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User Virtualization

User virtualization solutions can be a very powerful way of managing user profiles, personalization and data across desktop environments, but only if the pro's outweigh the con's when using these tools. Only ProfileUnity offers the ease of use, flexibility and feature set that gives desktop administrators the control they need to ensure that their Windows OS user settings, configuration and data are appropriately backed up to secure network storage. ProfileUnity is affordable, scalable and runs as a virtual appliance.

User virtualization solutions allow administrators to manage a user's Windows profile, configurations, personalization and settings separately from the Windows operating system. Advantages of this approach include the ability to:

Replace Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection to manage user profiles and data
Utilize one solution for all desktop environments – physical, terminal session or virtual
Offer a persistent user experience across versions of Windows operating systems
Provide a persistent user profile even with non-persistent VMs from a pool of linked clones in VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop environments
Migrate user profiles and data across differing versions of Windows operating systems
Enable users to access multiple versions of Windows that must co-exist to support applications that are not compatible with all OS.
Quickly recover the user profile & data within seconds in the event of desktop disaster recovery
Centrally modify end-user configurations and settings
Centrally manage application data settings
Manage application virtualization solutions such as VMware ThinApp, Microsoft App-V, and Citrix Application Streaming
Support an upgrade from Windows XP, Windows Vista to Windows 7 on physical PCs

A Deeper Look

Advanced user virtualization solutions can support users logging into any Windows operating system, including XP, 2000, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, or Server 2008. You'll note that Server 2003 and Server 2008 environments are mentioned, this is largely due to the fact that Citrix and Microsoft Terminal Services run end-user desktops based off of those server environments.

Microsoft's Roaming Profiles do not answer the market need for true user virtualization solutions for many reasons. Microsoft Roaming Profiles does not support a mixed operating environment, therefore it does not allow users to move between operating systems with a version one (v1) profile format (Windows XP, 2000, Server 2003) to one with a version two (v2) profile format (Vista, Windows 7, and Server 2008). The fact that a v1 to v2 movement is not supported makes Roaming Profiles very inefficient for both physical and virtual desktops. Roaming Profiles also allows for very little granular management, and does not provide the ability to exclude bloated areas of a user profile when saving to a network storage file share. Profile bloat is one of the number one reasons for long logon times in Windows. Over time, too, bloated profiles require more storage and incur additional cost.

Some profile management solutions claim to do the same as user virtualization solutions; however they often fall short because of their dependence on Microsoft Roaming Profiles (i.e. many of the profile streaming solutions). These solutions generally only handle profile information; they do not control the full user environment such as the ability to offer location-aware settings in relation to the user, map drives and printers, and set environment variables for management.

While there are a number of user virtualization solutions on the market today, many of them require complex infrastructures and back end systems including SQL and IIS servers. Often, installing these solutions require professional services support adding to the cost and time involved to deploy these solutions. In addition, they rely on proprietary formats, not native Windows formats, so not only do desktop administrators lose the ability to work with familiar constructs, they are further locked into the vendors data format which is often incompatible with a move back to a Windows based technology.

There is only one solution on the market today that provides the flexibility and affordability needed to support true user virtualization needs across physical, virtual and terminal server sessions, regardless of Windows operating systems.

Liquidware Labs ProfileUnity excels as a very powerful, lightweight, affordable yet flexible, user virtualization solution.

ProfileUnity stores users' persona data in their own secure network storage file share. It is always kept in Microsoft's native format and is therefore compatible with a move to Roaming Profiles or any profile solution that can harvest an existing user profile in Windows native format. ProfileUnity provides built-in configuration for general profile portability and allows administrators to pinpoint very specific parts of the registry in the user profile, thus reducing profile bloat and increasing login speeds.

ProfileUnity features a very long list of capabilities not found in basic profile solutions or in Microsoft Roaming Profiles. This exhaustive feature set has made ProfileUnity the choice for today's demanding enterprise environments that need a flexible and powerful user virtualization solution. Advanced features include the ability to:

Run ProfileUnity as a virtual appliance, eliminating the need for back end servers
Scale easily, even across thousands of users
Retain native Microsoft Windows formats to ensure OS compatibility even for backward moves to previous OS
Supports desktops across physical, virtual and terminal server sessions so you can use one solution for all your environments
Migrate user profiles across multiple Windows operating systems
Provide ‘anytime’ migrations of user data, supporting easy upgrades from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7
Setup folder redirection to ensure data is saved to secure network storage
Manage ThinApp package deployments
Map drives, map printers, create MAPI profiles
Perform a full software/hardware inventory
Dynamically assign resources based on location aware settings, and much more.

Download ProfileUnity now.