Utilize ThinApp Streaming with Horizon Workspace and View Desktops

 Administration, Desktop Virtualization, Tips and Tricks, VDI Design  Comments Off
Apr 022013
 

I’ve been diving deep in the lab with Horizon Workspace (review coming!).  Workspace can be used (with limited functionality) from just the web page portal but it is best used when you install the GUI apps for Windows, OSX, IOS, and Android.  One thing to note is that when the Workspace app for windows is installed, it will automatically deploy ThinApp packages to the clients that have it loaded (if the app is entitled to them of course).  So if you have the Workspace client installed in your View desktops, you can deploy ThinApp packages to them.  If I have the client loaded in my Windows home PC, I can get my ThinApp Apps there as well.  For my View desktops, I may want to stream my ThinApp packages.  If I have a logon storm of 100 users at 8am, I don’t want 100 network copies of Adobe Reader coming off my ThinApp share at the same time, crushing it.  For the home users, I want those pushed down locally.  Let’s remember: Adobe Reader XI comes in about 312MB when ThinApped.  Not exactly a download I want my remote users to start when they click on the Reader icon on their home PC and wait for the download to complete before seeing reader.  So for the home users, I want to have the full app downloaded to their endpoint operating system before the icon appears.  For my View Desktops, I want to present the icon immediately but only download the app when the user clicks the icon (after all, my View desktops are on a high speed network link to the ThinApp Network Share).  How do I accomplish this one way for the View desktops and another for the home users?

First, I’ll mention that there is no way to differentiate this by application in Workspace today (v1.0 remember?).  This is differentiated by the OS instance that the Workspace App runs on.  By default, when you install the workspace client, all ThinApp packages are set to download fully to the Windows Operating System.  If you would like to stream the apps you need to install the Workspace Apps silently using the command line options to change the default as explained in this page from the documentation from v1.0.

Here’s the example from the docs on how to run the installer:

VMware-Horizon-Workspace-1.0.0-12345.exe /s /z HORIZONSERVER=https://HorizonWorkspaceHost.com SSLBYPASS=1 /v DOWNLOAD=0 POLLINGINTERVAL=60

Where /v lets you specify the ThinApp Specific variables.  The one in question is DOWNLOAD=0.  0 means use streaming for your apps, 1 means download the full app to the OS where the workspace app is installed.  1 is the default.

If you have already installed your Workspace apps on your endpoints or in your View desktops, all is not lost.  You can just edit the registry (with a GPO if you like).

Here’s the key:

HKLM/Software/Wow6432Node/VMware, Inc./VMware Horizon Apps/DownloadPackages  REG_DWORD 0 or 1.  (0 is stream ThinApps, 1 is Download (the default)).

One thing to note:  The ThinApp sandbox for that package will not roam to the users endpoint on a home PC (or anywhere without some form of profile management).  The users profile is not in the Horizon Data folder so this information does not get shared with the other Horizon Data.  A little bit of a limiting factor, but something we can hope for in the next version.

VMware View desktops appear in an “Already Used” state

 Administration, Desktop Virtualization, Tips and Tricks  Comments Off
Oct 052012
 

Was researching an issue for a customer yesterday morning and ran across a few articles mentioning this “Already Used” issue.  It was not really the problem I was looking for.  Ironically, yesterday afternoon, I had a call with a different customer that described this issue exactly.  At that point, I had to post it.

Here’s the issue:

after a user logs off, a desktop in a linked clone pool goes into an “Already Used” state and stays there.  No users can use it until it is refreshed by an admin.  I found numerous references to this issue but no definitive answers.  I even found this KB Article on vmware.com and it’s resolution is to just refresh the desktop (#EpicFail).  That was until I ran across this post in the Community Forums by Paul Woodhouse.

The issue is caused by the user selecting to shutdown the desktop instead of logoff.  Instead of refreshing the desktop, VMView restarts the desktop and puts it in an “Already Used” state.  I believe this may be by design to protect it from being used until an admin can review it (just speculating here).  Whatever the reason, this desktop cannot be used by anyone else until it is refreshed by an administrator.

Paul writes in the article that you can set the default option to logoff and also provides a script to run thru the desktops to look for any in the affected state and reset them in one shot.  I agree with one of the comments to the article.  I recommend removing the shutdown and reset options from the logoff button completely via Group Policy.  There is no reason to give users those options in a VDI environment.  Especially when you are using linked clones that are refreshed on logoff.  As reported later in the comments, removing the shutdown and reset options  from Win7 eradicated the issue completely from the environment.

