Here’s were we go astray:  Now I want my VDI desktop to be a floating pool with Persona Management.  I use Persona in the lab because I want a floating desktop but still want my profile (IE links bar, etc) saved between sessions.  Now let’s try this scenario:

Login to VDI desktop.  Save a document to my horizon folder.  Logout of VDI desktop (persona is saved to network share, horizon data copies file to all my devices).  Open horizon Workspace on my iPad and delete the document (the document disappears from all my devices). Login to my VDI desktop (persona pulls down my profile – including the Horizon directory from the CIFS share).  Unfortunately Horizon data now sees this document as a new version and it reappears on all my devices.

The solution to this dilemma is to exclude the Horizon directory from persona management (via GPO).  However, when you do this you get a warning message that your Horizon Folder has been deleted upon each logon.  When you click OK, your Horizon folder is recreated and all of your data comes down from the server.  However, if your Horizon data repository is large, this could be a huge chunk of data each time you login to your floating-pool VDI desktop.

Hopefully VMware will correct this in the future with Workspace, these two features are great to use together.  Persona for the quick login with user persistence and Workspace for sharing data between all your devices.

I’ll post any updates here if I find a workaround.

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 Horizon Mobile enables enterprises to securely provision and manage corporate mobile workspaces on Android smartphones in isolation from employees’ personal environments. This dual-persona solution makes corporate data more secure and enables enterprises to take advantage of employee-owned mobile devices.

Using Horizon Mobile features, you can enhance productivity by creating purpose-built, preconfigured native mobile workspaces based on each employee’s responsibilities. Administrators can easily keep track of and manage corporate assets and applications on mobile devices through a Web-based portal. Security is seamlessly integrated with existing infrastructure to meet regulatory and compliance needs.

If you like to take it for a spin, head over to the download page here.

First a little background.  Today you can only create 8-Node Clusters in vSphere if you are using iSCSI or Fiber Channel storage.  The reason is because the number of hosts that can share a file on VMFS in vSphere 5.0 and prior is limited to 8.  If you are using NFS with View 5.1 and vSphere 5.0 or higher, you can have 32-node clusters for your View desktops.  vSphere 5.1 changed this limitation by changing the file locking mechanism and now allows for 32-node clusters to share a read-only file.  Secondly, vSPhere 5.1 introduced Sparse Virtual Disks.  These Sparse Disks are virtual disks presented to the desktops that can shrink as easily as they expand.  This is a real benefit and may rival linked clones one day to most efficently deliver a pool of desktops on storage.  You can read more about these two technologies from Cormac Hogan, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect at VMware.

As I’m sure you know by now, as of last week, View 5.1 and 5.1.1 are now supported with vSphere 5.1.0a.  So the question was asked: now that they are supported together, do we get those cool new features that Cormac was referring to?  Unfortunately, the answer is no, not yet.  I searched for a long time trying to find an answer.  When I came up empty, I just emailed Cormac directly.  He responded this morning, “…both features are waiting on a future release of View.”

Bummer.  Hopefully we’ll get the chance to get these two great features very soon.

Have a great and safe Halloween.

For all the details you can refer to this KB article.

Additionally, the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix has already been updated to reflect the new build of ESXi and vCenter required for View 5.1.x.

So how does an admin get rights to the user’s persona directory to repair a single file without destroying the persona completely?  There is an MS group policy object that applies here.

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles

Add the Administrators security group to the roaming user profile share

By enabling this policy, administrators will have additional rights to the profiles so that they can edit them if needed.  Perhaps you corrupted your sandbox environment for a specific ThinApped application, now the admin can erase just the sandbox for that app and not have to restore or erase any more information than is needed.

Additional Notes:

• This works for the user’s persona only.  If you are also using redirected folders, those targets will still only give the user permission to that data.  This policy does not apply to redirected folders.
• This does not add administrator permissions to persona folders that already exist on the persona network share.
• The group that gets added is local administrators for the server that the share is on.  This may be an issue if you are using MSCS for your network share.  If the share switches MSCS nodes, those administrative permissions will not apply.

Good luck.

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.

