Persona and Profile Management

The prevailing opinion has been to approach persona management in VDI the same as Terminal Services, and use a profile management or user virtualization tool to capture user settings and reload them on top of non-persistent virtual desktops. This burdens VDI with many of the same limitations as Terminal Services:

• User-installed applications and plug-ins are not captured, making knowledge workers unhappy.
• Non-standard apps manually installed by IT are not sustained, taking away IT's ability to make "ad hoc" customizations.
• Cost and complexity increases, with a new console needed just to manage the user.
• I/O boot storms at "8AM login" negatively impact the user experience.
• Applications that rely on deep registry keys, identifiers, and hidden files fail.

By creating storage-efficient persistent desktops that can be provisioned and patched as easily as non-persistent desktops, Unidesk fully and transparently solves the VDI persona management challenge. Use Unidesk to:

• Offer a fully customizable user experience. Unidesk persistent desktops safely capture ALL user customizations, including profile settings, user-installed applications, documents, and plug-ins.

• Enable IT to deliver "ad hoc" applications. Few organizations have the IT resources to package every application. So apps that are needed by only a few users are often manually installed. Even if your users are locked down and aren't given administrative rights, you need persistent desktops to handle these common exceptions. Profile management with non-persistent desktops cannot sustain these applications. Unidesk persistent desktops can.

• Repair user damage. Our desktop layering technology takes snapshots of the personalization layer at intervals you define, so you can revert back to an earlier version at any time to repair desktop problems caused by user customizations.

• Reduce management complexity. You don't need a separate management console just to manage your users. Unidesk desktop layering technology manages the entire desktop - user, applications, and operating system - so you can create, update, and patch personal virtual desktops with ease.

• Minimize the storage impact. Unidesk doesn't load any profiles at login. Before desktops boot, each user's personalization layer is dynamically composed with the shared application and operating system layers that have been packaged and assigned by IT. So all of your user's settings, data, and user-installed applications are already present in their own persistent virtual desktop and standard local profile. No additional I/O overhead. And no "8AM" boot storms.

• Integrate with profile management for "Follow Me" use cases. If your users have multiple desktop types that require a consistent user experience, Unidesk is perfectly compatible with profile management tools. Use Unidesk to capture all personalization - including user-installed applications - in VDI, and let the profile management tool roam the user settings across VDI, terminal services sessions, and physical desktops.