Persona Management, previously called RTO Virtual Profiles. A sleeping giant in my eyes. It's soo simple to install and configure but can offer you riches beyond your wildest dreams. OK, maybe a little over the top, but it is a really cool product and very underrated.
With VMware ViewTM 5, VMware introduces View Persona ManagementTM. View Persona Management preserves user profiles and dynamically synchronizes them with a remote profile repository. View Persona Management does not require the configuration of Windows roaming profiles, and you can bypass Windows Active Directory in the management of View user profiles. If you already use roaming profiles, Persona Management enhances their functionality.
Persona Management downloads only the files that Windows requires at login, such as user registry files. When the user or application opens other files from the desktop profile folder, these files are copied from the stored user persona to the View desktop. This algorithm provides performance beyond that achieved with Windows roaming profiles.
As it's still pretty new, detailed information on the InterWeb is limited so I thought I'd put together a post displaying how Persona Management functions. Installation/Configuration information can be found in the View 5.0 Administration Guide or in the VMware View Persona Management Deployment Guide.
Persona Management Logic Flow
Persona Management is based around Logic Flows which runs through a set of checks. Each step has to be completed before the next to ensure the process completes successfully. I will try and explain at a high-level what happens in each of the following Logic Flows:
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I'm actually a pretty big fan of the persona management in VMware View 5. In the past it's been the persistent disk, and I don't like user persistent disks as I find them a bit cumbersome to backup and restore, as typically they are captured once per day and are an "all or nothing" type of restore. Good job at highlighting how awesome the new persona feature is. :)
Great post. I have one question regarding Persona Management...Can it be implemented on physical machines? Can it grab and store my current local profiles? These are not roaming profiles. They are standard profiles, but I am trying to grab my profiles to prepare for conversion to VDI. Thanks so much.
Hi Randall, currently no it cannot be implemented on physical machines. And also, currently it cannot convert your profiles. :-)
I'd like to ask the following : many articles indicates that view persona can combine with persistent disks. But i can't find any documentation for that. Does anyone have any idea ? I implemented view persona (desktop/favorites/My Documents) and tested it with my DRS vdi pool. The result was fantastic !
when i configure folder redirection for various components, data are not stored in the persistent disk.
How they collaborate ?
Hi Jimmy what data are you trying to store on the Persistent Disk?
Hello Simon and thank you for yor time ! I want to store data like : desktop, favorites and generally things that personalize user profile data. I know that persistent disks do this job, but replicating and implement a DR solution with persistent disk is very painful. View persona helps me a lot, because works like romaing but mych better. I am just trying to find out a way to make them to collaborate. is it possible ?
Thanks in advance
So, just to get this clear in my mind, you want to use Persistent Disks to store the users persona data. In addition to that, you want to use Persona Management to centralise their Persona data for DR purposes?
to be honest : you are in mind ! You are absolutely right ! This is what i want to do.
Persistent Disks because they provide faster access and View Persona for Replicating (DR purposes)
If you done login time tests between, just using PM and then using Persistent Disks? I don't imagine there would be much difference at all. PM doesn't actually do anything during the first part of login other than making Windows think that the users profile is already local.
You may find that you are trying to do something that doesn't really have any benefit. Plus by using Persistent Disks you will be losing the ability to use Floating desktops.
Yor are right. Login time is almost the same. But these was done for only 2/3 test users. My vdi deployment will be for 80 users. Do you believe that the results will be almost the same ? I know that PM is much faster thatn MS romaing profile, but for 80 users ? ( i know that they are much larger deployement than mine). I want to use PD because of certain needs (outlook .ost is one of them)
Login time will be just as fast for 80 users as nothing happens during login.
Have you thought about redirecting the .ost to a central storage as well?
Checkout this post on the VMware Community: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/401938
thank you for sharing the above post. i'll read it carefully and do the appropriate tests. Thank you and have a nice day
Dear Simon, thank you for your time. I'd like to inform you that everything work smoothly according to the post you provided. Persistent disks are not necessary any more. Thank you.
Great news! Glad to help.