Archive for the ‘VDI’ Category

Today I want to start a campaign within the VMware Community…

I would like to see VMware re-instate the “VMTN Subscription”. You might ask, what the hell is that? That would be fair enough because it was withdrawn many years ago, and never re-instated by VMware.

The VMTN Subscription (I found this link on Google which is still active posted in 2005) was similar to Microsoft MSDN or TechNet – where for relatively small yearly fee you could download the core enterprise software and run it for 1year. Right now there is whole legion of home-labbers out there that have to make do and mend with evaluations that expire after 60-days. Sadly, the VMTN Subscription program was cancelled in 2007 and never re-instated.

Now as former VMware Certified Instructor and vExpert – if I wanted NFR style licenses I can get to them. Although I would have to say throughout all my time working with VMware its been also been a struggle gaining access to software and licenses – as independent guy not affiliated to partner…. That’s mainly because an evaluation download doesn’t always give me access to ALL the software I need to do my kind of work. It’s often been a frustration, and I’ve often need to call upon my personal network to get hold of bits that seemed impossible to get through legitimate means. My concern is not so much for myself as I’m generally a well-connected dude – but for the many thousands of loyal VMware supports in their homelabs. VMware has one of the best user communities on the planet. I personally believe that without the “bottom up” support of thousands of enthusiasts who teach themselves VMware in their home labs, who then go on to recommend software to the customers, clients and businesses – VMware wouldn’t be as half as successful as it is without this legion of unpaid evangelist for their cause.

So, VMware. Bring back the VMTN Subscription or make it part of the VMUG Advantage package.

If you want to register your thoughts/views/opinions for this idea – add your +1 to this forum post here.

This dropped in through my inbox about 10 minutes ago. And I think I’m already liking it (although I can’t vouch for it personally – as I’ve yet to fiddle with it). I’ve been saying for a while someone nice should produce a utility that turns of all crude you don’t need in Windows client  to make them ready for VDI. There’s just to many hardening and optimizing guides – and they often conflict with each other, and are not complete.

Anyway, Quest have stepped up to the plate and created a “Desktop Optimizer” which hopefully handles all that for us. It’s free – and because this is a Windows thing it will work with View and XenDesktop too…

http://communities.quest.com/community/vworkspace/blog/2011/09/08/introducing-the-free-quest-vworkspace-desktop-optimizer

Coming to London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt this October, independent expert and desktop virtualisation guru Brian Madden will update you on where the desktop virtualisation market is in 2011, focusing on what’s real and what’s not. Brian will cover an array of topics including user virtualisation, client hypervisors, remoting protocols, disk layering, cloud-based desktops, the consumerisation of IT and much more. Spend just a few hours out of the office to take advantage of a live Q&A, peer networking opportunities and tons of valuable information. Register today!
http://events.techtarget.com/desktopvirtualization/?Offer=VDI2011rtfm

Note of Explanation: For some reason I’ve got into the habit of saying Aye-PAD, Aye-Phone, Aye-POD with thick Geordie accent. It’s silly and I will soon grow out of such juvenile behaviour. For the Americans out there – this is an impression of a Geordie accent – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1zfG9No12Y We do talk funny here in the UK sometimes…

Well, they have finally gone and done it. VMware have released an View Client for the Aye-PAD. Personally, I don’t have one of these devices so I wasn’t able to take advantage of playing around it before the release. I’ve been holding off from getting my Aye-PAD until the G2 release. Sadly, it looks like the US will get the first chance of that on the 11th, as the RoW don’t get the chance to order until the 25th. I’m sure my life will be changed by having one [I'm joking by the way!]

And before you make them those jokey comments, no I wasn’t able to persuade anyone to give/lend me an aye-PAD before the release!

