Last UPDATE : 22/11/2018

Why do you need a solution?

Well as the move to Office 365 is on everyone’s radar this has introduced a number of challenges when being introduced into a non-persistent environment which can summarised as follows:

• Outlook Cache – the traditional recommendation was to always have Online mode set when connecting to exchange to ensure no OST was required to be saved in a profile. With Office365 now on everyone’s radar/to do list this recommendation has now been reversed due to the latency and reliability not a guarantee/not located in same data centre. End user experience is always a key priority and this has driven the requirement for cache mode to be used to ensure optimum reliability/access. This means an OST (could be up to 50GB mailbox size) must be created in the user profile and saved to the profile solution of choice (if any used) causing login delays or re-created everyone login adding some delay to outlook re-population of mailbox.
• Outlook Search/Indexing – Search index is stored per-computer, this does not follow the user, effectively disabling the real-time search option in Outlook. As searching in outlook is necessity due to the volume of e-mails we all receive/send daily it can have a productivity impact to the users and is a key requirement to provide first class experience.
• OneDrive for Business – with Onedrive for business included in Office365 subscription it allows up to 1TB of data storage per users to be available. This data is sync’d using the OneDrive for business client to the Server/Session in it entirety.

What’s products solve my problem?

All of the solutions use VHD/VHDX which use Block Level transfer introducing significant improvements to access to large files such as OST/PST Files or complete profiles. Below is a quick review on the products.

The context to this article is based on adding one of the above products to an existing profile solution to solve your problem. Full profile solution are also available and are covered off at the end of the article.

Citrix App Layering – Office365 Layer

A new type of User layer for Office 365 allows you to preserve users’ data and configuration settings when elastically assigning Office 365 layers. This feature was released in 4.8(in labs from 4.5) of App Layering and have been covered in my blog Citrix Application Layering – Office 365 User layer

This name is somewhat misleading as at the moment it only support Outlook. Like the other products in the comparison it is attaching a VHD file during login to redirect the outlook folder into user profile. If you’re an existing app layering customer and need to address only outlook then it will meet your needs with the possibility of more enhancements  being added  in the coming months in newer app layering versions.

It only addresses 1 of the 3 challenges highlighted , but adoption of OneDrive for Business may be optional in many organisation in which case the Indexing/Searching could also be a limitation imposed on the solution owners to end users.

• Management : Managed through App Layering Management.
• Storage Location: Stored on App Layering Remote SMB Share
• Limitations: No Concurrency, Limited to Citrix UPM as profile solution, no cloud storage option, SMB 1.0
• Platform’s supported:  VDI  & XenApp

Citrix WEM/UPM

As indicated during SYN231 session during Citrix Synergy 2018, WEM/UPM will be adding support for Office 365 User Experience including a roaming email cache & search index database. Below is a extract from presentation showing the roaming email cache + search index data (per user basis)

See below on Citrix Synergy TV Session SYN231 (from 22:01 onwards) a demonstration of the feature

This news didn’t make into the keynote speech , but was hidden within a session titled “Manage your user experience from Workspace Environment Management Service“.  It is a step in the right direction for citrix and is certainly going to ruffle the feathers of other product vendors who have being doing this for a while.

See my article covering the Citrix UPM setup and configuration

Citrix User Profile Manager Roaming OST & Search Index

It  addresses 2 of the 3 challenges highlighted , but adoption of OneDrive for Business may be optional in many organisation.

• Management : Managed through UPM
• Storage Location:  Can be stored in any file location local(on-premise)
• Limitations: No Concurrency but rumour of multi-session support , Limited to Citrix UPM as profile solution, no cloud storage option.
• Platform’s supported:  VDI & RDSH

Note: If you bundle Application Layering User Layers with Citrix UPM then OneDrive for Business will be provided.

VMWare App Volumes

With the combination of Writable App Volume & VMware UEM VMware Outlook cache roaming & Search Index between non-persistence sessions is now possible.

App Volumes allow a per user writable volume to be created and made available , this is created in the following location “C:\SnapVolumesTemp\writable”. This roams with the user onto each session as the volume accessible after user login.

Outlook Cache

Using VMware UEM adjust the ADMX “Default Location for Outlook OST” to redirect the OST location to  the App Volume that will roam with user to “C:\SnapVolumesTemp\writable\Outlook” allows the Outlook Cache to be written to User volume.

https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2016/08/app-volumes-user-environment-manager-managing-ost-files.html

Here is a youtube video covering outcome. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzy4X5xbURY

Search Index

Outlook Search Indexing with App Volume – https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2149799 , a video is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWDf6wQ8cM4

NOTE: “Writable volumes are not supported with RDSH assignments”

It  addresses 2 of the 3 challenges highlighted , but adoption of OneDrive for Business may be optional in many organisation in which case the Indexing/Searching could also be a limitation imposed on the solution owners to end users.

