Full User layer & Fslogix Office Container question

[Andrew Gresbach1709152664]

I had a crazy question i wanted to bounce off everyone here to see if it might be feasible.  We use full User Layer in our MCS non-persistent environment for our profile management.  All is working mostly fine except when we've tried to use Outlook 365 cached mode .  It works but we had odd .ost issues, mainly duplicate .ost files being generated frequently w/ no errors, just would recreate a new one every day or so.    We briefly looked at switching from User Layer to Fslogix profile container but fslogix was too limiting in that it only captures user profile data. 

 

I was curious if anyone has tried or knows if it would work to use full User Layer as our main profile tool and also use Fslogix Office Container to handle 365 related items (mainly Outlook search and .ost files)?  I know they both are container based solutions w/ their own filter driver so curious anyones thoughts on it

[Rob Zylowski]

Hey Andrew,

 

I was hoping someone else would answer who had tried them together.

 

FSLogix works fine with elastic layering as long as you change the altitude of the FSLogix filter driver.  I think that will mean that is would also work if you were using the user layer but we certainly have never tested that.  Note that in 1910 we now persist all the search indexes when using the User layer which as you know was a big issue in the past.  This should make us on par with FSLogix for outlook and as you say better for customers that need to save whats outside the profile.

 

I know that people have had issues with all the containerized solutions like user layers, fslogix and CPM with disconnects and some corruption unfortunately that seems normal just like we have always had with any type of roaming profiles.

 

If it were me I would try to stick with one solution but you certainly could do a test of both together.

 

Rob

[David Thacker]

Oddly enough, in a Horizon environment, I can't get Elastic Layering and FSLogix to play together. If Elastic Layering is on, the VM fails sysprep/quickprep with a generic error about how Windows was unable to complete setup. If I turn off Elastic Layering, it will compose OK under quickprep, and FSLogix works perfectly. Did the Altitude fix, doesn't matter.

 

The only reason I am choosing FSLogix over App Layering's user layer is support for OneDrive. FSLogix supports it, but last I knew, it wasn't captured in App Layering's user layer. However, if I'm wrong, and it does indeed persist OneDrive data, I will probably switch back.

[Rob Zylowski]

Hi David, The user layer captures everything onedrive included.  So if you want to use the user layer for what it does there is no reason not too.  If you dont need what the user layer does then fslogix may be better because it can manage much less and therefore require much less storage.

 

I am not sure why you are having the quickpre/sysprep issue in View.  I can say that i have not heard anyone else have the same issue and I would think we would have heard from a lot of folks if that was a default issue we had. 

 

Have you worked yet with support on it?

 

[David Thacker]

19 minutes ago, Rob Zylowski1709158051 said:

Hi David, The user layer captures everything onedrive included.  So if you want to use the user layer for what it does there is no reason not too.  If you dont need what the user layer does then fslogix may be better because it can manage much less and therefore require much less storage.

 

I am not sure why you are having the quickpre/sysprep issue in View.  I can say that i have not heard anyone else have the same issue and I would think we would have heard from a lot of folks if that was a default issue we had. 

 

Have you worked yet with support on it?

 

 

Hmm, if the User Layer now persists OneDrive as well as O365 and the search indexes, then I don't see any use in our environment for FSLogix in Win10 VMs. FSLogix does work with Server 2016 RDS, which is how I'm currently utilizing it, but it's only because I can't get a Win10 elastic pool working with our requirements. However, if O365 and OneDrive are at feature parity between the products, I'm going to remove FSLogix and test with the App Layering user layer instead. I never had any problems with the user layer, other than the limitations of it.

 

I haven't opened a support case yet, we're in the midst of a lot of changes (primarily an enterprise-wide domain migration) so I have other loose ends to tie down first.

[Rob Zylowski]

Yea the o365 layer does not support it that is only outlook but the full user layer should always have worked with onedrive.

[Andrew Gresbach1709152664]

i can confirm that full user layer does persist onedrive data no problem.  Really the only possibly downsides to full user layer vs fslogix profile container that I can see would be :

 

1.  Like Rob said , full user layer could require more storage space

2.  Outlook .ost support is stronger w/ fslogix (full user layer it works but we saw a lot of duplicate .ost's being created)

3.  Last thing is both a positive and negative to full user layer but since full user layer captures ANY changes that are made (profile and not), sometimes application files can get pulled into the user layer and cause issues 

 

We've (for the moment at least) decided to stick w/ onprem exchange mailboxes and online mode so no need to ost's for now so sticking w/ just user layer  and working pretty well

[Ryan Deschaine]

Any update to Citrix Application Layering using Office 365 with Outlook using FSLogix with Cloud Cache Containers, running into an issue with Outlook when the Outlook application is on the App Layer