What you Need to Know Before using a Windows Profile Disk/Profile Container

Profile Containers/Disks for Windows desktops enable Administrators to offload the entire user profile to a profile disk (VHD or VMDK). This approach allows for an otherwise large profile to be read at a block-level (very efficient) over the network. Liquidware ProfileUnity features the option to use a ProfileDisk™ and containers in ProfileUnity. They can be great – except when they are not.  Here are the Pros and Cons that you should know before you rely solely on a profile container/disk to provide an excellent user experience.

Pros

• Great for offloading Office 365/Outlook caches
• Ideal to solve Outlook indexing conundrums for virtual desktops like XenDesktop, XenApp, and VMware Horizon.
• Really great at keeping cloud storage (Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon Drive, Google Drive, etc) on a virtual network drive.

Cons

• Run in the user context only and therefore can’t pick-up or virtualize other areas of the user profile outside of shell folders.
• Profiles are exactly like a local profile except it is on the network so they are susceptible to profile corruption.
• They are locked to a Windows OS version so you must have a disjointed profile disk/container for every OS the user logs onto, the user cannot migrate their profile or co-exist it with another Windows version.
• Network only – there is no method to go offline. Laptops that even occasionally leave the office are not a candidate for a profile disk/container.

Read the entire article here, What you Need to Know Before using a Windows Profile Disk/Profile Container | Liquidware Blog –

Via the fine folks at Liquidware.