Writable volume change with profile

[Ray_handels]

Hey Guys,

Don't know if any of you read the release notes but I was shocked when reading the below part of the Writable volume change.

For us this was the unique selling point of Appvolumes and it's writable volume, not worrying about profiles and applications anymore and providing a pooled floating desktop

If they are to actually follow through with this it I would again have 2 points were I need to safe user data, 1 in the writable volume, 1 in the UEM Profile folder (and maybe even the redirected folder).

Also, something like an Offline Outlook file or settings stored in Localappdata will no longer be managed.

For me it seems like VMWare is actually killing it's darling here, no idea who ever came up with this brilliant idea.

Would love to hear other users point of view though.

Writable Volumes Profile and UIA+ Profile Templates support: From App Volumes 2.9, the support for Writable Volumes Profile and UIA+ Profile Templates will be deprecated. Cusotmers on App Volumes 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.9 (and any future 2.x) versions using Profile Only or UIA + Profile Writable Volumes Templates will continue to receive support for bug fixes through hot patches. Although using App Volumes writable volumes for managing end user profiles has provided huge benefits over traditional profile management solution with their speed of delivery and reduced IOPS, VMware UEM is a new paradigm in user environment management. This is the first step in integrating VMware App Volumes and VMware UEM to provide a more agile, flexible and mobile workspace for your end users. Support for Writable Volumes UIA templates will continue in the future releases. In addition to many profile management solution, you can use the following to manage users' profile instead of writable volumes:

• VMware UEM with Folder Redirection 
• VMware View Persona

[solgaeDK]

I agree - this is a disappointing decision. VMware UEM (i.e. Immidio) is nowhere near comparable to Writable Volume's profile and/or profile+UIA template, since it requires profiling all your applications in order to capture their settings. Good luck doing that with several dozen of applications unless your users only use the most basic apps like Adobe reader and Office and only that. View persona is at least workable, but questionable in terms of scalability. You'll need a beefy file share and network traffic to support large installations.

Bottomline is, UEM is NOT a comparable replacement to Writable Volumes as it stands today. Writable Volumes will work out-of-the-box (at least if it works as intended - see my other post about 2.7). UEM is not.

[sachindsharma]

To be clear, user profiles in writeable volumes is available and supported in version 2.9, which was released this week. In the future, we are building out a better overall solution, comparable to user profiles in writeable volumes, with more enterprise capabilities that will deliver an even more robust solution to our customers.

[Ray_handels]

To be clear, user profiles in writeable volumes is available and supported in version 2.9, which was released this week. In the future, we are building out a better overall solution, comparable to user profiles in writeable volumes, with more enterprise capabilities that will deliver an even more robust solution to our customers.

Dont get me wrong i do believe you guys are actually looking at options but my honest opinion is that a writable volume with profile in it is the best option. This is what makes VMware's Horizon View that much better than Citrix, Appvolumes. It's the icing on the cake when you are looking at user settings. No offence but LiveProviles is not nearly as good as Appvolumes is. And especially if you look at applications settings of applications that users installed theselves.

So if you are building something in the lines off Appvolumes with FlexProfiles I am more than happy to have a look at it. My honest opinion now is that we are getting a lot less functionality with a lot more management overhead only to promote LiveProfiles.

And as said before (and I still stand my ground on that one). I still believe that FlexProfiles is being shoved down our throats.. I would at least have the option to choose for myself if I wanted to have FlexProfiles or a writable volume with all options. At this point, if you want to have settings saved for over 200 applications it would take ages to get this done with FlexProfiles (or any profile management tool for that matter).

And it might be that I'm biased because I have always been a firm believer of Appvolumes (or CloudVolumes) but I haven't seen any software/functionality/technology that could beat it to this day.

[hahaU812]

I have hundreds of Writable Volumes Profile and UIA+ Profile volumes in our environment. Every user relying on their Profile volume to deliver such things as "MS Click once" applications (which delivers and updates mission critical applications within the users profile - same boat as the outlook profile thing mentioned in previous posts).

