Logging in with Dropbox and VDI

[chrisc718]

Anyone using dropbox with VDI and figure out how to get user login credentials to be saved?

[Jay]

Hi @chrisc718, thanks for posting in the Community!
 
Could you clarify which VDI you're using?
 
Is it possible to save your VDI sessions between logins?
  
This will help me to assist further!

[chrisc718]

Using Vmware Horizon.

Yes, I can save session information. From the limited research I've done, it seems like Dropbox ties the login info to the computername?

In my case, whenever a user gets a new VDI session, the computername is randomly assigned (not persistent).

[Jay]

For Dropbox to work correctly, it needs to be installed in an OS that is not part of a Shared Session.

If installing into a virtual environment, it would need to be installed into a user account that is part of this virtual desktop or virtual machine and only accessed by that user account. The Dropbox folder should also be located on the same mounted drive that is running the virtual machine or virtual desktop.

Please be aware that if you install Dropbox on a virtual machine or virtual desktop that are non-persistent, such that they are reset on a schedule or after logging off, Dropbox may be logged out and need to resync everytime this occurs.

[APBSecurity]

So the proper way to get Dropbox to work correctly with any flavor of VDI is to use user volumes that attach to the session.  This can be done in Horizon with Dynamic Environment Manager (f.k.a. User Environment Manager). However, with the uptick in licensing cost there is a better option that works with Citrix, KVM, and RDS as well as Azure and AWS.  Liquidwarelabs VDI essentials has a whitepaper on Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive integration to user volumes and it's cheaper than premium VDI licenses.  User volumes keep the cache and sync files to a virtual disk (VMDK or VHD) that attach when the user authenticates to the session, so credentials and anything in the user profile stays consistent even on non-persistent VDI (best practice).  I previously was the High Security VDI Solution Architect for Dell and have set this up many times, Liquidware makes it cheap and easy and highly reliable plus the performance data analysis is wonderful.

I came across this post looking for a way to throttle the memory back as it eats .5GB at idle.