Persona Management VS Writeable Volumes with UIA and Profile

[K_Miller]

Hi,

We are currently using Folder Redirection and Persona Management to handle profiles for floating pools. We have implemented Writable Volumes, but they are only for User Installed Applications. Does anyone have any thoughts regarding the pros and cons of using Persona Management vs using the Writable Volumes template to handle profile management and user installed apps.

Thanks,

Ken

[JHT_Seattle]

Well, there's not really a great way to migrate from redirected profiles to WVs without impacting the user, that I can see.  You'd have to disable your policy, then attach the volumes, then let users log on to create new profiles, and then (optionally) you could copy data into their profiles while they're logged on.  Not impossible, but it might be tricky to set user expectations during the transition.

As for UIA, you can implement that without the additional Profile piece, so it's an easier option to support.  That said, I'm seeing very few use cases for it at this time because of it requiring the user to have Admin rights to install software in the first place.  Definitely depends on your user base.

[K_Miller]

Thanks, you make some valid points. We do not currently have any users on our environment so the transition would not be a problem however I agree with you on the limited use cases for writeable volumes.

Ken

[Ray_handels]

Hey,

I agree with JHT_Seattle that you would need to rebuild all if you start using writable volumes due to the fact that it is stored into the writable volume entirely. There are some differences though in using writable volumes and roaming profile. Roaming priofile only holds the roaming parts of the appdata, writable volumes hold (for as far as i know, check the cfg file if you want to be sure) all parts of the profile, also the local. There are quite some applications that input info into their local profile parts (think of Mozilla FireFox settings and i believe Chrome does the same thing).

I disagree on the UIA parts of your discussion. We have multiple purposes for them, 1 being giving a user the options to have applications he wanst to install himself (without us having to woory about support) and still be able to use it whenever where-ever.

Also, i someone needs a "test machine" you can give them a writabel volume, attach it to a machine, let the user fiddle around with it and when done just remove the writable volume. No need to create extra machines, all can be done with 1 golden image.

I must say that our users do have permissions to install applications locally so for us it does have a business case..