5.2

Configuring View Composer Persistent Disks with View Persona Management
With
View Composer persistent disks, you can preserve user data and settings while you manage linked-clone
OS disks with refresh, recompose, and rebalance operations. Configuring persistent disks can enhance the
performance of View Persona Management when users generate a large amount of persona information. You
can configure persistent disks only with dedicated-assignment, linked-clone desktops.
View Persona Management maintains each user profile on a remote repository that is configured on a network
share. After a user logs into a desktop, the persona files are dynamically downloaded as the user needs them.
If you configure persistent disks with View Persona Management, you can refresh and recompose the linked-
clone OS disks and keep a local copy of the each user profile on the persistent disks.
The persistent disks can act as a cache for the user profiles. When a user requires persona files, View Persona
Management does not need to download data that is the same on the local persistent disk and the remote
repository. Only unsynchronized persona data needs to be downloaded.
If you configure persistent disks, do not enable the Remove local persona at log off policy. Enabling this policy
deletes the user data from the persistent disks when users log off.
Manage User Profiles on Standalone Laptops
If you install View Persona Management on standalone (non-View) laptops, make sure that the user profiles
are kept synchronized when users take their standalone laptops offline.
To ensure that a standalone laptop user has an up-to-date local profile, you can configure the View Persona
Management group policy setting, Enable background download for laptops. This setting downloads the
entire user profile to the standalone laptop in the background.
As a best practice, notify your users to make sure that their user profiles are completely downloaded before
they disconnect from the network. Tell users to wait for the Background download complete notice to appear
on their laptop screens before they disconnect.
To allow the Background download complete notice to be displayed on user laptops, configure the View Persona
Management group policy setting, Show critical errors to users via tray icon alerts.
If a user disconnects from the network before the profile download is complete, the local profile and remote
profile might become unsynchronized. While the user is offline, the user might update a local file that was not
fully downloaded. When the user reconnects to the network, the local profile is uploaded, overwriting the
remote profile. Data that was in the original remote profile might be lost.
The following steps provide an example you might follow.
Prerequisites
Verify that View Persona Management is configured for your users' standalone laptops. See “Configuring a
View Persona Management Deployment,” on page 232.
Procedure
1 In the Active Directory OU that controls your standalone laptops, enable the Enable background download
for laptops setting.
In the Group Policy Object Editor, expand the following folders: Computer Configuration,
Administrative Templates, Classic Administrative Templates (ADM), VMware View Agent
Configuration, Persona Management, Roaming & Synchronization.
The Classic Administrative Templates (ADM) folder appears only in Windows Vista or later and
Windows Server 2008 or later releases.
VMware Horizon View Administration
242 VMware, Inc.