User Environment Manager, will it replace Persona Management?

[HendersonD]

About a year ago VMWare released User Environment Manager

https://www.vmware.com/products/user-environment-manager

I have read a few blogs that think that VMWare will deprecate Persona Management in favor of User Environment Manager

Has anyone deployed User Environment Manager as a replacement for Persona Management?

If so, how is it working?

[eeg3]

There haven't been any deadlines on when Persona Management will go away that I have seen, though you are correct that is the expectation.

We've seen positive success with UEM, and several of our customers have migrated to it. VMware KB 2118056 goes through the different scenarios and migration paths.

The big thing to keep in mind is that while Persona Management automatically captures all application settings, UEM requires profiling the applications to determine what settings to keep. Here's a good blog on that process: VMware User Environment Manager and Application Profile Settings.

[HendersonD]

Does UEM grab all the various bits and pieces that get generated when a user logs in? I am not looking to profile many applications but I am interested in speeding up login times. As you know, the first time a user logs into any Windows machine, whether physical or virtual, it sets up a profile from scratch based on the default profile. This takes a bit of time. On a physical machine or a persistent VDI desktop, the second login is very fast since the profile exists.

The problem is logging into a non-persistent desktop which in essence is a fresh login each time. If UEM saves all the parts of the initial profile and can load them quickly on a new login to a non-persistent desktop, that would be helpful. I think that persona management does grab these pieces, does UEM?

[h3nkY]

Hi HendersonD,

You can imagine Persona as profile backup. It will backup all files in the profile except encrypted files.

When user logs in, it does a trick to let user login first and download remaining files later so the login time is much faster.

In case of user logs in to non-persistent desktop, Persona doesn't create user profile from default profile but from remote repository (if it exists).

[HendersonD]

VMWare's product Persona Management does exactly what you describe. The question is does User Environment Management (UEM) do this as well? In other words, does UEM backup the profile and then perform the same trick and allow the user to login and download the rest of the files later, speeding up login?