The VMware View client for Aye-PAD can be downloaded for free from the App Store here – and is a great way to get Windows running on a £579 tablet… Sorry, I couldn’t help that…

As of yet there’s no multi-tasking support in the View Client for IPAD – that’s likely to change in the future… The other issue to be aware of is that in “order for the View desktop display to autofit the iPad screen when you rotate the iPad, you must power the virtual machine off and then power it on. That is, after the desktop pool is created, the administrator must use vSphere Client or some other means to power off and then on the virtual machine that will be used as a View desktop on an iPad”. So I imagine that could be an issue for folks toggling between using View with conventional desktop computer or laptop – and then later switching to the iPAD.

It’s difficult to say really, as I DON’T HAVE AN aye-PAD…YET!

Here’s a couple of screen grabs to whet your appetite. What will they think of next at VMware, and IPAD app for………….

And there’s also some videos of thing here as well – http://www.flickr.com/photos/vmwarepr/

My fellow blogger, Eric Sloof actually has an iPAD and did this video!

There are so a user guide and release notes as well

Well, I think the blogpost title kind of says it all. As of today my View 4.5 Guide is now completely free to download.

Why I have a decided to this. Well, for a couple of reasons.

1. View 4.6 was released today – introducing new functionality. In particular the Security Server is now compatible with PCoIP. It’s always been my policy that as new version comes out. I either write an update – or I make the previous edition free – this was the case with the SRM 1.0 and 4.0 books. If you want to learn about 4.6 new functionality watch this video below its great!

VMware View 4.6 PCoIP Remote Access from Mark Benson on Vimeo.

2. It unlikely I will have time to finish the View 4.5 book, or indeed update it so it covers the new features of View 4.6. I wasn’t made privy to the new features of the 4.6 release or indeed have early access to the code. My focus for the next couple of quarters is in writing 3rd edition of my SRM book. The bottom-line is I haven’t the hours in the day to write for TechTarget and write two books at the same time – and do the chinwag, vendorwags, speak at UGs… The list goes on…

3. This week I discovered the PDF version of my book had gone on to a dubious website. As you might know – the $10 I was collecting for the View 4.5 Guide was going to UNICEF. Now the book has leaked out in this way, it seems likely that people will get hold of copy of the View 4.5 guide without that charitable donation being made. So as away of heading those people off at the pass, I thought I would release it for free today.

Erm… and that’s about the size of it. If someone out there feels they would like to take up the baton, and take my content – and complete and update it to View 4.6 I would be interested. We would then re-release the guide for free on RTFM, and I would happily share the credit with the individual concerned. Of course my name would be in super-huge letters, and your name would appear in Font size 8. [JOKE]

The guide is still available to buy in hard-copy format with no royalties attached, and PDF version up there is free download as well. You can of course download the guide directly from my site as of today. If you a blogger – please point to this page – as it all counts against my hits.

Click at the pic to download:

Look this is a VERY lengthy article. At nearly 8K words, its not really a blogpost. As such I thought folks might also want this in a PDF format offline so they can read it at their leisure.

A couple of weeks ago it was my good fortune to attend a new class on Microsoft Desktop and Application virtualization. If you’re interested the course is 10324A – Implementing and Managing Desktop Virtualization, and covers some of technologies in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack or MDOP. The MDOP is available to those who have a Volume License agreement and who have purchased a Software Assurance (SA) with Microsoft. The MDOP is really bundling of related technologies into a single SKU and includes the following tools

• Application Virtualization (App-V)
• Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)
• Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM)
• Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT)
• Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM)
• Asset Inventory Service (AIS)

Whilst the course mentioned all the of the tools its fair to say that main emphasis was on MED-V and App-V from the MDOP, but also adds modules about “User State Virtualization” (aka Profiles and Group Policies) and also covers how to setup and configure Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to allow end-users to access a shared desktop on what we once called “Terminal Services” as well as accessing a virtual desktop (VDI) environment. It was with some irony that I found the hosted-VDI approach put to the end of the course. It would be tempting to interpret this as Microsoft “downgrading” the significance of virtual desktops running on a datacenter hypervisor. The reality is that its position in the course owed more to its dependencies on the RDS components that must be configured first. It’s also not unusual for vendors to spend more time on their strongest technologies rather than their weakest – in an effort to show their best side to the customer.

