Profile Management

Scenario 3 - Disaster recovery

“How do I set up a full disaster recovery site to handle Citrix user profiles?”

Profile Management supports key features required for disaster recovery (DR) :

  • DFS namespaces. Domain-based namespace servers are preferred in this scenario because they allow the DR site to have its own namespace server. (A standalone namespace server cannot be replicated, but it can be hosted on a failover cluster.)
  • Multiple folder targets and DFS Replication. For each NUS, you provide at least two targets, but only enable one in normal operation. You set up one-way DFS Replication to ensure that the disabled targets (at the DR sites) are kept up-to-date.
  • Failover clusters for hosting individual folder targets. Optional. It might be wasteful of resources on the DR site.

In this diagram, a domain-based namespace manages the NUS. (The diagram in Scenario 1 deliberately did not include namespaces.) You can include a namespace server in each site, including the DR site. The servers all support the same view of the namespace.

Graphic

If the DR plan is activated, the DR site’s NUS is up-to-date with the changes replicated from the master NUS. However, the namespace server still reflects the wrong view of the namespace, so its configuration must be updated. For each folder, the folder target on the master site must be disabled and the folder target on the DR site enabled.

After AD updates have propagated, the namespace server correctly locates the DR folder targets and the DR site is ready to use by Profile Management.

Note: The Path to user store setting refers to namespace folders, not real servers, so there is no need to update the Profile Management configuration.

In practice, one-way or two-way replication is possible because the DR site is not normally used for profiles. Once the disaster is over, a connection from the DR site to the master site ensures that changes made to the NUS during the disaster are replicated on the master site.

Scenario 3 - Disaster recovery

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