Review of sepagoPROFILE posted by Jeff Pitsch on 08/20/07

Please don’t let the short review fool you. This product is so simple to install and maintain that there isn’t that much to discuss. Please read on for more.

Installation

Installation is extraordinarily simple. You simply run the MSI, specify the path to install to and that’s it. It’s that simple. You do this on all your servers and your good to go. The installation installs a service called sepagoProfileService. It does not install anything else beyond that because nothing else is required.

Configuration

Configuration of SepagoProfile is done through group policy. Sepago supplies a very simple and straightforward ADM file for administrators to use. At it’s very basic, you simply configure where you want the settings to be saved to (typically the users home directory). You do have the option of specifying saving the entire HKCU key or specifying the keys to be saved. You can even choose to exclude certain keys from being saved. If you need certain files or directories to be saved you can configure that as well. This does require that you specify a location for a change database. This database keeps track of changed files so that it knows which files need to be updated. SepagoProfile also supports logging. It can be as detailed as you need it to be. It stores the log files under system32\logfiles.

Management

Management? What management? This is set it and forget it.

Documentation

Documentation was straight and to the point.

Miscellaneous

SepagoProfile supports personal certificates. The product also supports seamless integration of streaming applications. For example, let’s say you have Word installed on one server and Word installed as a streamed application. Your configuration changes will be available in both. You make a change in one and it will be available in the other. SepagoProfile also comes bundled with a profile migrator. This utility basically allows you to take an existing profile and it scans and records the differences between the mandatory and the users current profile. It records those changes and saves them appropriately. Thi is a very nifty utilty.

Conclusion

I am very impressed with this product. It is very, very simple to setup, configure and manage and it just works. No scripts, no new management consoles, nothing like that. It is very fast in regards to login times. The biggest problem with this product is the licensing. It is currently based on named user. There is no option for per server licensing or non-named user per user licensing. I see the advantage of this licensing in that you can use it for a user on their workstation and terminal server session but I think most people would love to just have this for their terminal services environment. I do not have current pricing but I will post it if I can track it down.

© sepago GmbH 2008