The course did involve quite a bit of installing stuff only to use snapshots on HyperV to revert those VMs back into a clean state. I understand the reason for this is to allow each part of the course stand independently from each other – to allow it to be customized to the customers needs. Personally, as a former instructor I prefer the style of course where over the week you build up a solution piece by piece until you are left with all the puzzles in place. So to some degree the course was a missed opportunity to see AppV, RDS, VDI, HyperV all working in harmony to produce a desktop environment.

With that said, as an overview of what Microsoft is doing in this space it was an excellent course, and it was much quicker to spend time on a training course – than it would be sat in my lab environment with no instructor to interrogate. The course has a very wide view of VDI – so took in the use of running virtual machine on end-users desktop PCs in the form of XP Mode and MED-V, as well as looking at more the “hosted” environment where end-users get their desktop from a centralized bank of servers. So what I want to do is take each technology in turn, and give you my personal take on the product starting with virtual PC and XP Mode.

It’s not my intention to do any detailed “competitive analysis” between Microsoft and the other vendors. That’s the subject for a different article. I want to assess the technologies on their own merits, whilst at the same time remembering that there is more than one ISV in the world. If you are looking for a more competitive analysis approach I would heartily recommend reading the virtualfuture.info “smack down” papers which stop short of “bake offs” from one vendor to another, but do have a handy matrix which allows you to compare and contrast the features in a matrix – its particularly strong on application virtualization.

(more…)

Well, I’m back in the saddle after my weeks holiday in the Canary Island. This week I’m in London attending a Microsoft course about virtualization of desktop. That’s somewhat ironic given that one of my articles on TechTarget recently got a lot of traction on twitter – I was named checked even by legendary Brian Madden…

In case you don’t know Microsoft sent letters to folks telling them that using application virtualization to virtualize IE6. Apparently its against support and the license. I take a pretty forthright attitude on the issue – although I’m not responsible for the title!!!

To hell with Microsoft’s rule against IE virtualization

[Special Note to Bloggers: Please link to this blog post NOT directly to LULU. It means I get the hits rather than LULU which help with my Google Analytics stats. Thanks!]

Today I’m releasing my very long guide to View 4.5. I’m kinda loathed to call it a “book” because its no way as detailed as my previous works on Vi3, SRM and vSphere4. For me its still very much a work in progress. With that said, I like to mark product GA days with a release of one my guides, and so that’s why I’m releasing it to day. It runs to some 190 pages of text and graphics, and I’ve been working on it since I joined the View 4.5 Beta Program. It contains 21 “chapters” but I’m not being grand here, sometimes these chapters are just a couple of pages long. I’ve tried to use the chapters to outline the major steps you go through in building out a View environment.

Here’s a chapter list:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Virtual Desktops
Chapter 2: Install a Connection Server
Chapter 3: Post-Configuration of Connection Server
Chapter 4: Install Agent into Virtual Desktop
Chapter 5: Install the Local Mode View Client
Chapter 6: Publish an Individual Virtual Desktop
Chapter 7: Publish a Dedicated Virtual Desktop Pool
Chapter 8: Publish a Floating Virtual Desktop Pool
Chapter 9: VMware Composer and Linked Clones
Chapter 10: Refresh, Recompose and Rebalance
Chapter 11: Enabling Local Mode
Chapter 12: Enabling Kiosk Mode (TBC)
Chapter 13: Publishing Terminal Servers/Remote Desktop Services
Chapter 14: Microsoft Group Policies
Chapter 15: VMware View User Experience
Chapter 16: Install a Connection Server Replica
Chapter 17: Install a Security Server
Chapter 18: Load-Balance Security Servers
Chapter 19: Create and Apply Certificates
Chapter 20: Virtual Application with VMware ThinApp
Chapter 21: Managing VMware View with PowerCLI

So it’s an author’s edition in the sense that’s it almost there, but I feel there is still work to be done – to polish it up. But at the same time, I felt it was “good enough” to release to day. The content has yet to be QA’d against the GA release for start, and I recently had the opportunity to submit the manuscript to VMware – and hoping for some quality feedback from them – from which I improve what’s there already, and at the same time add additional content here and there…

Today I also made a change to the way I distribute both the SRM book and the View Guide. They are STILL BOTH available for PDF download, but now the donation to UNICEF is mandatory. It’s come to my attention that a small minority have been downloading the PDF version of the SRM 4.0 book without doing their moral duty and donating the $10 to UNICEF as I hoped. So because of those small number of people I’ve decide to make this a mandatory – $9.99. Of course this shouldn’t bother the good folks who would have donated anyway, right?

