{"id":25104,"date":"2022-08-30T12:44:27","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T16:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eginnovations.com\/blog\/?p=25104"},"modified":"2025-05-13T10:26:28","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T14:26:28","slug":"what-is-fslogix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eginnovations.com\/blog\/what-is-fslogix\/","title":{"rendered":"What is FSLogix?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Introduction to FSLogix<\/h2>\n

FSLogix<\/a> is a profile management solution used to apply personalization to user sessions for application and desktop virtualization technologies such as Citrix and Microsoft Azure AVD (Azure Virtual Desktop) and enable \u201croaming profiles\u201d. It used to be common to copy a profile to and from the network when a user signs in and out of a remote environment. Because user profiles can often be large, sign in and sign out times often became unacceptable. FSLogix is used as it reduces user logon times by offloading user profiles to a VHD(X) file and redirect a user’s data and settings to a centralized share repository and attach to those VHD(X) disks at logon.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1: How FSLogix works<\/div>\n

Mounting and using a profile on the network eliminates delays often associated with solutions that copy files. FSLogix used to have several solutions, all based on a single agent (filter driver). Acquired by Microsoft in 2018, the technology has now been tightly integrated within the Microsoft Portfolio. Most importantly for RDS\/VDI and cloud digital workspace deployments, they offer Profile Containers and Office 365 Containers.<\/a> The FSLogix agent driver sits as a filter driver on the file system. On a remote file server, for each user a VHD(X) is created. This VHD(X) is attached for each user when the user signs in. A separate VHD is used for the Profile container associated with a user, to the Office container, and either one or both may be implemented. Microsoft has some easy-to-read documentation on the architecture of FSLogix that covers details of the filter driver, see FSLogix for the enterprise – Azure Architecture Guide | Microsoft Docs.<\/a><\/p>\n

Profile Containers<\/h2>\n

These redirect pretty much everything in the user profile to the VHD, although some exclusions of temporary data are made (see: excluded<\/a>) and are used to implement non-persistent desktops. This has a significant impact on logon times, because instead of having to create the profile and such like with solutions from Ivanti, the profile only has to be attached. This can take logons down from > 30 secs to figures as low as 7-8 seconds in total. It also takes away the horror of managing profile settings, you just store everything. It also mitigates the issues that EUC (End User Computing) veterans remember which used to be common, associated with network or roaming profiles, which resulted in longer copy times and profile corruption. Solutions such as FSLogix have made this type of issue largely a thing of the past.<\/p>\n

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Figure 2: How FSLogix profile container works<\/div>\n

A failure or slowdown to attach FSLogix VHDs (Virtual Hard Disks) has a significant impact on logon times, and it is a key part of the user experience that needs to be captured for every user logon and proactively monitored for any signs of a decrease in performance.<\/p>\n

Office 365 Containers (ODFC containers)<\/h2>\n

These are not that different to Profile containers, in fact they are essentially a subset of full Profile containers, as they only deal with the part of the user profile associated with Microsoft 365 office applications instead of the entire profile. FSLogix also implements some significant intelligence specific to Office 365 which helps with things like outlook indexing, cached address book and alike. FSLogix Office Containers can also be used when users are using an alternative Profile Container management solution to FSLogix itself (e.g., Ivanti). Given the nature of the data associated with Office 365 applications e.g., email accounts for Outlook, the VHDs associated with Office 365 containers can be large and need to be monitored. Some history on the need for Office containers is given in Kasper Johansen\u2019s blog: Why is FSLogix O365 Container essential when using Office 365? \u2013 Virtualwarlock.net.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Figure 3: How FSLogix O365 container works<\/div>\n

Some users will choose to implement both Profile and Office (ODFC) containers using FSLogix, see Profile Container vs. Office Container – FSLogix | Microsoft Docs<\/a> for an overview of this strategy. This can offer benefits in environments such as AVD (Azure Virtual Desktop) deployed on Microsoft Azure, particularly because of the options it enables to control IOPs and costs, including:<\/p>\n