• Active Directory Sites – Many customers create a new network subnet in their environment for a new VDI deployment.  Make sure that you if you create a new subnet for VDI that you add it to Sites and services so AD knows where to authenticate the VDI users.  (I once had a customer whose desktops were authenticating to their DC in their DR site. – not the best use of WAN traffic.)
• DHCP – This one has been very frequent lately.  You have to remember that VDI can be very fluid, especially if you are using floating desktops with refresh on logoff (my personal favorite.)  Because of this fluidity, you have to make special considerations with DHCP.  If you are not careful, a recompose of a large pool of desktops can deplete your available IP addresses in your DHCP pool.  You should set your DHCP lease to 1 hour for all of the subnets where VDI desktops will reside.  You should also set a script to run, either on shutdown via group policy or by the View agent by configuring the power-off script in the quickprep settings.  For details, take a look at “The Resolution” section in the blog article here.  This script approach will release the IP addresses when the desktops refresh and then renew them when the desktop restarts.  The issue comes when an admin has to delete some desktops.  In this case the scripts do not run to release the IP addresses, however, your shortened lease time will pick up those IP addresses in an hour.
• DNS – make sure that your forward and reverse zones are working well.  You should have dynamic updates enabled so that you can have the desktops register with DNS correctly.  I have had customers try to use DHCP to update DNS but this always seemed to run into some kind of issue so I typically try to deter customers from using that approach.
• DNS #2 – Also when using an internal and external facing environment, make sure to set the proper DNS records and their resolution to the correct internal/external brokers for users who may be logging in form both scenarios.
• Read-only DC’s – If you are using read-only dc’s in your Active Directory environment, you may want to have a look at this MS KB article.  I ran into a few issues with a customer running XP and building their base image, we forgot this and they could not authenticate.  If you run Read-only DC’s, make sure to fully read the article.
• OU Creation – Make sure when you create a new Organizational Unit in AD that you DO NOT select “Protect container from accidental deletion”.  If you are running XP desktops this setting will prevent them from joining the domain correctly.
• Firewall ports – make sure the correct ports are open for the security servers and the brokers.  This article is a great reference to make sure you have opened what you need.
• Group policy loopback processing – You’ll definitely want to have a look thru this MS KB article.  Group policies apply to users or machines.  When you use loopback mode, it allows you to set a policy that has a user policy that only applies to those machines.  So say you wanted to have all users of VDI desktops to have the same wallpaper, but you wanted them to have their regular wallpaper if they log into their regular desktop.  That’s when you would use loopback mode.

These are some of the issues I’ve run into as of late.  Feel free to post any others in the comments.  Next design tips will be: Network.

Apologies for the absence, I’m back now.

Dave

“The VMguy”

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.

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

To enable Network I/O Control we need to have a DvS in place.  If we select the distributed switch and then select the Resource Application tab on the right, this gives us the “properties” option on the far right.  By selecting the Properties option, you can enable Network I/O Control on the DvS.  Once enabled you can see all of the System network resource pools.  There is one at the bottom of the list labeled “vSphere Replication (VR) Traffic”.  Selecting it and then clicking the “Edit Settings” link just below it opens up the settings window.

From here, you can edit the adapter shares.  The shares are to balance the bandwidth so that network flows can use the bandwidth thats available from a given dvuplink.  The shares are for a given dvUplink.

Alternatively, you can uncheck the Unlimited checkbox and set a host limit.  Keep in mind that this is Megabits per sec, not MegaBytes.  This is also the limit of the combined set of dvUplinks on a given host.

Lastly, a QOS priority tag can be used.  The traffic will have a 802.1p tag applied to it.  The IEEE does not standardize or mandate the use of the priority tag applied to the packets but the switches should treat higher tags with higher priority.  The choices are None, 1-7.

While not the granular controls that we may wish for, say individual bandwidth controls on a per VM or per-site replication limits, these settings and options are a start.  Hopefully in the future in vSphere Replication v2 we will have more granular controls for bandwidth throttling but until then, these are what we can use.  Happy computing.

The vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.0 provides various new features.

