FSLogix Profile Containers help offload user profiles to a VHD(X) file and redirect a user’s data and settings to a centralized share repository. The configuration process is as simple as modifying several Windows registry entries to enable the feature and identify the share repository. During the logon process, the service mounts the Profile Container and redirects user profile requests to the mounted disk.
FSLogix Profile Containers, alone in multi-session scenarios, only support write-back to one session profile at time. Other sessions are set to read-only mode, so changes made to the second user session are discarded. Multi-session use cases are commonly found when using Citrix Virtual Apps. For example, consider a physician. Using Citrix Workspace from home, this user might launch Outlook from their corporate Windows 10 device and at the same time launch the hospital’s EMR system on a personal Mac desktop to quickly check up on a few patients. That’s two launched sessions with the possibility of losing data on one.
How can Citrix Workspace Environment Management (WEM) help when using multi-session deployments?
When a user launches multiple sessions, changes made in each session are synchronized and saved to the FSLogix Profile Container. During the user logon process, FSLogix mounts the Profile Container and redirects I/O requests to the mounted disk. Profile Management then synchronizes changes from the user store to the local profile.
During the user logoff process, WEM’s Profile Management feature works differently depending on which FSLogix Profile Container mode is used in the session. If the user’s session is in read-only mode, Profile Management writes back changes to the user store. If user’s session is in read/write mode, Profile Management applies changes from the user store to the local profile directly. Then, the FSLogix Profile Container merges those changes to the profile container disk. No matter which mode the user profile containers are set to, with WEM enhancement to FSLogix Profile Containers, users won’t have to worry about losing their profile data.
Be sure to visit our Citrix Docs page for details on how to enable the multi-session write-back feature in Citrix WEM. Want to keep up on what’s new with WEM? Check out our What’s New page for the latest on all things Citrix WEM.
