We just released an update to ProfileUnity, we’re now at 5.7 and this release was focused on blowing the doors off login/logoff.

ProfileUnity has always been faster than roaming files and now we’re knocking its socks off!

We’ve done a few things to make this happen.

1st a New Portability engine: Portability is the feature that handles the users filesystem, registry, optionally system filesystem and registry if you need parts of the system as well for DR or to travel from one desktop to another. The new engine has optimized compression to run as fast as possible. It’s also smarter. Before 5.7, the engine would bring everything down to disk then decide what needed to be merged into the profile. Now the engine knows what it does or does not need to bring down. Also, it reads from the network and writes into the target path vs download, extract, write to target path, this is a savings on network transfer and disk IOPS.

2nd Process post login: Not every function of user management needs to be done at login. We have put options in printers to start connecting printers post login. Does the user need his or her printers within 30 seconds of login? The answer is likely no. Mapped drives also have this option now as well, however you might need a single drive to be mapped 1st for the profile and others can be post. FlexApp DIA VHD work for creating a differencing disk (write cache) was also done during login, has since been moved to post login to help bring down login times when using FlexApp DIA. You will see more of these post login options happening in other areas of the product in future releases as well.

By just upgrading and not changing any settings you will get faster logins just by the smarts of the new engine. Then you can go in and tune more if you would like to get even more out of it.

Here is a set of suggested changes to get the most out of your logins and logoffs.

  1. In your configuration under “Main” uncheck Legacy mode and use no compression. No compression is the fastest and still allows for 3rd party tools to open the archive with ease if you need to view the files. If you want compression, “fast” will give you good performance with a little bit of compression but you need a command line tool to view and extract files. “Smaller” is the slowest but has the most compression and can be opened by 3rd party tools easily.

Note: Once you uncheck legacy mode the format is NOT compatible with windows XP/2003/2008 Non-R2. So, if you need to coexist between older OS’s and Win7/2008R2/win8/2012 you’ll need to keep legacy mode checked.

  1. Move your printers to post login, each printer has an option to check a box for post process. You also would want to move your mapped drives to post login as well, each mapped drive has an option to check a box for post process.

Customers have already started to see their logins that were already faster than roaming profiles be cut in half or more!

For more information on Liquidware Labs ProfileUnity visit the ProfileUnity Product Page or contact sales at Liquidware Labs.