• Automatic Report Scheduler
  In vCenter Chargeback Manager, you can define automatic report schedulers. These schedulers create report schedules for hierarchies and entities that match the criteria specified in the automatic report scheduler. The automatic report scheduler scans all the hierarchies and creates report schedules for the hierarchies and entities that match the specified criteria.
• Charge thin and thick provisioned virtual machines differently
  In this release, you can charge thin provisioned disks and thick provisioned disks differently. By default, thin provisioned disks are charged for the actual usage of the disk. You can override this behavior to charge the thin provisioned disks as thick provisioned in your billing policy.
• Cost variance and cost optimization
  vCenter Chargeback Manager provides a cost variance graph in the report dashboard that lets you analyze the day-to-day change in cost for a selected hierarchy or entity. The graph shows cost data for the last 30 days and that projected for the next 3 months in sets of 30 days each. vCenter Chargeback Manager lists different cost optimization opportunities, such as oversized virtual machines, undersized virtual machines, idle virtual machines, and powered off virtual machines. Cost variance and cost optimization is displayed only for the vCenter Servers that are integrated with VMware vCenter Operations.
• Showback Report
  A showback report lets you analyze how the cost is distributed among the entities based on a specified distribution policy. It is a configurable report that does not include any costs when it is generated. You can specify the total cost, fixed cost, and resource weight in the generated report to obtain the cost for each entity and for each resource per entity. The cost per entity is calculated based on the distribution policy that you select when generating the show back report.
• Apply fixed cost based on virtual machine state
  In vCenter Chargeback Manager, you can now define fixed costs that will be applied on an entity only for the duration for which the virtual machine in the entity is powered on.
• Tier-based storage costing
  vCenter Chargeback Manager lets you define storage tiers and configure cost on the tiers. All the datastores under a tier will be charged uniformly as per the cost configuration settings on the tier. You can also include VM storage profiles in a tier. The storage profiles defined in vSphere are synchronized and the datastores are automatically grouped according to their storage profiles. The cost configuration defined on a profile is applied on all the datastores that match the storage profile. Similarly, the cost configuration defined on a tier is applied to all the datastores or storage profiles added to the tier.
• Support for raw device mapping
  vCenter Chargeback Manager accounts for usage of hard disks that use raw device mapping. The corresponding cost and usage data is reported for the virtual machines that have disks using raw device mapping.
• Complete support for vSphere 5.0 and vCloud Director 1.5
  vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.0 supports the new features introduced in vSphere 5.0, such as VM storage profiles, and that introduced in vCloud Director 1.5, such as support for an SQL Server database.
• Partial support for IPv6
  In this release, vCenter Chargeback Manager supports IPv6 over IPv4 on an experimental basis. You can provide URLs with IPv6 IP addresses when connecting to vCenter Servers, LDAP Servers, vCenter Chargeback Manager databases, and vCenter Server databases. Ensure that the IPv6 IP address is enclosed in square brackets [ ] in the URL as per the standard convention.
• VM Instance Cost support for all hierarchies in vCenter Chargeback Manager
  In vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.0, you can define fixed cost pricing matrices for virtual machines based on vCPU count and memory bundles. Unlike earlier releases, this functionality is now available for all the hierarchies created in vCenter Chargeback Manager.
• Support for burstable billing or 95th percentile billing for the external network traffic in vCloud Director
  You can now calculate the cost for external network traffic in your vCloud Director setup based on the 95th percentile transfer rate. Starting with this release, vCenter Chargeback Manager introduces the external network transmit rate and external network receive rate resources and the Burstable Utilization resource attribute for these resources. You can define a billing policy that has these resource-attribute pair in the expression to calculate the cost based on the 95th percentile transfer rate. vCenter Chargeback Manager calculate the 95th percentile value based on the daily samples. That is, vShield Manager Data Collector runs a job that accounts for the samples for the last 24 hours and computes the 95th percentile value based on these samples.
• Support for overage charging for org vDCs in the Allocation Pool model of vCloud Director
  In this release, vCenter Chargeback Manager provides the VMware Cloud Director apply overage charge on Allocation Pool vDC property for the Cloud Director Data Collector. This property must be set to true (default value is false) to account for the resource usage over and above the guaranteed reservation in vCloud Director. This is applicable only for CPU and memory. Also, you must use the VMware Cloud Director Overage Allocation Pool Cost Model to account for resource overage. You must, however, modify the cost model to define the base rate and overage rate for the resources.
• New cost models and billing policies for vCloud Director
  This release of vCenter Chargeback Manager introduces two new cost models and billing policies that are made available when you install the Cloud Director Data Collector. 
  • VMware Cloud Director Actual Usage Cost Model: This cost model uses the new VMware Cloud Director Billing Policy – Actual Usage. This billing policy lets you calculate cost based on actual resource usage for all resources except count of networks, enabled IPSec VPN tunnel count, and NAT, DHCP, and firewall services. For these resources the allocation values defined in vCloud Director is used.
  • VMware Cloud Director Overage Allocation Pool Cost Model: This cost model uses the new VMware Cloud Director Billing Policy – Overage Allocation Pool. Only for this beta release, the billing policy calculates the overage cost for CPU based on actual usage and that for memory based on allocation. For external network transmit and external network receive the actual usage values are used and for all other resources the allocation values are used.

