anyone using ProfileUnity

[VMMikeC]

just wondering if anyone has experience with using Liquidware Labs Profile Unity product with their View deployments?

[mittim12]

I setup and tested ProfileUnity in a demo environment.  I thought the setup was very simple and the product reasonably priced.  I did not have an opportunity to run this in our production environment but would have felt very comfortable doing so. 

[VMMikeC]

thanks for the quick reply, what option did you go with for your production environment?

[mittim12]

We are using Appsense in our production enviroment and at the time were looking at a replacement.  In the end we decided to simply keep what we have.  

[VMMikeC]

any particular reason to keep Appsense over Unity? Which one would you recommend for someone who has no profile management? Do you know if either product allows management for only VDI users and not users of physical desktops/laptops?

Sorry for all the questions. I've been playing around with roaming profiles/folder redirection for days, and it creates such a headache when switching from XP to Windows 7, and vice versa.

I need to convince my management to invest in one of these products

[mittim12 · Accepted solution]

In the end management didn't want to spend the money and time to move from one solution to another one.   I think both are really good products but the last time I checked ProfileUnity was a lot cheaper than Appsense. 

If I'm not mistaken both will allow you to manage physical and virtual desktops.  I know for a fact that Appsense will and think that's the case with ProfileUnity though i didn't test that feature.

[VMMikeC]

excellent thanks. I am going to try to download Unity in my home lab and test it out and then pitch it to them. Money is a huge factor, so they'll want to go for the cheaper product if it works well.

You've been extremely helpful as always.

Mike

[mittim12]

Well good luck.  We use their Stratusphere UX product for user experience monitoring in our production environment.   Their support has always  been outstanding.  

[VMMikeC]

thanks! I was just looking at Appsense's website, the product I assume you have is AppSense Environment Manager? Looks pretty solid as well.

From what I read, VMware offers a discount for ProfileUnity for like $16 per user. I need to download this trial asap.

[idle-jam]

interesting, do share your POC experience with us 😃

[LiquidwareLabs]

Hi Guys,

Jason E. Smith from Liquidware Labs here.  I'll try not to be too commercial in my response. You guys will research and choose the product that's right for your environment and budget.  The other product mentioned here seems to be a good product so I won't knock it but let me point out some very strong points about our ProfileUnity solution.

• It scales without limits from day one in your environment;      it uses an incredibly small 5MB of files to run on a daily basis.
• It scales to tens of thousands of users easily with no need to add the expense or overhead of servers.       Our biggest customer to date has more than 60,000 users, it is a      University.
• There are no SQL or IIS databases involved.
• The architecture is very straight-forward and it can be      implemented into full production on the largest of sites in a few hours      and in many cases only an hour.
• The profile data stays in a native Windows      format.  It is compresses on the storage side but fully expanded as a      native profile on the client side.  You can easily troubleshoot a      problem or bloated profile and solve the issue quickly with ProfileUnity.
• If you decide to go another direction with your      profiles in a couple of years you can do so easily without the complexity      involved with databases or proprietary solution. Any other profile that      works with native Windows profiles can pick up our profile in      seconds.  My point is that you are never locked in with a complicated      or proprietary setup.
• We have features that you likley won't find anywhere else in      the market such as VMware ThinApp management with caching capabilities for      offline use, data migration from legacy endpoints, and more.
• We do have a limited time $16 price point for VMware      View customers. We've worked very closely with the VMware View team to      establish this offer in the absence of a profile solution from      VMware.  You'll need to request the offer.  You can find more      details on the Liquidware Labs web site.

I'll try to check in again here if there are more questions, otherwise my email is easy to guess and you can contact me directly at jsmith.

[VMMikeC]

Jason,

Thanks for the reply and the information that you provided. It does seem like a really great product. I'm going to demo it today. Do you know how long the free trial lasts?

Thanks,

Mike

[LiquidwareLabs]

Hi Mike, You can download it as the Liquidware Labs/Stratusphere Applicance (OVF) or as a standalone Windows installer app on our downlaod page.  The applicance has a 10 day key built-in (we can extend it upon request) and you'll need to request a license key for the standalone version.  We usually easily do 30 days on either just let us know.

Jason