Hi,
I have started to test Microsoft UE-V to see what the differences/ advantages
are against AppSense Environment Manager.
Prerequisites:
EM:
For a minimum configuration and tests you need an
Active Directory and a server where you install a Microsoft SQL Server Express,
EM Personalization Server and the EM Console.
UE-V:
You need an Active Directory and a fileserver where
to save your settings and your settings templates.
Conclusion:
So as you could see here the prerequisites are
nearly the same except of the SQL Server.
Installation:
EM:
The installation of the AppSense EM is very
straight forward and documented good in the admin guides and the SQL Server
Express 2008 R2 is included in the installation media.
The installation on the client side is also
straight forward and all prerequisites are also on the installation
media.
UE-V:
The only thing to install on the server is the MDOP
2012 Group Policy Templates to configure UE-V via the Group Policy Management
Console. As I have seen right now
you could also deploy the UE-V agent via commandline and set the configuration
so you do not need the Group Policy templates but it is so much easier to
configure it with GPOs.
On the client side the only prerequisite
is .NET Framework 4 or .NET
Framework 3.5 SP1.
Conclusion:
One big advantage of EM is the broader client
support as you could install it from Windows XP and above as UE-V only supports
Windows 7 and above. The downside is that you need an additional component
which you also have to update and maintain as this is the SQL Server which is
needed.
Configuration:
EM:
The first time configuration is documented on the
AppSense site and there is also a Quick setup wizard for user personalization
and some common application templates (Adobe Reader, Google Chrome, Lotus
Notes, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Office 2003, 2007, 2010) which
are configured for you. So after the installation you could go on and start
with your tests shortly without so much knowledge about the Personalization
Server.
UE-V:
The only thing you have to do is to install the
agent and do some configuration via GPOs which should be done in about 5-10
minutes and then you are ready to start. There are only MS application
pre-configured (Calc, IE 8,9,10, Office 2010, Lync 2010, Notepad, Wordpad and
some desktop settings like Themes) which could be captured to your network
share.
Conclusion: So for a test environment the
configuration tasks are nearly the same for both products. In my point of view
the AppSense environment will be a little more complex in a production
environment but also more flexible.
Architecture/Design:
The main difference you see at the architectural
side is that EM is working with a SQL database at the backend and UE-V is
storing its settings on a fileshare. So if your company does not have a SQL
server installed and you want to work with AppSense you have to install minimum
two SQL Server for failover reasons, so this could be a point where EM loses
against UE-V as nearly every company on the world has a fileserver so UE-V is
always possible.
There is no management/configuration console on the
UE-V side so no administrative overhead on the server side but the problem with
that is if you want to reset the application states with UE-V you have to
"powershell" something so not very comfortable especially for the
user.
As the UE-V configuration is working with GPOs
which is a very robust infrastructure since a decade you likely won't see any
misconfigurations or problems with that.
The personalization itself is stored in the SQL
database but with the tool "Personalization Analysis" you could
read/export/import all settings for the specified user which is perfect if you
need to troubleshoot. As UE-V saves all settings in the .pkgx format which
isn't readable from any software I know, so it is really hard to troubleshoot
the personalized settings if a user has a problem.
As AppSense saves there settings in a SQL database
there is a possibility to rollback the settings of an application to a state
one day/week/month before to resolve some issues. On the UE-V side the only
thing you could do is to reset the application to a pristine state but not to
settings which was made before.
The application settings are written back to the
fileshare/SQL database on application stop so both vendors working with the
same triggers here so there is no need to logoff for an application setting.
Conclusion (Differences/Advantages):
At first I am much more experienced with EM than
with UE-V and I only tested it for a project to find the differences of these
solutions so if any of my information are incorrect, please give me a comment
and I will change it.
One thing I have seen which is better done by
AppSense is the sizing of the profiles if you configure it like best practices
or as the templates from the Quick setup wizard. I have made a test with Office
2010 and changed something in Word and Excel and the AppSense profile of the
whole Office suite was about 300kb. I have changed exactly the same with the
default UE-V templates and the whole Office settings were about 14MB great so
this about 47-times bigger than the AppSense profile. If there any
optimizations it is ok but this shouldn't be the case with the default
configured settings. The problem with this is that you will notice the 14MB if
there are copied back on a new machine to get your settings.
Another one is the not readable file format (.pkgx)
which isn't very good for troubleshooting purposes if you want to see why the
application for the specific user isn't working correctly. You could only reset
it to a pristine state and all customizations for the user are lost.
One big plus of the EM is the variety of the
clients supported. As UE-V is only supported from Windows 7/Windows 2008 R2 up,
EM is supported from Windows XP/Windows 2003 up. The next thing is that EM is
officially supported from AppSense on Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop and on
vmware View. I have not found any official statement on the Microsoft site but
I am not 100 percent sure if you will get support when you have problem with
UE-V on your XenDesktop Farm.
One good thing on UE-V is the template generator
which is a very easy to use application where you could find out on which
registry keys and folder your application stores the configuration. I am also
using this right now for my EM tests as it is much easier as the AppSense
Configuration Assistant.
The Migration Mode is a big plus for EM as there is
a possibility to grab the settings of an existing application so you have not
to start with clean settings when you start with a user virtualization product.
At the end I want to say that UE-V is a great
product for the version 1.0 and I am looking forward to see the next versions but at the state of now AppSense EM is much more advanced product. I would say that at the present time I would recommend to implement EM and not UE-V.
So if you have any improvements or if you see any
wrong facts give me a comment as I have only tested UE-V but have not worked in
deep with it.
Best Regards,
Michael
P.S. Please note that English is my second
language. I am trying my best here, but just in case you read an odd sounding
sentence every now and then, I hope you will excuse me.
