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TimBasher
Contributor
Contributor

Persona Management not completely working with Unidesk

I am trying to get Persona Management fully working and I've run into a roadblock. I'll summarize my environment:

Horizon View 5.3.3

Agent is installed with persona management add-on on all VDI desktops

Persona Management GPO:

VMware View Agent Configuration/Persona Management/Desktop UI

     Show progress when downloading large files          Enabled          Minimum File size to show progress window (MB): 50

VMware View Agent Configuration/Persona Management/Folder Redirection

     Add the administrators group to redirected folders          Enabled

     Desktop                                                                            Enabled     Redirect to the following location: \\persona-server\desktop$\%username%

VMware View Agent Configuration/Persona Management/Roaming & Synchronization

     Files and folders to preload          Enabled          (AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch)

     Manage user persona                  Enabled          Profile upload interval (in minutes): 10

     Persona repository location          Enabled          \\persona-server\persona$\%username%

     Roam local settings folders          Enabled

On first log in, a folder is created under \\persona-server\persona$ with the user's profile name with a .V2 (i.e. "timothy.basher.V2") The folder remains empty; which is supposed to be normal. A "timothy.basher" folder is also created under \\persona-server\destop$ for the redirected Desktop folder. So far so good.

On log off, the NTUSER.dat, ntuser.pol, and ntuser.ini files are copied up to \\persona-server\persona$\timothy.basher.V2 like they are supposed to, but none of the other local profile folders are. And that is where I'm stuck.

I have checked the logs for errors and I see none. In fact, there are a couple lines where it states that the number of files and folders that need to be synchronized is 0.

Without, at least ,AppData\Roaming successfully synchronizing our users are losing desktop backgrounds, Outlook signatures, and in return are receiving broken Quick Launch icons on their next login.

Oh, and I also used the VMWVvpValidator.exe tool to test my repository share/ntfs permissions and it states that I meet the minimum requirements.

Any thoughts or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Message was edited by: TimBasher I changed the Title to "Persona Management not completely working with Unidesk" because the issue is with Unidesk not Persona Management. I figure this would help others who are searching a similar issue on Google or these forums to find this post and read what I discovered.

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2 Replies
RyanH84
Expert
Expert

Hi Tim,

I've had some weird permission related issues before with Persona folders. My issue was down to share permissions on the DFS targets.


In the end I think I elevated up permissions to give All/Everyone and worked my way back down. (Using a test GPO and share). This enabled me to prove that the problem was permission related (in fact it was SHARE permissions, not NTFS). I haven't used that tool you used to check but I have seen things like this happen. I also cleared out any test profiles after adjusting permissions to see if that helps.

Happy to help if you need any more ideas?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regards, Ryan vExpert, VCP5, VCAP5-DCA, MCITP, VCE-CIAE, NPP4 @vRyanH http://vRyan.co.uk
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TimBasher
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for your reply Ryan.

I almost forgot I made this discussion so I'll post an update to the situation.

In addition to the environment I described in my original post we use a 3rd party management software called Unidesk. Unidesk serves as a alternative and enhancement to Composer. Within Unidesk we have the freedom to create "layers" for all of our applications and then configure templates for our different VMs consisting of the layers (applications) we want them to have. Unidesk takes those templates and builds desktops into Horizon View Pools for us. I didn't mention this before because I thought it was unrelated.

But first I'll talk about Share/NTFS permissions. We use the Microsoft methodology on Share/NTFS permissions where you always use Everyone Full Control or Authenticated Users Full Control as the Share Permission. From there you scale back the access using NTFS permissions. With NTFS Permissions, we use Authenticated Users (List Folder / Read Data, Read Attributes, Create Folders / Append Data on [This Folder Only]) and CREATOR OWNER (Full Control on [Subfolders, and files]). Basically the same permissions one would use when using Windows' Folder Redirection or Roaming Profile shares.

Back to Unidesk. It turns out that Unidesk handles Persona Management a little different. For reasons I can't explain, there is a requirement that Offline Files be enabled while using Persona Management on a Unidesk-created VM. In addition to this, certain folders in the Profile are required to be redirected either by Windows or Persona Management in order for everything to work on a Unidesk-created VM. This was unfortunate to find out because we had high hopes Persona Management would solve our current problems with login performance.

So here's a Pro Tip: Don't buy Unidesk if you plan on using Persona Management.

This summer we are upgrading our VDI with vCenter 6.0, View 6.1, AppVolumes, and their new product User Experience Manager (previously called Immidio) and completely getting rid of Unidesk. Unidesk was wonderful when we had a small VDI deployment. Fortunately, our end users love the virtual environment and the demand for VDI access has grown to a point where we feel Unidesk is becoming an overhead and a hindrance. VMware did a great thing by bundling all of these features into the Horizon View Enterprise suite so that our dollars spent on View licensing is taking us further. There is no reason to rely on 3rd party applications to get a fully optimized end user-centric VDI environment put together.

So to wrap up this book that I decided to write: We have a POC with vCenter 6.0, View 6.1, and AppVolumes 2.6. We haven't incorporated UXM yet, but we did give Persona Management a whirl out of curiosity and found that everything works like a charm. "Thanks Unidesk..." So there you have it. Persona Management + Unidesk = Failure. I hope my pain and suffering will help another poor soul out there who's running into the same disappoint with Unidesk to discover the truth.

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