Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?
-
@wrx7m We have not deployed anything RDS related without User Profile Disks in close to a decade now. I can think of maybe one exception and that was because it was a very small setup with no need for anything else plus it was temporary.
User Profile Disks whether native or FSLogix, which is now included with RDS CALs by default, is the way to go.
They make adding Session Hosts or additional collections to the farm so much easier to do when located on a file server.
If someone blows-up their profile or it gets corrupted then SIDFinder to figure out their UPD, log them off, rename the UPD, log them on, configure their profile, mount the old UPD, and copy the needed data in if this is needed at all. Note that I am speaking specifically of something within the local profile getting corrupted here.
We would not deploy an all-in-one or farm RDS configuration at all without a UPD setup. Period.
-
@PhlipElder said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
We have not deployed anything RDS related without User Profile Disks in close to a decade now.
Gah! I need to get off the seesaw lol. OK. I will test them out to see how well it handles the 3 apps that people will be accessing.
-
@PhlipElder said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
User Profile Disks whether native or FSLogix, which is now included with RDS CALs by default
Interesting. I need to check it out. Not sure what it does.
-
@PhlipElder So, UPD should be stored on a completely separate file server?
-
@wrx7m Correct.
Putting them elsewhere offers true user portability. In my experience the only extra step we take from there is redirecting Desktop and the My Documents folder. We do that by default for all of our clients.
There are some additional management and features available in FSLogix. It's been a while since I've looked at it though.
-
@NDC said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@wrx7m said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@NDC OK. Thanks for sharing your issues. I am just going to use regular profiles on a standard disk. I don't have time to deal with those types of issues.
I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what was going wrong and never saw anyone else with a similar problem in all my searching.
I don't get the impression that this is common at all. Most people seem to think they just work and are an upgrade on old school roaming profiles.
I don't think I'd let the one anecdote of trouble rule it out as an option unless you are in an extreme hurry.
As much as Scott is likely against this - I would have request permission to open a case with MS - The $250 call would have likely provided you direct access to MS engineers to assist in the issue. I'm guessing you could have saved a lot of money (i.e. your salary time) getting to a solution faster - and if not, then MS would refund your money, but at least you would have had them sitting side by side with you working the issue.
-
@wrx7m said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@PhlipElder So, UPD should be stored on a completely separate file server?
It works through a file share. If you have a RDS farm, then likely you want a server with fast disk to provide access to these, and not be reliant upon any of the farm members to be active, providing this service (storage location).
-
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@NDC said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@wrx7m said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@NDC OK. Thanks for sharing your issues. I am just going to use regular profiles on a standard disk. I don't have time to deal with those types of issues.
I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what was going wrong and never saw anyone else with a similar problem in all my searching.
I don't get the impression that this is common at all. Most people seem to think they just work and are an upgrade on old school roaming profiles.
I don't think I'd let the one anecdote of trouble rule it out as an option unless you are in an extreme hurry.
As much as Scott is likely against this - I would have request permission to open a case with MS - The $250 call would have likely provided you direct access to MS engineers to assist in the issue. I'm guessing you could have saved a lot of money (i.e. your salary time) getting to a solution faster - and if not, then MS would refund your money, but at least you would have had them sitting side by side with you working the issue.
A coworker spent some time with MS support as I recall. Since I wasn't involved in the call(s) I don't know how well that was handled on either end but we didn't get a resolution.
-
Did you end up going the UPD route? If so, what are your thoughts so far?
I am debating myself. We have a couple 2008R2 RDS hosts ourselves and will be migrating to 2019. We have a pretty simple setup with one LOB app.
-
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Did you end up going the UPD route? If so, what are your thoughts so far?
I am debating myself. We have a couple 2008R2 RDS hosts ourselves and will be migrating to 2019. We have a pretty simple setup with one LOB app.
If you don't need dedicated profiles that save information - why not just use a mandatory profile instead?
-
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Did you end up going the UPD route? If so, what are your thoughts so far?
I am debating myself. We have a couple 2008R2 RDS hosts ourselves and will be migrating to 2019. We have a pretty simple setup with one LOB app.
If you don't need dedicated profiles that save information - why not just use a mandatory profile instead?
I had to pause last week. I am picking up this project again and am going to try testing UPD with a couple test users. I will update this thread with my thoughts.
-
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Did you end up going the UPD route? If so, what are your thoughts so far?
I am debating myself. We have a couple 2008R2 RDS hosts ourselves and will be migrating to 2019. We have a pretty simple setup with one LOB app.
If you don't need dedicated profiles that save information - why not just use a mandatory profile instead?
Having a <75 User setup, GPO'd locked down Hosts and with one LOB app, I never really though about it. I will look into it though and see.
-
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Did you end up going the UPD route? If so, what are your thoughts so far?
I am debating myself. We have a couple 2008R2 RDS hosts ourselves and will be migrating to 2019. We have a pretty simple setup with one LOB app.
If you don't need dedicated profiles that save information - why not just use a mandatory profile instead?
