Who is this article for?

IT Administrators performing an installation of Mail Manager.

No special access or permissions are required.

Virtual desktops allow users to access a desktop and its applications from anywhere on any kind of device. This article outlines the available types of virtual desktops and considerations to bear in mind when deciding whether to implement them.

1. Types of Virtual Desktops
2. Personal or Pooled Virtual Machines
3. Implementation considerations
4. Implementation requirements
5. Further reading

1. Types of Virtual Desktops

There are distinct types of virtual desktops and desktop virtualisation technologies, and they all require special configuration to implement Mail Manager.

Remote desktop services

Desktop and application sessions hosted on a shared desktop on Windows Server. Requires a Windows Server virtual desktop environment hosted on physical servers by the customer, in-house.

This is probably the most common system, used by medium size companies (25 to 100 users).

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Desktop and application sessions hosted on physical servers by the customer, in-house. Requires the
customer to build their own virtualised hardware and servers.

Used by larger companies (150+ users). Requires specialist knowledge to setup.

Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Desktop and application sessions hosted in the cloud by a third-party vendor. Requires no server or data centre investment by the customer.

Used by any size of company. Relatively easy to setup using tools provided by the third-party vendor.

2. Personal or Pooled Virtual Machines

With a personal (persistent) virtual machine (VM), each user is permanently assigned a dedicated VM as their desktop. Personal desktops behave exactly like a physical device (e.g. laptop) and are managed by the customer using traditional application delivery tools like SCCM and Intune.

In pooled environments (non-persistent) VM, users are connected to a “random” VM for the duration of their session and may be connected to a completely different VM the next time they login. Pooled desktops provide advantages over personal desktops such as cost efficiency and ability to standardise the IT environment.

However, they also come with unique application management challenges since most existing tools are built for a one-to-one user-to-desktop assignment, which is not the case with pooled desktops.

How you manage your applications

The methods of managing applications on personal desktops are quite different than those used
with pooled desktops. The challenge with managing applications in pooled desktop environment can be boiled down to this – multiple users are sharing VM's, any installed app is available to all users.

This “all or nothing” approach creates challenges in situations where specific apps must be available to certain groups of users, but not to others. This is particularly true when setting up Mail Manager.

3. Pre-implementation considerations

Are the VM's personal (persistent) or pooled (non-persistent)? If personal, are there any disk space limitations for the local appdata files?
Over time Mail Manager may require approximately 10 GB for its local index, but this can be redirected if required (see AdminEmailFiling.cfg below)

Do you use a single pool of VMs or multiple pools?
Single pool: not suitable for trials unless everyone is part of the trial.
Multiple pools: Mail Manager can be applied to the image of one or more pools as required.
This allows control over which pools and users will use Mail Manager and consume a license.

Will the Mail Manager MSI be deployed on an image or session host VM?
Where images are created from a Golden image and Mail Manager used by everyone, install Mail Manager on the Golden image.
If everyone won’t be using Mail Manager only install Mail Manager on the images used by those required to use Mail Manager.
The MSI can be manually installed on a VM after it has been created from an image, but this usually only applies to personal (persisted) VM's, unless it can be scripted.

4. Implementation requirements

Installer

Only use the per-machine installer, to ensure the installation files can only be changed using
elevated permissions.

Future updates will require the Mail Manager installer to be manually downloaded and reinstalled.

To set up:

1. Configure the MSI using the Mail Manager MsiConfigure.exe.
2. Apply the shared configuration folder path.
3. Apply license details to the installer.
4. Install the MSI onto the VM image(s).

AdminEmailFiling.cfg

When user’s local profile information is not persisted (pooled VMs), apply the Redirected_RootDirectory variable to the AdminEmailFiling.cfg e.g. #Redirected_RootDirectory=\\server01\%USERNAME%\Mail Manager.

You need to restart the Outlook process to enable redirection.

5. Further reading

• Implementing a remote desktop