Smart Full Screen

Full screen mode provides better productivity and consistency with Mac OS X Lion than previous versions.

The Lion full-screen button is used in virtual machine windows.

The Lion full-screen keyboard shortcut (Cmd-Control-F) is now supported in addition to Cmd-Control-Return.

Like other full-screen Lion applications, a VMware Fusion virtual machine moves to a new space when all displays are connected to the virtual machine.

Switching to Full Screen mode on a secondary display uses the whole display but does not create a new space, which enables you to work in other Mac applications while the virtual machine makes full use of the secondary display.

The VMware Fusion menu bar and toolbar are now accessible from Full Screen mode. A short delay in showing the menu allows access the top of the virtual machine screen, particularly when running Mac OS X Lion in a virtual machine.

A redesigned, compact minibar that you can drag for quick access to common actions without leaving Full Screen mode.

Automatic virtual machine power on

Virtual machines can now be powered on automatically when VMware Fusion starts. You can override this setting by holding Shift when VMware Fusion starts. This feature was removed in VMware Fusion 4 but is now available in VMware Fusion 4.1 in the General settings for every virtual machine.

Improved animations

Improved animations for full screen mode, unity mode, library and snapshots.

Fast screen resizing and improved startup time

Faster screen resizing (Microsoft Hotfix 2522761 recommended), faster transitions into Unity and Full Screen modes, and improved startup time with Windows 7 virtual machines.

Improved Mac OS X Lion guest operating system support

Improved Mac OS X Lion virtual machine support including smoother mouse movements and support for File Vault 2 when using Mac OS X 10.7.2 or later. Upated VMware Tools disable sleep on older versions of Mac OS X virtual machines.

Improved graphics performance

Improved graphics performance and correctness for Internet Explorer 9 and Solidworks 2012 and improved graphics performance when using Mac OS X 10.7.2.

VMware Fusion 4.1 also resolves the following issues:

An intermittent problem when plugging in a new USB device that resulted in error 4.

Improved support for resizing NTFS formatted disks.

An intermittent issue connecting USB devices attached via a Thunderbolt display.

An intermittent issue installing Mac OS X Lion from physical media.

Improved compatibility of shared folders for many applications.

An issue installing VMware Tools on Ubuntu 11.10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7.

A graphics rendering issue on some Mac Pro systems with very large amounts of memory

A graphics rendering issue specific to some non-English languages.

An intermittent problem when using the migration assistant on Mac OS X 10.7.2.

Spurious activation messages when using Boot Camp virtual machines on some systems.

