By Tina de Benedictis, Technical Marketing Manager, Enterprise Desktop, End-User Computing, VMware
VMware View Premier includes an integrated user profile management system: View Persona Management.
You may already be aware of how View Persona Management optimizes the handling of user profiles at login and logout for View virtual desktops. Because of the minimal amount of data uploaded at login or logout, performance is better than with Windows roaming profiles, and boot storms are eliminated or reduced.
View Persona Management also manages user profiles within the View environment, without reliance on Active Directory and without affecting desktops outside of View. You can even manage your legacy Windows roaming profiles with View Persona Management.
For a deep dive into setup and configuration, see the VMware View Persona Management Deployment Guide.
What more could you want with user profile management in a virtual desktop environment? With Persona Management in View 5.1, you can now:
- Convert a Windows XP user profile to a Windows 7 user profile
- Synchronize a user profile on a physical machine with the user profile on a View virtual desktop
Converting a User Profile from Windows XP to Windows 7
VMware View now provides you with a command-line migration tool for one-time conversion of the user profile on a Windows XP desktop to a user profile on a Windows 7 desktop.
Why would you want to convert a user profile from Windows XP to Windows 7? You might want to migrate users
- From Windows XP View virtual desktops to Windows 7 View virtual desktops
- From Windows XP physical desktops to Windows 7 View virtual desktops
You can also use this View Persona Management feature to migrate users from Windows XP physical desktops to Windows XP View virtual desktops.
For details, see the VMware View 5.1 Evaluator’s Guide and the VMware View Administration guide.
Synchronizing a User Profile Between a Physical Desktop and a View Virtual Desktop
Why would you want to synchronize a user profile on a physical machine with the user profile on a View virtual desktop?
- Some users go back and forth between a physical desktop and a View virtual desktop. As the user moves between machines, you want their user profile to remain the same.
- In converting a physical desktop to a View virtual desktop, you also want to transfer the user profile
VMware View now allows you to install a standalone View Persona Management application on a physical machine to manage the user profile. The existing local profile on the physical desktop is migrated to the roaming profile in the Persona Repository. When the user logs in to their virtual desktop, the user profile from the physical machine is available via the roaming profile.
Try it! See the VMware View 5.1 Evaluator’s Guide and search for Evaluation Tasks for View 5.1 New Features and then for Persona Management User Profile on a Physical Machine.
