VMware Horizon Community
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Roaming profiles

I just wanted to get a feel for how the community is handling roaming profiles in a View environment. Do you use user data disk and folder redirection or do you utilize a third party solution to handle profiles.

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buckethead
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

We are looking to not use the user data disk and will be using AppSense to help with Profiles and User Personalization. We tried Roaming Profiles in our XenDesktop environment in 2008 and ran into issues. We brought AppSense in and never looked back. It might be worth looking at RTO as well.

We have tested with the user data disk and just feel that AppSense works for us without adding anymore complexity.

mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Thanks for the reply. We are also using Appsense but have had some intermittent agent issues that cause a failure to load the profile and a weird delay in login times. Those two problems have proven to be very difficult to resolve and are causing me quite a bit of grief.






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s1xth
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

RTO Profiles and Virtual Profiles will be integrated into View 4.5. Smiley Happy

Blog: www.virtualizationbuster.com

Twitter: s1xth

http://www.virtualizationimpact.com http://www.handsonvirtualization.com Twitter: @jfranconi
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mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

RTO Profiles and Virtual Profiles will be integrated into View 4.5. Smiley Happy

Blog: www.virtualizationbuster.com

Twitter: s1xth

Yes, that will be a great day when 4.5 drops. I've heard great things regarding the integration and hopefully I will not be dissapointed.

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mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

So since RTO isn't going to be in 4.5 I'm going to bump this back up. What are the pros/cons in using roaming profiles/folder redirection over something like user data disk/folder redirection?

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virtualkodo
Contributor
Contributor

Hi mittim12....coming to the post very late, but am curious, why are you not looking at other 3rd party vendors to handle your profiles and user information?  It's pretty clear that, at this time, neither Microsoft or VMware have a complete offering in this area.    For a really good overview of the current state of roaming profiles and file redirection, Jason Smith of Liquidware Labs presented a six part series.  You can see it here:  http://www.dabcc.com/search/search.aspx?q=profile%20challenges

It appears that the options are: wait for VMware to incorporate this capability into View or look at other vendors.   The roaming profiles/folder redirection route probably will not scale for you.  Six months later, this may be a moot point and you probably have your answers, but I just came upon this looking for other info, and thought I would share what I found on the topic.

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chaz112182
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

we are just letting vmware redirect the profile to the user data disk and then using folder redirection for my docs, desktop, etc to keep the size of the profile to a minimum. we have been very pleased with this setup. really simple and effective. 

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virtualkodo
Contributor
Contributor

Hey chaz...thanks for the input.  Are you doing this in production now?  Can I ask the size of your environment (i.e. number of desktops you are supporting?)

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chaz112182
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

no problem ...     we are indeed in production.   in the end we will have right around 300 desktops.   we are in the rollout phase right now and have approx 100 virtual desktops .     

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virtualkodo
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks much!  This is very helpful.

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SDChargersFan
Contributor
Contributor

Ringcube is an authorized Technical Partner of VMware and provides a VDI add-on to address roaming profiles and other needs like user installed apps for View.  Check us out at www.ringcube.com or email me at jtsai@ringcube.com for demo software.

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