ProfileUnity is a robust User Environment Management solution that is extremely efficient. Profiles are stored in users’ replicated file shares when offline. This is the same location that user authored mission critical business data is stored in so it’s a great place to store profiles as well. There are no SQL databases additional servers needed to scale to tens of thousands of users like we have at many government institutions, businesses, and telecom companies.
But how does ProfileUnity perform?  The average ProfileUnity login is often measured in seconds. This INCLUDES other processes like policy management (Group Policies can take minutes per user otherwise). Of course every environment is very different. There are many variables but  this execution time also includes the configuration of FlexApp if you are also layering in applications. Let talk about two areas of performance. First Profile playback and then Application Performance…
Profile and Application Performance
¢ Administrators can automatically eliminate profile bloat issues before the user is brought under management with ProfileUnity, so only the desired parts of the profile and user-authored data and files are made available = fast login.
¢ ProfileUnity compresses the transfer and network storage of the user profile in a ratio that is as much as 50:1Â for more efficient use of storage resources = fast login.
¢ Exclusive Profile Disk technology (profile from VHD/VMDK) can also be leveraged to enhance the performance of large profiles in virtual environments = fast login. For more info, read this blog I wrote on Profile Disk and Profile Portability providing the best of both worlds.
¢ Only differential portions of the profile are updated in physical and persistent desktop environments = fast login.
¢ Application response times do not suffer because no SQL retrieval of profiles is being performed at application start = fast application response times.
That last point is VERY important because if you are only comparing profile performance during login, you are missing the boat. There are more than a few profile solutions and UEM solutions that will only bring down enough of the profile to get Windows started at login…often times ProfileUnity is faster at login than those solutions but with the entire profile being made available. The other issue is that those solution that stream profiles will continuously retrieve profile data during the user session which can significantly contribute to slow application response times. Are you are customer of a UEM solution that takes this approach? Â Have you been wondering why it takes an application so long to open? It’s likely because your UEM solution is holding off the app to bring down the profile information during the user session. THis also can contribute to CPU and RAM spikes. Our Stratusphere UX (User Experience) solution can help identify this problem.
There are really two types of UEM and profile solutions; type 1- you take a slight performance hit at login –ProfileUnity is very efficient as outlined above and type 2– you take a continued hit every time the user opens or closes an application – SQL approaches use this as well as some streaming profile tools). Type 2 will always elude you and frustrate the user throughout the session.
Policy Execution
Microsoft Group policies can be slow. It can take minutes for a user to login because of Group Policies or login scripts alone…and that is not even counting profile load time. One of the main reasons Group Policies is slow is because it is likely doing a Microsoft Active Directory look up for every single policy you have. This creates a lot of chatter on the network and takes a while to process. While you can keep using Microsoft Group Policies (GPs) and ProfileUnity, you can replace most policies with ProfileUnity policies which are MUCH more efficient. ProfileUnity authenticates and can lookup policies by AD as well ProfileUnity performs one master lookup then applies policies accordingly. ProfileUnity also automatically documents policy configurations, this alone trumps the use of GPs.
So there you have it, a 50,000 foot view of how ProfileUnity can speed up login times and how Stratusphere can help identify your performance bottlenecks for Application Response Times. Stay tuned for a blog next week from our own Kevin Cooke on how you can also use a new offering from Liquidware Labs to quickly identify slow login causes through a FREE Liquidware Labs Cloud Login Analysis!  You can also get started with ProfileUnity and Stratusphere today. Just visit our website and download fully functioning trial licences.