Profile Management

Profile container

Important:

This feature does not work on Windows 7.

Large folders associated with a user profile result in a slow logon. Profile Management provides a VHDX-based profile solution that lets you specify the folders to be contained in the profile disk (VHDX files). This solution reduces logon times by mapping the specified folders to the profile disk that is stored on the network. The profile container attaches the profile disk containing those folders during logon, thus eliminating the need to save a copy of the folders to the local profile. Doing so decreases logon times.

Note:

  • The maximum permitted size for the VHDX files is 50 GB. You cannot modify this value.
  • Profile Management automatically grants permissions to the folder where the VHDX files are stored. Doing so allows the Profile Management service to access and mount VHDX files.
  • The VHDX files do not shrink automatically, even if you manually delete files from them. If you want to reduce the size of the VHDX files, go to Disk Management, right-click the applicable volume, and then select Shrink Volume.

There are two scenarios to be aware of:

  • The profile container does not support simultaneous access by multiple sessions.
  • The profile container does not support containing the entire profile.

The profile disk is stored at a user’s user store path. For example, if you configure your user store path as \\myprofileserver\profiles$\%username%.%domain%\!ctx_osname!.!ctx_osbitness!, the profile disk is located at \\myprofileserver\profiles$\%username%.%domain%\!ctx_osname!.!ctx_osbitness!\ProfileContainer\!ctx_osname!.

To understand how a profile container works, you can regard it as a secondary user store that is designed for storing profile-related large folders such as cache folders. Even if the folders are present in the exclusion list, they are still stored in the profile disk after you enable the profile container feature and add the folders to the profile container list.

Suppose you enable the profile container feature and then you disable it. To ensure a consistent user profile, Profile Management synchronizes the user store profile with a profile container. This synchronization occurs during user logon. Folders in the exclusion list are not copied to the user store.

To enable the profile container feature, do the following:

  1. Open the Group Policy Management Editor.
  2. Under Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates: Policy definitions (ADMX files) > Citrix Components > Profile Management > File system > Synchronization, double-click the Profile container policy.
  3. Select Enabled.
  4. Click Show to add the relative paths of the folders to contain in the profile container. We recommend that you add folders that contain large cache files. For example, add the Citrix Files content cache folder to the list: AppData\Local\Citrix\Citrix Files\PartCache.

    Note:

    The folders you add to the profile container also exist in the user store. After you enable the profile container feature, Profile Management keeps the folders synchronized between the profile container and the user store.

    Adding folders to the profile container

  5. Click OK.

Note:

To delete the folders contained in the profile disk for a specific user, you can perform the profile reset from Citrix Director. For more information, see Reset a user profile.

Profile container

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