{"id":14640,"date":"2019-12-06T17:51:01","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T17:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clouddesktoponline.com\/blog\/?p=14640"},"modified":"2025-11-13T15:16:43","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T15:16:43","slug":"windows-virtual-desktop-profile-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clouddesktoponline.com\/blog\/windows-virtual-desktop-profile-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows Virtual Desktop Profile Management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Profile Management or managing the what, when, why, who and how of users is not a fun-game. It had always remained a serious issue, especially in virtualization or hosted desktop as a service<\/a> landscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the available tools including Microsoft\u2019s roaming profiles, user profile disks, folder redirection and many third-party tools, none was without compromise. Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD)<\/a> profile management through FSLogix takes care of the painful limitations of profile management. We will explore here how profile management is done by WVD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a user\nprofile? Why Crucial?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A user profile is a bunch of settings\nand configuration data (folders,\nfiles, registry settings, and configuration settings) that shows how the\nuser interacts with the desktop environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some such settings are customizable and\ncustomized by a user, like backgrounds, taskbars, desktop icons, layouts etc.\nSome configuration is set by the IT department using tools like Group Policy\n(GPO), user environment management solution (UEM), Scripts and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, a profile is\noperating system (OS) specific; doesn\u2019t work beyond its own OS. For example, a\nWindows 7 profile will not work with Windows 8. Forget about working between\ndesktop and server OS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are 1.\nLocal Profiles and 2. Roaming Profiles<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Profile Types<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

1.   \n<\/strong>Local Profile<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In this case, a user\u2019s profile is stored on a network server (in\ncontrast to being stored locally on a desktop PC). Through Active Directory\nconfiguration admins link the roaming profile with the user\u2019s account. Whenever\nthe user logs in, Windows copies the user profile from the network to the local\ncomputer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The default profile in any Windows\nenvironment that lives locally. By default, it contains everything related to\nthat user\u2019s operating environment.  As a\nuser upgrades Windows, simultaneously the user upgrades the profile. But if the\nuser signs into another machine, the process has to start again. The user\nexperience fails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.   \n<\/strong> Roaming Profile<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Roaming profiles became commonplace, it had its\nchallenges. The user experience was slow, painful; the admins got sleepless\nhiccups and swollen eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FSLogix for profile management<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft acquired FSLogix for better profile\nmanagement of the user profiles that roam through all pooled session hosts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Profile\nContainers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FSLogix tools help in profile and application management especially in a virtualized environment and the most valuable tool is Profile Containers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Profile Container does is, it packs the user-profile to VHD(X) files, stores it in File share. These VHD(X) files can be mounted through network when the user logs in and demounted when the user logs out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Profile Container of FSLogix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cloud Cache<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To reduce network traffic, FSLogix brings a caching mechanism \u2013 Cloud Cache. It caches profile files to the local machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Multi-session feature<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multi-session at a time is the beauty of WVD. This feature is done through\nFSLogix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all these advantages, the beauty of FSLogix is it doesn\u2019t need an extra license but comes bundled with existing WVD license.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advantages of FXLogix<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

i) Improved Performance: <\/strong>through profile\ncontainers and resolve performance issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ii) OneDrive: <\/strong>FSLogix profile containers enable support for OneDrive in\nnon-persistent RDSH or VDI space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

iii) Additional folders:<\/strong> FSLogix enables to extend user profiles to include additional folders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtual desktop profile management has had been a challenge for a long time. But the profile management through FSLogix comes as a relief aimed at flawless profile management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Profile Management or managing the what, when, why, who and how of users is not a fun-game. It had always remained a serious issue, especially in virtualization or hosted desktop as a service landscape. Despite the available tools including Microsoft\u2019s roaming profiles, user profile disks, folder redirection and many third-party tools, none was without compromise. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-windows-virtual-desktop"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t