ProfileDisk: Full User Profile Delivery Employing Virtual Disks

Another powerful feature included in ProfileUnity is ProfileDisk. Very simply, ProfileDisk allows a user’s entire Windows user profile to be contained on a virtual disk that can be attached and detached to a desktop as needed. The ProfileDisk stores 100% of all file system and registry changes in the user profile path so that all user settings and data are preserved on both persistent and non-persistent desktops. You will not have to spend time deciding which parts of the user’s profile should be saved and made portable across your environment to reduce profile sizes. And because the user profile is available after mounting the drive at login rather than waiting for it to be streamed across the network, large profiles load much faster for your users.

As a user environment management solution, ProfileUnity has always delivered universally compatible user profiles across multiple Windows sessions. When a user logs on to a Windows session, their personal user profile settings are instantly pulled across the network in seconds. Customized settings such as application-level customization, user-created spell checker data, Outlook signatures, desktop wallpaper, and much more are instantly made available for the user regardless of whether the machine is a VMware Horizon, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD), thin client, or traditional Windows desktop.

However, the large amount of data stored in a user’s profile tends to grow and not all this data is necessary for a robust and complete user experience. As a result, ProfileUnity gives administrators granular control to set rules and choose what parts of the profile data to preserve and make portable with Portability Management and Settings. Reducing the user profile to contain only the essential settings and data speeds up logon times, reduces profile corruption instances, and eliminates the needless transfer of large amounts of data over the network.

Out-of-the-box, ProfileUnity comes with templates that cover 85% of the user profile and typical application and Windows settings. What about the rest of the settings? Administrators would have to create portability rules for any essential settings and applications that are not typically captured by ProfileUnity.

What if user login times are growing even while using Portability Management and Settings? Administrators are faced with either cutting more data from the profile to reduce streaming data over the network or telling their users to expect long logins.

In some cases, organizations want to provide users with their full user profile settings and data to give them a persistent desktop in a non-persistent environment. But again, user experience satisfaction decreases as the transfer of a large user profile causes delays at login.

ProfileUnity’s ProfileDisk solves these issues. A ProfileDisk contains a user’s entire profile on either a VHDX or VMDK virtual disk. When the user logs in, that ProfileDisk is attached to their session. When the user logs out, the ProfileDisk is detached. This feature acts as an “easy button” or “catch all” for user profiles so that no settings are missed or forgotten. With the disk attached for the duration of the session, there is no need for the settings and data to be streamed across the network at login, resulting in support for full persistence without compromising user experience.

Using a VMDK ProfileDisk with FlexDisk technology, the ProfileDisk can be attached to any Horizon VDI desktop on the fly and detached at logoff on either a persistent or non-persistent desktop. This avoids the need to restore the profile at login and adds less than 5 seconds of login time for Virtual Center to hot-add the VMDK upon our request. This technology is also created in a way that preserves the native Windows format of the user profile.

Similarly, the same technique is used to attach a VHDX ProfileDisk. The login process is held up for about 2 seconds to mount the VHDX and then let Windows run. This technology supports Windows 10 and 11 and Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025 and the following desktop delivery types:

  • VMware Horizon
  • Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
  • Amazon Workspaces and AppStream 2.0
  • Dizzion Frame
  • Physical desktops
  • Multi-user operating systems like Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Remote Desktop Services for Windows Server

While it might seem that employing ProfileDisk to capture the whole user profile would eliminate the need for or use of Portability rules, ProfileUnity’s Portability Management can still be used in conjunction with ProfileDisk. Portability Management can help bridge the gap by capturing user profile settings from non-conforming applications that are not being saved in the standard local user folder or user’s registry hive. Portability Management can also be used to help support multiple desktop sessions or multiple application sessions. When it comes to disaster recovery and using VMDKs for your users’ profiles, Portability Management can be configured to save out the profile from the ProfileDisk VMDK to a CIFS share. Backing up and replicating a CIFS share might be easier than backing up and replicating a VMDK on a VMFS volume. Thus, Portability Management is still an administrator’s powerful ally in customizing user profile management for their specific environment.

Configuring a VHDX ProfileDisk

VHDX ProfileDisks can be set up in two ways. The first method is to create a new configuration using the Guided Configuration Wizard by selecting a “Windows 10, 11, 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025 as a Desktop ProfileDisk” template from the template library. One of the wizard’s steps will allow you to configure VHDX ProfileDisks similar to the instructions below. The second method is to configure VHDX ProfileDisks on the Administration screen using the instructions below.

User Group Management is available for VHDX ProfileDisks. Different VHDX ProfileDisks can be assigned to particular Active Directory User Groups. Also, each group of users can have separate paths to their own ProfileDisk so that loads can be balanced among different file shares.

To use a VHDX ProfileDisk to hold user profiles, complete the following steps:

