A quick reminder for most test-takers, but it can be confusing during an exam to remember the benefits and cons of each profile type.
User profiles generally hold:
- Desktop settings such as wallpaper and screen saver
- Shortcuts and Start menu setting
- Internet Explorer Favorites and Home Page
- Microsoft Outlook signature
- Printers
Types of profiles:
- Mandatory
- Local
- Roaming
- Profile Management
- Temporary (not covered here.)
Mandatory profiles:
- To be configured when an administrator does not desire user changes to be saved.
- Stored on the network.
- All user changes are lost when the user logs off.
Local profiles:
- Configure local profiles when an administrator desires to allow user changes to be saved, but not on the network.
- Stored on the user device's hard drive.
- Can take up a lot of space as the profile grows.
- Slower logon time.
- Obviously, the user's device must have a hard drive.
Roaming profiles:
- Configured in environments where an administrator desires the users to have access to their profile on any device which they log on.
- Saved on the network.
- Can be accessed from any device.
- If multiple sessions are open on separate XenApp servers, the last closed session overrides changes of sessions closed earlier which can result in lost changes.
- See: Citrix eDocs: Technologies > Profile Management > Profile Management 4.0 > Get Started > Profile Management Use Cases
Profile management:
- Best to configure in environments where users have multiple sessions open on different XenApp servers.
- Does not allow the “last write” to win.
- Specific data can be excluded from the user profile.
- Profile can be kept to a minimal size.
- Speeds up user logon
More info: Citrix eDocs > Technologies > Profile Management > Profile Management 4.0