• Management : Managed through App Volumes Management & VMware UEM
• Storage Location: Must be stored in VMware datastores
• Limitations: No OneDrive for Business, No concurrent access, Only available in VDI not RDSH
• Platform’s supported:  VDI Only

NOTE: A sneak preview of App Volumes is available here A Sneak-peek at App Volumes 2.14

Brief overview as follows:-

• Less configuration required for Outlook OST/Indexing
• Writable Volumes on Shared Datastores
• Writeable volume backup’s

FSLogix O365 Container

Office365 container is a profile agnostic solution that can be deployed on any existing Server Based Computing (SBC) solution, it has the benefit that you don’t need to transition your existing profile into its own profile container solution (FSLogix Profile Container) to take advantage of the features.

If you buy the FSLogix profile container solution you will get all the features of the Office365 container with the exception of roaming search (Outlook Search/Indexing)

https://docs.fslogix.com/display/20170529/Roaming+the+Windows+Search+Database

It addresses all 3 of the challenges highlighted, with additional benefits of Skype for Business GAL/OneNote and Teams.

It also includes concurrency allowing multiple logins which could be common on Xenapp/RDSH environments. See more on my blog on concurrency FSLogix -Concurrent access to O365 Containers VHDAccessMode Explained!

See my blog for further info on the product ,FSLogix Office 365 Container – Install, Configure and Testing

It has to be noted that Indexing/Search for outlook is available single user environment(XenDesktop, VDI etc) + Multi-user environment (RDSH, XenApp)

• Management : Managed through Group Policies/Registry Settings
• Storage Location: Can be stored in any file location local(on-premise) or remote(cloud) with examples in AWS & Azure demo’s been published.
• Limitations: No Central Management (although due to be released this year)
• Platform’s supported:  VDI & RDSH

See my article on Cloud Cache FSLogix – Cloud Cache “CCD” Overview for interesting developments on containers locations. Although not related to this analysis it is worth referring.

Ivanti (Cache Roaming for Virtual Sessions)

Updated 22/11/2018 – Updated after 2018.3 Release

The ivanti solution does exactly what the title says, it is mainly driven by an environment manager (AEMP) configuration during login (Pre-Desktop or Desktop Created) running a number of predefined actions to create and attached a VHD file and redirection of the outlook folder in user profile, OneNote and Skype for Business GAL as well as OneDrive now.

Roaming Search index can be implemented by using the following AEMP configuration on the Ivanti Community site: –

Environment Manager Policy Outlook 2016 Cache Roaming & Windows Search – https://community.ivanti.com/docs/DOC-71005

At the minute, the search index is only for Single Session (VDI) but it is expected that it will support RDSH in the next release due Jan 19.

Concurrent VHD

In addition to the One Drive Cache Roaming for virtual sessions feature, Environment Manager 2018.3 also now supports concurrent user access for Office 365 VHD containers.This enables a user within a non-persistent Windows environment to have multiple sessions running at the same time, for example to access Outlook from multiple virtual sessions.

Credit where credit is due, Ivanti has stepped up in the last 6 months to delivery these features that users are asking for and are closing the gap quickly compared to some of the other products.

It addresses all of the challenges highlighted , but Indexing/Searching  is limited to single session(VDI), could also be a limitation imposed on the solution owners to end users.

• Management : Managed through Environment Manager (AEMP) configuration
• Storage Location : Can be stored in any file location local(on-premise) or remote(cloud)
• Limitations:  Limited to Ivanti Product, Single Session Roaming Index
• Platform’s supported:  VDI & RDSH (Some limitation on RDSH)

Liquidware – ProfileUnity with Office365 Caching

ProfileUnity with Profile Disk allows you to have users’ entire profiles on a provisioned VHD or VMDK. VMDK support is definitely a exclusive feature only offered  in Profile Disk as the other products compared are VHD/VHDX based.

ProfileDisk essentially off-loads the entire user profile to disk for optimum performance and flexibility to a fileshare (local or cloud) and injecting during the login process allowing profile to load in seconds.

It is now possible to be selective in profile unity/profile disks to not capture the entire profile and only target the specific O365.

The below article was created showing OST/Outlook.

• https://liquidwarelabs.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000728671-Setting-up-a-VHD-for-OST-file-for-use-with-Office-365
• Also see my article on Liquidware Profile Unity & Office 365 Caching, and putting the configuration into practise.