Having a <75 User setup, GPO'd locked down Hosts and with one LOB app, I never really though about it. I will look into it though and see.
If you're not deploying an actual desktop, mandatory profiles seems like the way to go, that and delete them (there's a registry key for that) each time upon log off.
-
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Did you end up going the UPD route? If so, what are your thoughts so far?
I am debating myself. We have a couple 2008R2 RDS hosts ourselves and will be migrating to 2019. We have a pretty simple setup with one LOB app.
If you don't need dedicated profiles that save information - why not just use a mandatory profile instead?
Having a <75 User setup, GPO'd locked down Hosts and with one LOB app, I never really though about it. I will look into it though and see.
If you're not deploying an actual desktop, mandatory profiles seems like the way to go, that and delete them (there's a registry key for that) each time upon log off.
I do have them coming to the RDHS desktop at the moment. Currently looking up mandatory profiles to see if they are a good fit. It is looking to seem so.
I was also thinking about using RemoteApp so they can don't really get to the desktop. If using RemoteApp, is a mandatory profile even needed?
-
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Did you end up going the UPD route? If so, what are your thoughts so far?
I am debating myself. We have a couple 2008R2 RDS hosts ourselves and will be migrating to 2019. We have a pretty simple setup with one LOB app.
If you don't need dedicated profiles that save information - why not just use a mandatory profile instead?
Having a <75 User setup, GPO'd locked down Hosts and with one LOB app, I never really though about it. I will look into it though and see.
If you're not deploying an actual desktop, mandatory profiles seems like the way to go, that and delete them (there's a registry key for that) each time upon log off.
I do have them coming to the RDHS desktop at the moment. Currently looking up mandatory profiles to see if they are a good fit. It is looking to seem so.
I was also thinking about using RemoteApp so they can don't really get to the desktop. If using RemoteApp, is a mandatory profile even needed?
I'd say it's even more "desired", not needed - one less thing that breaks. Never have to worry that some cache file is broken, etc.
This of course depends on your LOB - if your LOB requires static information you can't folder redirect out of the profile, well, then you're stuck.
-
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Did you end up going the UPD route? If so, what are your thoughts so far?
I am debating myself. We have a couple 2008R2 RDS hosts ourselves and will be migrating to 2019. We have a pretty simple setup with one LOB app.
If you don't need dedicated profiles that save information - why not just use a mandatory profile instead?
Having a <75 User setup, GPO'd locked down Hosts and with one LOB app, I never really though about it. I will look into it though and see.
If you're not deploying an actual desktop, mandatory profiles seems like the way to go, that and delete them (there's a registry key for that) each time upon log off.
I do have them coming to the RDHS desktop at the moment. Currently looking up mandatory profiles to see if they are a good fit. It is looking to seem so.
I was also thinking about using RemoteApp so they can don't really get to the desktop. If using RemoteApp, is a mandatory profile even needed?
I'd say it's even more "desired", not needed - one less thing that breaks. Never have to worry that some cache file is broken, etc.
Good point.
This of course depends on your LOB - if your LOB requires static information you can't folder redirect out of the profile, well, then you're stuck.
Hmm.. I will check into that. I don't think the LOB does anything inside the profile. Basically just runs a static .exe that connects to an SQL DB back end.
-
Cool, then you should have it easy.
FYI - Published apps still create a full profile on the RDS box, Just the desktop isn't presented to the user. If the application allows them to browse around, they could typically see the drive letters, the mapped printers, etc... that's why you still need to lock all that stuff down.
-
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Cool, then you should have it easy.
FYI - Published apps still create a full profile on the RDS box, Just the desktop isn't presented to the user. If the application allows them to browse around, they could typically see the drive letters, the mapped printers, etc... that's why you still need to lock all that stuff down.
Thanks for the info. I will keep that in mind. I was debating about using UPD's like @wrx7m and that was my interest in this post.
Also, still planning out where to put Connection Broker, WebAccess and Licensing but that is another post.
-
@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:
Cool, then you should have it easy.
FYI - Published apps still create a full profile on the RDS box, Just the desktop isn't presented to the user. If the application allows them to browse around, they could typically see the drive letters, the mapped printers, etc... that's why you still need to lock all that stuff down.
Thanks for the info. I will keep that in mind. I was debating about using UPD's like @wrx7m and that was my interest in this post.
Also, still planning out where to put Connection Broker, WebAccess and Licensing but that is another post.
For local profile management, UPDs are a lot cleaner. If we are not putting them on a file server across the network then a second partition/VHDX is set up for that task to keep them separate.
With the inclusion of FSLogix with RDS CALs/SALs now it's a no-brainer, IMNSHO, to set the project up on the FSLogix version.
Storage management is another reason why UPDs on a network or separate partition make sense. Keeping a local profile on the C:\ of the session host is messy and can cause issues down the road with users coming and going.
As far as the Broker/Gateway/Web put those roles on one VM but separate from the Session Host.