  1. Log in to the ProfileUnity Management Console.
  2. Hover over your username in the top right corner of the screen.
  3. In the drop-down menu that appears, click the Administration option.
  4. The Administration screen opens with the Settings tab displayed.
  5. Scroll down to the Client Settings section.
  6. In the ProfileDisk and FlexDisk VMDK Mode field, select the VHDX ProfileDisk option.
  7. Click the Add ProfileDisk Group button to add a new ProfileDisk and User Group assignment. Or edit an existing ProfileDisk assignment in the ProfileDisk Assignments table.
  8. On the ProfileDisk Assignments screen, select the domain to search under Active Directory Groups. Then enter the group that will be assigned to this VHDX ProfileDisk by typing the first few letters of the group and then selecting the correct group. Multiple groups can be selected. If this field is left blank, then the ProfileDisk is assigned to all ProfileUnity users.
  9. Choose whether to enable Multi-session ProfileDisk support. Selecting this checkbox allows a user to log in to multiple sessions at the same time and have the same experience across sessions. Only VHDX ProfileDisks are supported for Multi-session ProfileDisk.
  10. Enter the Virtual Disk Path where the VHDX will be located.
  11. In the Size in GB field, enter the VHDX’s maximum size.
  12. In the Secondary Virtual Disk Path field, enter an optional failover path to be used if the primary Virtual Disk Path is unavailable.
  13. In the Disk Type drop-down list, choose whether the disk will be Expandable or Fixed in size.
  14. Click the Save Assignments button.
  15. Enter the Deployment Path where the ProfileDisk configuration for all disks will be stored on your NETLOGON share.
  16. Select the Overwrite files if they exist option to have the deployed configuration file overwrite any previously existing client configuration files at the specified location.
  17. Click the Update button in the top right corner of the screen.
  18. Click the Download or Deploy Client Settings button to send a copy of the client configuration file to the specified location.
  19. On the screen that pops up, select the Platform for deployment.
    • If you choose the Domain or Cloud option, the client configuration file is placed in the directory you specified in the Deployment Path field.
    • If you are not logged in as an Active Directory user, choose the Download option. This allows you to place the client configuration file, clientsettings.xml, in the Deployment Path field manually.
  20. Scroll down to the ProfileUnity Tools section.
  21. Enter the Deployment Path where the Client Tools will be deployed on your NETLOGON share.
  22. Select the Overwrite files if they exist option to have the deployed files overwrite any previously existing client files at the specified location.
  23. Click the Update button in the top right corner of the screen.
  24. Click Download or Deploy Client Tools to copy the ProfileUnity Client files to the specified location.
  25. On the screen that pops up, select the Platform for deployment.
    • If you choose the Domain option, the client configuration file is placed in the directory you specified for in the Deployment Path field.
    • If you are not logged in as an Active Directory user, choose the Download option. This will allow you to manually place the Client Tools in the NETLOGON share on your domain controller.
  26. Click the Deploy button.
  27. Click the Configuration Management option in the left column.

Note: For changes to VHDX ProfileDisk Assignments to take effect, end-user machines must re-process the updated clientsettings.xml file via the Startup Script GPO, also known as startup.exe.

Configuring a VMDK ProfileDisk

To use a VMDK ProfileDisk to hold user profiles, complete the following steps:

  1. Log in to the ProfileUnity Management Console.
  2. Hover over your username in the top right corner of the screen.
  3. In the drop-down menu that appears, click the Administration option.

  4. Note: If you have not already done so. Follow the directions provided earlier in the Setting Up ProfileUnity Clustering for FlexDisk section to configure FlexDisk for your vCenter.

  5. The Administration screen opens with the Settings tab displayed.
  6. Scroll down to the Client Settings section.
  7. In the ProfileDisk and FlexDisk VMDK Mode field, select the FlexDisk VMDK ProfileDisk And FlexApp option.
  8. In the Deployment Path field, enter your NETLOGON path.
  9. Click the Update button in the top right corner of the screen.
  10. Back in the Client Settings section, click the Download or Deploy Client Settings button.
  11. On the screen that pops up, select the Platform for deployment.
    • If you choose the Domain or Cloud option, the client configuration file will be placed in the directory you specified in the Deployment Path field.
    • If you choose the Download option, the client configuration file will be downloaded through your browser.
  12. Scroll down to the ProfileUnity Tools section.
  13. Click Download or Deploy Client Tools to copy the ProfileUnity Client files to the specified location.
  14. On the screen that pops up, select the Platform for deployment.
    • If you choose the Domain or Cloud option, the client configuration file will be placed in the directory you specified for in the Deployment Path field.
    • If you are not logged in as an Active Directory user, choose the Download option. This will allow you to manually place the Client Tools in the NETLOGON share on your domain controller.
  15. Click the Deploy button.
  16. Click the Configuration Management option in the left column.

  17. Note: In order for the VMDK ProfileDisk mode change to take effect, end-user machines must re-process the updated clientsettings.xml file via the Startup Script GPO, also known as startup.exe.

  18. In the ProfileUnity Management Console, click the FlexDisk Management option in the left column.

    • Note: Beginning with version 6.8.5, FlexDisk Management is hidden by default. If you do not see it in the left column, hover the cursor over your username in the top right corner of the screen and click the Administration option. In the Settings tab, scroll down to and click to open the Miscellaneous section. Deselect the Hide FlexDisk checkbox, then click Update in the top right corner of the screen. Lastly, refresh your screen and the FlexDisk Management option should appear in the left column.

  20. Click the User Data Disk tab in the top right corner of the screen.
  21. Click the Create button to provision a user data disk.
  22. On the New User Data Disk Setting screen, select your Datastore.
  23. Select the Create New Disk For ProfileDisk Use checkbox.
  24. (Optional) Change the value in the Size in GB field.
  25. Click Save.
  26. After the Task Manager list on the FlexDisk Management screen shows the disk creation has been successful, refresh the User Data Disk list if necessary.
  27. With the user data disk just created, click the (Assignments) icon to create an assignment for users or groups.
  28. Select your user or group.

    Pools will automatically populate if you have configured your VMware Horizon credentials under Administration > FlexDisk.

  29. Click the Add Assignment button to add it to the list of current assignments.

    30. When done, click the X button. With the VMDK ProfileDisk configuration complete, the user or group should be able to log in and receive their ProfileDisk.

  30. Note: Changes to VMDK ProfileDisk assignments do not require additional updates to the clientsettings.xml or the subsequent re-processing by startup.exe. The changes take effect, for a given user, on their next logon.