I recently worked on an issue relating to large Citrix UPM profile sizes. Many companies are deploying Teams and Chrome into their virtualised environments, however, there is a noticeable impact on profile storage space. Many profile increase beyond 1GB due to the Chrome and Teams cache folders that are written back to the profile share at user logoff.
Existing profile management configurations often included folder mirroring for the chrome folders. However, folder exclusions will not apply to these mirrorer folders. The answer in some cases is to synchronise the Chrome folders so that folder exclusions can be applied to their sub folders and the unrequired cache data excluded.
It was not possible to recreate these production profiles in their entirety as the profiles are active with the production environment. Therefore, the only option is to clean the profile folders at logon and remove any unwanted folders.
A Citrix Profile Management policy setting called “Logon Exclusion Check” can be used to check if a folder is listed within UPM exclusions. If the folders exist, they will be deleted during the next user logon.
There are other files that should be excluded such as the Teams .json files etc, but the purpose of this blog is to demonstrate that excluded Teams and Chrome cache folders can be removed by Citrix UPM at logon.
This should be added to the work ask backlog and tested at the end of the sprint. For example: Test to make sure you are retaining Bookmark files in the Chrome Default folder but remove the cache subfolders.
The following Teams and Chrome folders can be added to the Citrix Exclusions: (This is not a strict listing, you can add or remove as you please)
GPO Policy Path:
Computer config/Admin Templates/Citrix Components/Profile Management/File system/ Exclusion List - Directories
Add:
AppData\Local\google\chrome\user data\default\Code Cache
AppData\Local\google\chrome\user data\default\Cache
AppData\Local\google\chrome\user data\Safe Browsing
AppData\Local\google\chrome\user data\pnacl
AppData\Local\google\chrome\user data\PepperFlash
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\skylib
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\media-stack
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\IndexedDB
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Blob_storage
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Document Building Blocks
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Bibliography
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Service Worker
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\cache
AppData\Roaming\Chrome\Profile
Directories to Synchronise:
GPO Policy Path: Computer config/Admin Templates/Citrix Components/Profile Management/File system/Synchronization
Add: AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
Apply Logon Exclusion Check:
GPO Policy Path: Computer config/Admin Templates/Citrix Components/Profile Management/File system/Logon Exclusion Check
Setting: If profile in the user store contains files or folders that have been excluded: Delete excluded files or folders