If you do download the View 4.5 Guide please keep a record of your purchase. When the full version is ready you will be welcome to contact me with your proof-of-purchase, and I will send you a private link where you can download the full PDF version at no additional charge. I don’t think you should have to pay twice for the PDF where there might be only 10-20 pages of additional content and bug fixes. At this time I will also make available a print version together with a more fancier cover. In the meantime if you click the graphic below that should take you to the download page on LULU.

The other good news is that with the GA,  VMware View 4.5 finally got the seal of approval from the folks at Gartner. This is a bit of shaggy dog story. But at the beginning of the year, Gartner declared a plague on both the houses of Citrix and VMware. Declaring that neither product possessed all the required criteria to be regarded as Enterprise ready. Later in the year Citrix release SP1 for XenDesktop – beating VMware to the finish line. Some people say suspiciously so. There was a rumor that Citrix was tipped the wink on View 4.5 delays, and given the nod that if they were able to push out SP1 early, then they would score points over VMware. Anyway, whether there is any truth to this rumor is anyone’s guess – I just enjoy spreading them! Anyway, recently the scales will tipped back in balance with Citrix, with VMware receiving the same thumbs up from those folks at Gartner.

Today VMware’s View 4.5 product which was “announced” at VMworld last week, has been GA’d. Whoop-Whoop!

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_downloads/vmware_view/4_5

If you want to learn more about View 4.5 offers, today TechTarget published my article all about the product…

You can hear a computer generated text-to-speech version of the article below..

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Avid (sic) readers of the RTFM blog will notice how recently its become a portal for me blowing off steam and ranting about various technical woes I have. You see even a vExpert and certified Guru has their challenges. [Incidentally, I really don't believe in those monikers - expert and guru... show me a guru, and I will show him a problem they haven't seen before...:-) ].

Anyway, recently I had a “challenge” (such is the vague euphasisms that “totally ****ing annoying problems go by these days!). It concerned cloning a Windows 7 (and occasionally Windows 2008) machines. The blogpost about that problem is here, and the error I was getting was this one:

Well, I kinda walked away from this problem in disgust. I decide to use Windows XP for my virtual desktop pools to avoid this kind of ******t. Then I had problems with Windows XP! So it turn back to Windows 7 and this problem.

Anyway I think I found the cause. I did another googlewack. Using the search string of sysprep and the entire string from the offending dialog box. I found this in the release notes for Vi3. Incidentally, this should also apply to vSphere4 as strictly speaking its not a VMware issue.

http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vi3_vc25u4_rel_notes.html

Customization Specification of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista Guest Operating System Can Only Be Changed Thrice Successively

Consider a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista. You can clone this virtual machine with customization, and edit the customization specification of the clone to create another virtual machine. However, only three such successive cloning operations can be performed. ?For example, if virtual machine A is cloned to virtual machine B, virtual machine B is cloned to virtual machine C, virtual machine C is cloned to virtual machine D, and the customization specification of the guest operating system is edited for every clone operation, then an operation to clone virtual machine D with customization might fail.

This is might be the cause. He’s how. Let say I have Windows 7 template. I then decide a want a clone of this – so I can install the Beta/RC View 4.5 Agent to the VM. Next I clone this VM to make another copy to install VMware Tools. I’m worried that the pesky SVGA 3D Driver might cause problems with PCoIP for argument sake, and decide having a clone is better than working from endless nested snapshots… Next I clone this VM to make a Parent-VM. And so on. Clones of the clone of the clone – can result in this limit being reached very quickly…