Further testing around OneDrive etc needs to be completed in the same manner as above to remove the profile agnostic “X” but i’ll test update when i can validate the configuration.

It addresses all 3 of the challenges highlighted, with additional benefits of Skype for Business GAL/OneNote being addresses as complete profile is being migrated.

It has to be noted although Outlook Search/Indexing is available , it is only for single user environment(XenDesktop, VDI etc). Using Search/Indexing in a RDSH environment would require indexing to be done per RDSH server which although technical possible in RDSH is is lottery if the next server you connect to contains your Search/Indexing database.

• Management : Managed through Profile Unity Central Management console.
• Storage Location : Can be stored in any file location local(on-premise) or remote(cloud) with native support for Azure Blob, Amazon S3 and Google Object Storage.
• Limitations: Requires entire profile to be migrated to solution, no concurrent access for profiledisk
• Platform’s supported:  VDI & RDSH

Microsoft User Profile Disk(UPD)

As already covered in the following article.

http://wilkyit.com/2018/06/19/user-profile-disk-office365-outlook-cache/

• Management : Managed through ADMX/XML File
• Storage Location : Can be stored in any file location local(on-premise) or remote(cloud)
• Limitations:  Does not play well with other products, No Roaming Search Index or support for OneDrive.
• Platform’s supported:  VDI & RDSH

Conclusion

Reviewing each of the products i have completed the comparison matrix below with the 3 challenges (Outlook/Search/OneDrive) plus two additional features:-

• Concurrent access – does the product allow for concurrent access to VHD/VHDX
• Profile Agnostic – does the product work with any profile solution (Citrix UPM, Roaming, Mandatory etc)

The following is the outcome of the comparison:-

Overall in my personal view here is my Leader board:-

1. FSLogix Office 365 Containers – It meets all the requirements to address the challenges + Concurrent access to container by multiple sessions + Profile agnostic + Single/multi-user roaming search index
2. Ivanti Workspace Manager – It meets 2 of the 3 requirements to address the challenges + Concurrent access to container by multiple sessions + Profile agnostic (As workplace environment configuration manager can be got separately from Personalization) + Single roaming search index
3. Liquidware ProfileUnity – It meets 2 of the 3 requirements to address the challenges( Indexing/Search only available for single user environment with RDSH possible but would be inconsistent therefore the tick in table is amber). Without profiledisk being used OneDrive is not yet available with being profile agnostic which is the final requirment which it does meet.
4. Citrix WEM/UPM – It meets 2 of the 3 requirements to address the challenges +  you are also tied to UPM Profiles so it is not profile agnostic.
5. VMware App Volumes – it  addresses two of the challenges with both OST & Search Index being redirected to writable volumes. App Volumes is limited to VMware datastores.
6. Microsoft UPD – it only addresses one of the challenges + Partially profile agnostics as it won’t work with all other full profile solution. testing has shown it works well with AppSense, but won’t with Citrix UPD.
7. Citrix App Layering (Office 365 Layer) – App Layering – it only addresses one of the challenges, it is tied to Citrix User Profile Manager.

Moving to a Full profile solution?

This context to this above sections are based on adding one of the above products to an existing profile solution to solve your problems. Additional you can choose to move your profile solution/expand your existing solution by bundling products (i.e UPM + App Layering).

This alters the outcome and matrix to the below (obviously the profile agnostics has been removed):-

Overall in my personal view here is my Leader board is now :-

1. FSLogix Office 365 Containers + Office 365 Containers – It meets all the requirements to address the challenges + Concurrent access to container by multiple sessions + Single/multi-user roaming search index
2. Citrix WEM/UPM + App Layering Full User Layers & Ivanti Workspace Manager –  Citrix WEM/UPM + App Layering Full User Layers – It meets all the requirements to address the challenges + Single/multi-user roaming search index. Only limtation being the concurrent access to VHD’s. Ivanti Workspace Manager – It meets all the requirements to address the challenges + Concurrent access to container by multiple sessions + Single roaming search index
3. Liquidware ProfileUnity – It meets 2 of the 3 requirements to address the challenges( Indexing/Search only available for single user environment with RDSH possible but would be inconsistent therefore the tick in table is amber). Without profiledisk being used OneDrive is not yet available with being profile agnostic which is the final requirement which it does meet.
4. FSLogix Proifle Container – It meets 2 of the 3 requirements to address the challenges and to roam the search index you need to include Office 365 containers
5. App Layering Full User Layers – It meets 2 of the 3 requirements to address the challenges.
6. Microsoft UPD – It meets 2 of the 3 requirements to address the challenges. The OneDrive is Orange tick due having to exlcude OneDrive in UPD and place the file elsewhere.
7. VMware App Volumes – Not available