When VMware finish "building out a better overall solution,comparable to user profiles in writeable volumes, with more enterprise capabilities that will deliver an even more robust solution to our customers", I really (really!) hope that they will provide a transition path for me and my hundreds of user profile volumes. Actually by then it could be thousands of volumes because I have neither the time nor the performance confidence in UEM+folder redirection to change the solution now (As you've suggested in the release notes of 2.9):

In addition to many profile management solution, you can use the following to manage users' profile instead of writable volumes:

• VMware UEM with Folder Redirection

(Actually no I can't - not in its current version - not the profile management I need)

To me it seems a bit ass backwards to give us something, encourage us to use it then say it's going to be taken away, without:

A) Providing an equal or better solution in the first instance or B) Providing more information about exactly what is to replace it and how it plans to transition its customers user base to its replacement).

Cheers and beers - sorry about the winge........ just that I've got these floating View Workstations working sweet, users are really happy (which is a minor miracle in our envornment)......theres one piece of technology holding it all together and now you're telling me you're  going to take away.

Cheers

Matt

[sachindsharma]

Profile Only and User Installed Apps + Profiles will still be supported in 2.9. The intent of the deprecation statement, for releases beyond 2.X, is to recommend not to use writeable volumes for profile management in your environment today. We are currently developing new enhancements to provide fully managed and feature rich profile capabilities with App Volumes beyond 2.X. Since this is a future enhancement, we are unable to share more details at this time, but will share more as we continue to develop this solution. VMware is uniquely positioned to help you with delivering applications and managing user profiles and we will share more details with our customers soon.

[HenryLe0311]

This is kind of painful, but I am glad we are hearing about it now and not a year from now. Sounds like App Volumes is going to be just that, an APP solution vs a persona/personalization solution.

I think it should be made more clear in the marketing. Just having a deprecation notice in some read me stuff while marketing is still pushing writable volumes, user installed apps, etc. On the one hand "Citrix PVD is awful! Buy App Volumes with writable volumes!"  on the other hand "Here is a buried notice that we are recommending you dont use this feature because we are changing it in the future because we bought a new tool"

[EChampagne]

‌I couldn't express myself better than you in your post ahahU812..... after migrating all of our users profiles to writable volumes I cant imagine to go back on persona or whatever other solutions ... my head will roll on the floor. I have pushed so much to get this solution in place.

[solgaeDK]

Just noticed there is a change in the 2.9 release notes.

• Support for profiles on writable volumes:
  • Leveraging writable volumes for user profile delivery and storage will continue to be supported.

So is it safe to assume writable volumes for user profile will still be supported in the future release? Because VMware UEM is nowhere near close to replacing writable volumes as it stands now.

[Ray_handels]

I tried to find the old information that i posted but couldn't find it indeed.

It seems as if you are spot on with this information and that would be great news. Hopefully they will just add EUM as a feature that you could be using, not one that you must use.

I really hope VMWare itself can shed some light on this matter because I haven't found anything to back this one up. That being said, we are still using the writable volume feature... No idea if others are moving away from it?

[Jason_Marshall]

Writable Volumes are not going anywhere!!

[Ray_handels]

Hey Jason,

Does this mean that profiles will also be in writable volumes?

As said, we are still using them and to be honest they for us it works quite well..

There are off course some things that need to fixed here and there but still, much better than the per app settings that EUM of Appsense or other applications use.

[solgaeDK]

We already know Writable Volumes (WV) are not going anywhere, and it looks like there will be more features added in the next 2.10 release according to the blog post released today that would make administration easier (expandable WV, vMotion support), but is it still a supported solution to deliver user profiles? The 2.9 release notes used to have a statement that user_profile_only and profile+uia writable volumes would be deprecated after 2.9 release, and only UIA-only would be supported. Sometime later, however, I noticed that the whole statement has been deleted and now simply says all WV profiles will continue to be supported.

I really want to believe that's true because none of the so-called UEM solutions (with a possible exception for Liquidware Labs ProfileUnity) are viable alternatives to what App Volumes WV has to offer.

[JaceJ]

The vMotion support is exactly what I've been waiting for.   We've been using UEM and it works for certain use cases (Call Centers for example) but for our Developers its not a viable solution.  They have a large build workspace which we need to have persistent and I really didn't want to go the full clone route