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Tested it. Really easy setup. VDA install, Citrix policy, and file share. Much more simple than UL.

Nice! Looking forward to trying it as well. User layers have a lot of admin overhead

Is this available in cloud? My studio is still 1909 in cloud...smh

This is in 1912 so Cloud needs to be updated

Interesting thought cloud was supposed to go first then on prem

@Jarian Gibson : what did you do for the SMB share config? Or just re used an existing UL smb share ? Also, I didn’t note any new services for UDL post 1912 VDA install , is that expected ?

There’s an option during VDA installation. The share is same as what’s needed for UL SMB share.

I ended up re-using an existing scripted install with a strict /exclude list the client requires , so I think it might have got missed. I’ll run it again via GUI to compare

I was wrong the setting is in the cloud already

If I remember correctly the policy’s were added in 1909. The VDA needs to be 1912 for the new components.

Do you need premium license? 🙂

I found the new services added by clicking "yes" to the Citrix layering service in the GUI install. ulayer Citrix Layering Service UniService Citrix App Layering Guest Service upl-support Citrix UPL Support Service I will need to ID how to include them by the CMD line based XenDesktop.exe-based installs:

UPL is all editions where UL is only premium

I think it's FSLogix related, I'll keep testing and report back. Regardless, even with this new error, i'm super excited to keep evaluating UPL 🙂 First new Citrix feature i've been excited about in years!

OneDrive does work with UL and from my testing also does with UPL.

Are you using OneDrive with FSLogix? That's what we've got

Not just in UL and UPL when I was testing

So fslogix or UL? Crap more testing.

It might come down to a choice between the two, FSLogix has been rock solid as a replacement for UPM all the way into prod for the project i'm working on. That being said, UDL solves a problem we'e got for those edge-case users who want to install their own apps that we don't want to manage in our MCS non-persist catalogs

Why do that? Does UPL not handle then office stuff well?

FSLOGIX is well regarded for office / OST handling against other solutions: I’d like to keep the best of both worlds , but it’s early days , as I only got my own profile fully migrated to proposed solution a few hours ago. Will have to see how it holds up during extended testing and when more users are added

UPL will do almost everything FSLogix does except will be desktop OS only and not support concurrent sessions.

The logon speeds seem to track the same between FSL / UPL so far. which is great. We used to measure login times in minutes with win 7 / upm, now , it’s around 30 seconds with FSL or UPL on win 10. A huge win for productivity

Yes it would be nice if the technology worked as expected. The idea of not changing the master image for the small apps is great! I will install and test more tomorrow. I have not had the best luck with fslogix.

One thing with UPL, you don't get as much control over the SMB path. You would input a remote SMB path in the Citrix policy as follows: \\server\share Upon logon of your first user, a users sub-folder is created, and then you get user folders created in the following format: DOMAIN_USERNAME Then a sub-folder called A-OK, that contains logs and the actual UPL VHD Hopefully they will give additional options to amend this. With FSLogix, you could place the related VHDX files anywhere you wanted on the network

FSLogix is tried and true. Citrix’s version is going to Alpha/Beta quality at best.

Mind you, it's built from Unidesk app layering, so it's not exactly alpha/beta.

Fair enough, so more Beta than Alpha then.

It’s the same tech as UL. Just trimmed down of App Layering infrastructure and process. Wouldn’t call it an alpha/beta.

Ok, good to know! I might look into a feature request to bring UPL closer to FSL in that regards.

@Owen Reynolds I know people rave about fslogix but I have had nothing but issues with Win10 vdi. I keep trying new build and hope they work better.

I've done some more testing, and it's more good news: Even changes to HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Startup are reconciled by UPL. One bug, possibly? Searches don't appear to be working. This includes the file system (explorer) and Outlook. I did have this happen when we first deployed FSL a while back, and it was related to the FSL settings and the search service intermittently failing to start on our Win 10 1809 build. This could be something new to UPL, though, as i've completely disabled FSL profiles for windows/o365 @Jarian Gibson: Are you able to search outlook for old emails by sender/subject and windows explorer for documents on your UPL enabled VDAs?

Know I remember the full year I spent on applayering and why I dumped it. Am I the only person that can’t do persistent profiles? I have @Eric help too.

I had two different app layering projects with customers that failed, mainly due to the time it took to update layers. I’m hopeful that UPL will be better given it is more of a focused use case. So far my testing has been positive

I did an upgrade on the vda will try a fresh install later.

@Cory Zaner ; had that yesterday. It was share permissions on the remote SMB share. Authenticated users was missing.

@Owen Reynolds what rights did you give them?

Read / write / execute to THIS FOLDER ONLY. I will post a link to the Microsoft article I used as a reference shortly , it’s the same set of permissions you’d set for regular Citrix UPM or FSL

Also same set as UL

My outlook search issue is no longer occurring. I’m going to create a new DG that’s aligned with the DG type specified in the above CTX

I have been trying to get this to work for a while and no go. Creates the disk stops a 32mb and throws the driver error. I saw this when sep was blocking the driver, but no sep. there is a driver signature error in the logs. Will try a clean image with a new dg.

One interesting note from this article: https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/install-configure/user-personalization-layer.html They recommend to use Citrix UPM. To me, this doesn’t make sense. FS logix and UPL get around the main problem with UPM / Microsoft roaming ; where files need to be copied up / down from a remote source. I will need to follow up with Citrix support on why they have this recommendation. It’s like telling a client to use a 32-bit version of an app when a 64-bit version is available. They must have a valid reason, it’s just not stated and I don’t understand it. I’ve been on native UPL for 4 days now , and it’s great.

Nice! What antivirus do you use?

Just good ol’ windows defender :)

Yes same here, a lot better. I need to a fresh image with the ul

Twice now over the past 3 days, i've had to hard reset my session on my Win 1903 / 1912 UPL VDA . I'm trying to ID whats causing it to hang over-night. It's occurring when I take more than 24 hours in-between sessions. In prod, we would disconnect/shutdown sessions after 120 mins of idle time, but in UAT, I should be able to connect back no matter what, as that's what we have on our Win 10 / 1909 static VDAs currently

Anyone tested if you can increase the size of the UPL? I.E. increase the size in policy and it grows?

BTW, for VDA CLI installs that include UPL, make sure you use the /includeadditional switch as follows; /includeadditional "User personalization layer" I had it as follows: /includeadditional "Citrix User Profile Manager","Citrix User Profile Manager WMI Plugin","User personalization layer" And it didn't work, I need to have it just with UPL listed, UPM still installs if you dont ask it to I submitted feedback on the related KB: https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/install-configure/install-command.html#command-line-options-for-installing-a-vda

Nice looking for this! Thanks