Microsoft has just released a beta of what they call User Experience Virtualization (Many twitter people say its just a imitation of Profile Management and Profile redirection ) Well. This is what Microsoft says about the tool.
“The agent is installed on each User Experience Virtualization managed computer. The agent
monitors the applications and the operating system for changes to settings and can roam those
settings between computers. Settings are applied from the settings storage location to the
application when the application is started, and saved back to the settings storage location when
the application closes. For the operating system, the settings are applied when the user logs in,
when the computer is locked, or when they connect remotely to a computer. The agent saves
settings when the user logs off, when the computer is locked, or when a remote connection is
disconnected. As the settings are monitored for each application, the agent creates a package as a container for
the settings and their values. These packages are built, stored locally, and then copied to the
settings storage location. “Last write wins” because the settings storage location is the same for
all the managed computers of a user”
Some of the main features of UE-V are:
Users retain their application experience without having to reconfigure applications when they log in from a different Windows instance – regardless of whether it is a rich desktop or virtual desktop session.
Automatically delivers a personal experience to Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 8 based devices, giving users the flexibility to work from anywhere.
If a user accidently applies unwanted changes, IT can simply roll back to the initial state.
Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft desktop virtualization products to roam the user experience in heterogeneous environments.
So I’ve given it a try, to see what Microsoft is aiming for here.
Ive downloaded the beta from Windows Connect.
The innstallation consists of 2 msi packages. One for the tools and one for the agent.
I start by innstalling the x64 Tools on my vmware.
The Tools allow you to create application profiles that the Agent uses,
So I just next, next, finish this and start the UE-V generator tool.
From here I choose, “Create a settings location template” and choose an innstalled application. For the purpose of the demo I’ve choosen Foxit PDF reader. ( for some reason I keept getting an error message when I tried to discover location for an application will get back to you on that after I’ve debugged ) So I’ve just taken a closer look on the other templates that the agent installes.
Agent install
PS: If you want to install the agent as silent install use these parameters.
Agentsetup.exe /quiet /norestart /l*v “%temp%UE-Vinstaller.log” SettingsStoragePath=”\servsettings%username%”
The agent is pretty much invisible for the user, after innstallation it just shows as an service, but it can be managed via powershell.
(Import-Module Microsoft.UEV.commands.) first.
The agent comes preinnstalled with some application profiles. Such as Office, Lync, Internet Explorer and such. These profiles are editable via notepad. The profiles are XML based an look like this.
Quick glimse of what the UE-V beta has to offer, stay tuned for more.
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