Ivanti File Director vs OneDrive Known Folder Move
It seems recently that many other vendors out there are chipping away on the DesktopNow (UWM) suite from Ivanti. Citrix acquired Norskale a couple years ago and added a policy engine as well as CPU and memory management to their stack. This was a big win for Citrix customers and for many it was "good enough" that they didn't have to look for better solutions like DesktopNow. Microsoft recently made an announcement that really had me excited and I couldn't wait to try, OneDrive Known Folder Move which again chips away at the DesktopNow suite. This is essentially the same thing as In-Location Sync and lets users "use" OneDrive without changing workflows. Users save data to their desktop and My Documents and it just goes to OneDrive. No need to copy stuff into the OneDrive folder, just continue to save data like you always have. Lets have a look.
So for starters, I have to say this was by far the easiest thing I've implemented in a long time. Its 100x easier to setup than File Director with a OneDrive connector. I've setup File Director and its OneDrive connector for my self and several customers and its pretty involved and requires admin rights in Azure. I won't go into detail as its all documented online.
https://help.ivanti.com/ap/help/en_US/fd/4.3/Content/FileDirector/Admin/OneDrive%20connector%20for%20Home%20map%20points.htm
So how easy is it? One GPO setting!
You'll first need to copy the ADMX and ADML files to your sysvol folder on your domain so you can create the GPO. The files can be found in your %localappdata% folder.
Next you'll need your tenate ID from Azure. You can get this by going to the properties of your Azure Active Directory. Copy the Directory ID so you can use it later.
Now you can set one of two policies. I've set my policy to prompt the users to use Known Folder Move but you can silently redirect as well if you wish.
At this point your done with your configuration. Its really that easy! No appliances to setup, no crazy Azure applications to create, nothing. So what is the experience like? Well after the policy is applied and you've updated OneDrive to the latest via windows updates you will get this prompt to start protection.
At this point I was presented with this screen for a little bit. More on this later.
Next OneDrive begins syncing your data.
You'll now see icon overlays on all your files within your desktop, documents, and pictures showing its sync status.
So whats really going on behind the scenes? Well this is where I'm a bit disappointed. See Known Folder Move is essentially doing just that. Moving the folders into OneDrive and then setting up redirections. I'm mean really? I could have done that myself. At least they made it simple. As we saw earlier the Setting up Protection screen was simply moving data and redirecting the folders. Here is a view of the shell folders before and after.
Before
After
So is this something I'll use to replace File Director? No, I don't think so. There are some obvious advantages. No infrastructure and stupid simple setup make this a quick win for anyone out there without File Director. No infrastructure means that scalability is not a concern however there are many disadvantages.
First one being its use of folder redirection. Now my data is sitting in a non-standard location in the profile. File Director can sync the data where it normally sits in the profile without moving anything. Huge win for File Director as it makes backing out or turning it off a snap.
Another big one for me is the lack of selective sync. With File Director I can have it sync nothing and just sync on demand as I open files. I can also unsync a folder that I don't want offline or just tell it to sync a folder I do want to take offline. This is a big one as it allows me to use the sync on demand within my XenApp sessions and I still have access to my data. Sure I could use a container from one of the many vendors out there to capture the OneDrive folder but then I have to store that 1TB of data on my file servers which makes the use of OneDrive pointless.
So in the end I guess I'll turn this off and install File Director again. Time to figure out how to revert all these changes and get my profile back to normal. In the OneDrive settings Auto Save tab you can choose update folders and undo these changes.
After choosing Stop protecting everything disappeared from my desktop and I was presented with this little icon on my desktop.
Shell folders are once again back to normal and the redirection was removed but my files are still in the OneDrive folder and I now need to move them back out. Sure was alot easier to undo File Director as it didn't change anything. Time to move some data and reinstall File Director. :)