Liquidware Labs is known in the market for removing the barriers to run efficient, low maintenance, non-persistent (stateless) desktops in VDI. start-taking-control-666x500What you may not know is that we offer compelling features to help you efficiently manage persistent (stateful) and physical desktops as well.

For whatever reason, you’ve decided to deliver persistent VDI (VMware Horizon, Citrix XenDesktop, etc) desktops to your users. A persistent desktop is very much like a physical desktop. By being stateful, persistent desktops are more dependent on storage, and users can easily install and modify the desktops as they wish. Coincidentally, these are arguably also drawbacks when going persistent.

Persistent and physical desktops should be backed up for disaster recovery purposes, and Administrators should take great care to ensure that these desktops do not become “anything goes” or like the “wild west.”  After all, you likely have been giving persistent desktop users full desktop Admin rights so they can still enjoy the same benefits as if they were using a physical desktop. Should your users really be able to install anything they wish?  If your users have full desktop Admin rights you’ve got a recipe for disaster and you are ripe for virus sprawl.

ProfileUnity solves these challenges in four ways-

1)      Stop making users Admins! ProfileUnity includes Application Rights Management features that selectively elevates the rights of standard users to install or run applications. Our Application Rights Management is even compatible with VMware’s forthcoming AppVolumes technology and avoids the issues associated with the requirement to make users Administrators of their desktop. Application Rights Management examples include the ability to:

  1. Limit the types of applications users can install or limit them to a pre-approved directory of MSI/EXE packages on a network drive.  You can also limit users to only install applications that have a signed certificate, therefore avoiding most accidental virus installs.
  2. Elevate the privileges of a user only for specific apps that require Admin rights
  3. Deny access to select applications in the base image for specific groups.

2)      Limit what Users can Break! ProfileUnity can effectively lockdown any portion of the Windows operating system, limiting the harm users can cause. A ready-to-use Lockdown Configuration is available which can accomplish the following and more:

  1. Disable application installations from USB device or disable them altogether
  2. Permanently hide/disable the Windows control panel
  3. Disable workstation lock
  4. Disable Windows Themes, Backgrounds, etc.
  5. Disable right-click on the desktop
  6. Many, many more

3)      Stop Backing Up full Desktops for Disaster Recovery! – ProfileUnity and best practice data storage provides built-in disaster recovery that can be seamless for end-users. With ProfileUnity there is no need to backup persistent or physical Windows desktops. Users’ profiles are stored on replicated storage and user data files such as My Documents, The Desktop, and any other select files are redirected to replicated storage or can be set to continuously sync. In a worst case disaster scenario ProfileUnity shines, the user simply logs onto the network with a new physical or persistent desktop and the user’s Persona, Data, and Policies are instantly made available. Applications can be restored as well with our FlexApp technology (Q1 planned support for persistent), application virtualization, or VMware’s forthcoming AppVolumes solution.

4)      Roam with Admin Rights – ProfileUnity’s ability to grant and limit User Rights for specific tasks are well noted but your users may be using multiple machines. You can easily leverage context aware filters within ProfileUnity to apply select Admin rights and limit rights on a desktop by desktop basis. For example, a user may be granted many rights on a physical desktop but when they are logged onto a RDSH or Citrix XenApp Server they can be limited to the rights of a Standard user.

Whether you go with persistent or non-persistent (stateless) desktops, ProfileUnity is a proven leader in User Environment Management.   Download and try ProfileUnity today and see why organizations from 70 users to 70,000+ users rely on it every day!