A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about configuring Onedrive for a Horizon VDI/RDS deployment with VMware UEM. While the guide was a good and flexible way of configuring OneDrive for specific users. The setup had one major drawback being the Onedrive Installation was done in user context and not machine based.
Meaning when a user logged onto the RDS, a OneDriveSetup.exe was called, this installed the OneDrive agent into the %localappdata% of the user. Again this was a working solution but the user profile gets bloated during the session and gets a performance hit during the installation.
In this update, I will be adjusting the guide to use a machine based OneDrive installation. This to enhance the existing setup and use all benefits of the Machine-based installer.
Machine-based installer
Fortunately, Microsoft has listened to the community and released a machine based installer that all users on a system will use.
The installation is rather straight forward as by start downloading the latest version of OneDrive, build 19.043.0304.0003 or higher. Run the OneDrive.exe with the following parameter “/AllUsers”, this will install the client to the “program files” folder on the system.
Also if you have pushed the initial OneDrive installer on the RDS/VDI base image, I suggest you remove this to have a clean setup when using the “Machine based” setup.
Adjusting config
As mentioned I already made an initial blog on how to configure Onedrive with VMware UEM. I will be using the same configuration but adjust only a couple of settings using the machine based OneDrive installation.
First, we need to change the initial installer that runs at logon when the user logs onto the RDS/VDI. Change the path of the installer as shown below:
No process elevation is needed as the installer is available in the C:\program files (x86)\ folder. So, therefore, the user does not need elevation rights.
Application blocking
As this setup is using the %program files% installer, the application blocking rule can be adjusted to the same path to ensure no OneDrive could be initialized.
Conclusion
As you can see with a small adjustment we can have a big advantage in our OneDrive setup (no more performance hit during logon & profile bloat).
This will hopefully help you in providing the end user an overall better experience when using OneDrive in there RDS/VDI environment.
If you like this post please help us by sharing this! Also leave a comment, If you have some questions.
More posts regarding UEM: Configuring printer in UEM with personalization.
Changelog
26/06 – removed the process elevation
Hi Jens Herremans, this is Fabrice Blanchet VDI Specialist. We are running with Appvolume 2.14.2
What is the need to run Onedrive with Elevated Privilege? We do running succesfully with it. Can you explain further?
We should read “We do running succesfully without it”
Hi Fabrice,
The process elevation was copied over from the initial User-based installation of Onedrive. Here it was necessary that the user had priv. elevation to install Onedrive.
I did test the machine based setup without priv. elevation and this also works without any issue. I’ll update the blog, so we have a cleaner setup!
Thank you for the feedback!
What is the exact icon path for this please?
Hi Randy,
The Icon path that is used in the config is the following:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft OneDrive\OneDriveSetup.exe”
Regards,
Jens