This article contains information about Citrix User Profile Management (UPM) best practices for VDI-in-a-Box.

Background

Citrix UPM is an optional component that can be used with VDI-in-a-Box desktops. It can be used as a standalone profile management solution or can be used to compliment Roaming Profiles and Citrix Personal vDisk technology. Some features of Citrix UPM are designed to improve the profile management experience for pooled virtual desktops.

Note: This article does not explain configuration and settings found in Citrix UPM, but rather focuses on two specific settings, which Citrix recommends you to enable in all VDI-in-a-Box deployments.

The UPM settings discussed in this article are not required for UPM to function correctly, but it is noticed that default behavior can result in loss of some profile data.

In environments where pooled desktops are set to refresh on a regular basis, it is possible that profile settings or data written during the session will not be saved to the user profile. This is because default behavior, similar to Roaming Profiles is to only synchronize the user profile upon logoff.

The other aspects of UPM is the ability to speed up logon times, especially with larger profiles. Best practices typically state that user profiles should be minimal, but in a pooled desktop environment, it is better to synchronize more files than usual. Default behavior is to synchronize the entire user profile when the user logs on to their desktop, thus, larger profiles can delay the logon time.

Profile Streaming

Enable Profile Streaming setting so that user profile contents are fetched only when required. This speeds up logon times, as the entire user profile is not loaded. This utilizes less network bandwidth as the entire profile is not required to be synchronized from the user store to the virtual desktop each time a user logs on to a new desktop.

1. Log on to a Domain Controller.

2. Open Group Policy Management Editor console.

3. Open the Group Policy containing Citrix UPM ADM template and settings.

4. Drill down to Profile Management > Streamed user profiles.

5. Select Enabled and click OK.

6. Optionally, change the Always cache setting to Enabled. To save network bandwidth, impose a lower limit of the file size that is streamed. Files over that limit will be fetched as required.

7. Optionally, change Timeout for pending area lock files setting to Enabled.

   • Set the number of days in which locked files are moved from the pending area to the user store. This prevents profile bloat.

   • Setting this to one (1) day is typically sufficient.

   

   Refer Citrix eDocs To stream user profiles for more information on how to stream user profiles.

Active Write-Back

Enable Active Write-Back to allow Citrix UPM to synchronize profile data during the user session, instead of waiting to synchronize the entire profile upon user logout. This prevents profiles from not synchronizing all data and from being corrupted. Active Write-Back prevents this by synchronizing files during the entire user session, so when the user logs off, there will be minimal profile data (if any) that must be synchronized. A direct benefit of this setting is that if a virtual desktop crashes or gets reset instead of properly shutdown, users need not have to worry about files not being synchronized. 
Refer  Citrix eDocs - To configure active write back for more details.

Additional Resources

Refer the following links for more information about Citrix UPM. 

• System Requirements

• Install UPM

• Administering Profile Management

This article contains information about Citrix User Profile Management best practices for VDI-in-a-Box.