Good luck.

UPDATE: It just occured to me that this is a user policy.  If you want to remove these options from the VDI desktops but not the user’s desktop or laptop, you have to turn on Group Policy Loopback mode and apply the GPO to the OU with the desktops.  This will apply this user GPO to all of the VDI desktops only.

Release: vCenter Infrastructure Navigator 1.0

 Administration, Disaster Recovery, Software Releases, Tips and Tricks, VMware News  Comments Off
Jan 242012
 

Infrastructor Navigator has been released and can be found here.  Rather than go thru the details, I’ll repost the features from the release notes:

VMware vCenter™ Infrastructure Navigator is an application awareness plug-in to vCenter Server, and provides continuous dependency mapping of applications. Infrastructure Navigator offers application context to the virtual infrastructure administrators to monitor and manage the virtual infrastructure inventory objects and actions. Administrators can use Infrastructure Navigator to understand the impact of the change on the virtual environment in their application infrastructure. Infrastructure Navigator helps virtual infrastructure administrators perform the following tasks:

  • Make accurate first-level triage to help either eliminate the problem or associate the problem with the virtual infrastructure when business service users report problems.
  • Assess change impact, manage, and communicate virtual infrastructure issues for critical applications.
  • Understand the application and business impact of changes to the virtual infrastructure on applications.

The Open Source Licenses (OSL) file for the virtual appliance is available at /root/open_source_licenses.txt. You can retrieve the file by running the scp root@<appliance IP>:open_source_licenses.txt command.

Infrastructure Navigator is supported on vCenter Server 5.0 with the vSphere Web Client. The supported ESX versions include ESX/ESXi 3.5 (build 425420), ESX/ESXi 4.0 (build 398348), ESX/ESXi 4.1 (build 433742), and all builds of ESXi 5.x.

Features

This section describes the key features for the Infrastructure Navigator 1.0.0 release.

Simplifies and automates the deployment and the discovery process and keeps manages Application Component Knowledge Base (KB) current

  • Eliminates physical switch spanning or credential based discovery.
  • Discovers and maps the application components and dependencies using KBs and presents this knowledge through maps or search for relevant use cases.

Provide Infrastructure Navigator data for vCenter Server and related solutions

  • Ensures that the application and dependency data is available to the rest of the vCenter Server entities and its various solutions through the vCenter extensibility APIs.
  • Supports SRM integration to set up more focused and accurate site recovery and backup plans.

 

Release: vCenter Operations Manager 5.0

 Administration, Software Releases, VMware News  Comments Off
Jan 242012
 

The enterprise and standard editions of Operations Manager have been updated to v5 and can be downloaded here.  There’s not really a What’s new in the release notes, but rather a high-level summary of the features as so:

VMware vCenter Operations Manager is an automated operations management solution that provides integrated performance, capacity, and configuration management for highly virtualized and cloud infrastructure. Deep VMware vSphere integration provides the most comprehensive management of VMware environments. VMware vCenter Operations Manager is purpose-built for VMware administrators to more effectively manage the performance of their VMware environments as they move to the private cloud.

Key Benefits

  • Actionable intelligence to automate manual operations processes
  • Visibility across infrastructure and applications for rapid problem resolution
  • Proactively ensures optimal resource utilization and virtual and cloud infrastructure performance

 

 

Release: VMware vSphere Client for iPad 1.2.0

 Administration, Software Releases, Tips and Tricks, VMware News  Comments Off
Oct 172011
 

Fresh out of the app store comes the VMware vSphere Client for iPad v1.2.0.  You rush right over to the download section in iTues here.  If you already have it downloaded, visit the app store on your device and download the update.  Here’s What’s New from the App Store:

New in v1.2 (see notes below):

  • Migrate virtual machines without downtime using vMotion.  This feature is available via Host & VM action menus.  Virtual machines can also be two-finger flicked/dragged from the Host detail view to enter vMotion mode
  • Ability to email vMotion validation error details to others
  • View task progress reporting on VM cards
  • Ability to refresh vCenter host list
  • Support of ESX 3.5
  • Support for vSphere 5.0

Release Notes:

  • This version requires vCMA 1.2, available at: http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vcma
  • Min iOS version: 4.0

 

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