In my previous posts I talked about the performance gain when using streamed profiles and how we can confirm the feature is actually working as expected.

Now I'd like to take a step back and discuss the necessity behind this great feature.

Slow logons are one of the more common profile related issues, especially when using standard windows roaming profiles. Folder redirection can make a difference here by seperating the application data which generally makes up a large chunk of the profile and leaving it permanently on a file share, thereby reducing the size of the profile and in turn the logon speed. However, there are pros and cons to this as any app that reads/writes to the %AppData% folder on a regular basis will have to send these calls across the LAN, seriously impacting app performance. Take Application streaming for example, If the per user Radecache is redirected as part of %AppData% then this can cause performance problems for some apps as the RadeSvc.exe needs to read & write files to this location. I've worked more then one case in the past where this was an issue. With App streaming you can take some actions to try and reduce app launch and app performance but sometimes you just can't get past the network impact when folder redirection is used.

To learn more and to read the entire article at its source, please refer to the following page, How does profile streaming really make a difference?- The Citrix Blogs