon so this must just be a XenApp problem.