The following blog is one of a series of blogs that will discuss the integration of third-party User Environment management solutions. This blog will focus on Liquidware ProfileUnity™ profile manager with a Nutanix Frame Desktop as a Service (DaaS) deployment. We will break down the ProfileUnity capabilities and a high-level implementation as follows:
- What is ProfileUnity
- How Does ProfileUnity Work
- Why ProfileUnity with Frame
- ProfileUnity vs Frame Enterprise Profiles
- How to implement ProfileUnity with Frame
What Is ProfileUnity?
ProfileUnity is a User Environment management solution that delivers a full spectrum of features that includes Profile Management, and Centralized Policy Management that goes beyond traditional Microsoft Group Policies, as well as advanced features such as Privilege Elevation and Application Rights Management.
The capabilities with ProfileUnity are vast and far reaching, some key aspects are:
- Centralized Dynamic User Profile, App Management, and Policy Managementacross all Windows workspaces.
- Context-aware filters apply profiles, app management, policies and FlexApp delivery.
- Works across mixed OS versions for zero downtime migrations/co-existence.
- Supports Physical, Virtual, and Cloud Workspaces – Amazon Workspaces, Nutanix Frame, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and others.
In this blog we will discuss specific aspects of the product, primarily the User Profile and Policy Management features configured within a Nutanix Frame deployment as the area of focus. A future blog will cover the Application Management aspects with Nutanix Frame.A breakdown of ProfileUnity from a reference architecture perspective is as shown in the figure listed below:
How Does ProfileUnity Work?
ProfileUnity is available as a standalone product and consists of three parts:
- The Management Console - provides one central location where administrators can configure persona management, user, and machine policies.
- The Client Tools - manages each user's settings and persona during their session.
- The FlexApp Packaging Console (optional) - allows administrators to configure and prepare any applications that will need to be configured for users and made available as a department installed application (DIA) through application layering.
The user environment is centrally managed via the Management Console and configured and maintained within a database to point to file shares and storage locations for configuration file settings, (a ProfileUnity Netlogon or UNC Shared folder) and for user data and configuration persistence (a ProfileUnity user data share or storage container location). As users login, the user experience is actively configured, monitored, and maintained while in a session, then persisted and written back to the user data location by ProfileUnity at logoff. There are many areas in which ProfileUnity can manage a user environment and persona. All contained within a configuration database, managed within the ProfileUnity console. These can be seen in the figure listed below:
Note the items with numbers in red in the figure above, these are the areas in which configurations have been set (all of which are default settings by ProfileUnity). These items in red are as listed below:
- Portability Settings (35)
- User Defined Scripts (7)
- Application Launcher (15)
- Registry (28)
- Folder Redirection (6)
- Windows Options (1)
The initial numbers listed beside each in red are the active configurations that have been set, that are general best practice configurations Liquidware has found to enhance a user's environment experience and persona in a Windows desktop environment.
Liquidware has created configuration templates that automatically pre-configure settings based on the goals you are trying to achieve in your environment. You also can add or import custom templates into this library from the Administration area.
There are two user profile or persona-specific areas of a ProfileUnity deployment that can be used for persistence. These are:
- Profile Disk (VHD or VHDX)
- Portability Settings (Files and Folders)
A ProfileUnity deployment can leverage either or both capabilities depending on use case needs and requirements.