With the Horizon Persona Management feature, a user's remote profile is dynamically downloaded when the user logs in to a Horizon 7 desktop. You can configure Horizon 7 to store user profiles in a secure, centralized repository. Horizon 7 downloads persona information as the user needs it.
Horizon Persona Management is an alternative to Windows roaming profiles. Horizon Persona Management expands functionality and improves performance compared to Windows roaming profiles.
You can configure and manage personas entirely within Horizon 7. You do not have to configure Windows roaming profiles. If you have a Windows roaming profiles configuration, you can use your existing repository configuration with Horizon 7.
A user profile is independent of the Horizon 7 desktop. When a user logs in to any desktop, the same profile appears.
For example, a user might log in to a floating-assignment, linked-clone desktop pool and change the desktop background and Microsoft Word settings. When the user starts the next session, the virtual machine is different, but the user sees the same settings.
A user profile comprises a variety of user-generated information:
- User-specific data and desktop settings
- Application data and settings
- Windows registry entries configured by user applications
Also, if you provision desktops with ThinApp applications, the ThinApp sandbox data can be stored in the user profile and roamed with the user.
- During login, Horizon 7 downloads only the files that Windows requires, such as user registry files. Other files are copied to the local desktop when the user or an application opens them from the local profile folder.
- Horizon 7 copies recent changes in the local profile to the remote repository, typically once every few minutes. The default is every 10 minutes. You can specify how often to upload the local profile.
- During logoff, only files that were updated since the last replication are copied to the remote repository.