What’s New in version 1.2

• Optimized for VMware View 5 with improved performance
• Support for iOS 5 including Airplay
• Presentation Mode for use with external display and Airplay
• Embedded RSA soft token simplifies login to desktop
• Background tasking to move between Windows and iOS apps
• Updated look and feel
• Integrated online help
• Buffered text input for multibyte text entry
• Now in French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese
• Bug fixes

This statement sounded somewhat familiar to me, somewhere I had heard this before.  I did some digging and I found why this rang such a bell.  Flash back four and a half years ago.  I remembered this article from the NY Times in February of 2007.  In it was an introduction to a little company called VMware.  It describes this little company and how it was taking on the Goliath Microsoft.  My favorite part was a quote in the article from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who said: “Our view is that virtualization is something that should be built into the operating system.”  Essentially, virtualization is a feature and not a product.  Funny how times change.  VMware, who was selling a “feature,” just yesterday reported revenue of $941.9 million for the just-ended third quarter.  Vmware is projecting Q4 revenue to be between 1.03 and 1.06 billion.  Not bad for a “feature.”

In this day and age Apple is the Goliath and the biggest kid on the block.

Dropbox, only yesterday, scored $250 million in funding and appears to be growing well.

It amazes me sometimes how what comes around, goes around.  Never underestimate the power of a competitor and the “feature” they might be selling.  Who knows where Dropbox might be 4 years from now.  Maybe they are the next VMware.

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

Here lies the problem and the reason for my post.  Remember that the licensing is sold in packs of 25 VMs so we can add SRM capacity in blocks of 25.  When we cross that 75 to 100 in capacity required, we need to upgrade our existing Standard Licenses to Enterprise and purchase a 25-pack of Enterprise to protect the additional VMs.    In list price terms, the 76th VM will cost $49,501.  That price includes 3 of the 25-VM Upgrade packs for SRM Standard to Enterprise (to upgrade the existing licensing for that site), a 25-VM Pack of SRM Enterprise and 4 x 1-year SnS for SRM Enterprise (the upgrade packs require SnS at purchase).

I created a chart showing List Prices and the acquisition cost and total investment in SRM.  From left to right shows the number of licensed VMs protected.  This chart assumes you start purchasing SRM Standard for a site with 75 or less VMs protected and then grow the site to larger than 75 VMs protected.

You can see from the greenish line that the total cost takes a significant jump from the 75-to-100 number of VMs protected.  Please keep in mind that these are list prices and assume that you are going to start with Standard Edition.

I was curious to know how this model would compare if we purchased SRM Enterprise licenses from the start.  I created this graph below for comparison.

You can see the blue 25-VM pack acquisition costs are a constant and predictable for each 25-VM pack.  The red total cost line is also a constant rate.   You’ll also notice that at 100 VMs and on, total costs are lower when you use Enterprise from the start.

There are a couple important observations that I have made from this analysis.  First, Standard Edition is a great way for customers to get into SRM at a much lower price point.  Please understand the risks if there is potential for that site to grow large enough to protect more than 75 VMs from it.

Second, and most important, this article is not meant as a criticism of VMware licensing practices (I’ll let others write those).  This article is meant to inform the customers:  If you need to protect a site with SRM and you think that you will eventually grow that site past the 75-protected-VM mark, you may want to consider purchasing SRM Enterprise now to balance out your costs and save some money in the end.  I really do not want to have to explain this licensing to you when started by purchasing SRM Standard Edition and now you need to protect the 76th VM.

Good luck and good computing.

This release of VMware Workstation adds the following new features and support.

• Installation Changes and Enhanced Keyboards
• Virtual Hardware Improvements
• New User Interface
• What Happened to Teams?
• Shared Virtual Machines and AutoStart
• Remote Connections
• Upload to vSphere
• Documentation Changes

Installation Changes and Enhanced Keyboards

The hardware requirements to install this version of Workstation have changed. Workstation now requires a relatively modern 64-bit CPU. See Installation Requirements for details.

The keyboard filter driver is no longer installed by default. When the driver is not installed, the enhanced keyboard functionality is unavailable and you must press Ctrl-Alt-Ins instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del to send a Ctrl-Alt-Del keystroke to the guest. To use the enhanced keyboard functionality, you must perform a custom installation and select the component. If you select the component, you must reboot whenever you install or uninstall Workstation.

Virtual Hardware Improvements

This version of Workstation includes many hardware improvements. To try new hardware features, you must upgrade the hardware version of your virtual machine or create a new virtual machine that uses the latest virtual hardware version.

• The display technology has been changed to provide a better experience for Unity users and users who have multiple monitors. These changes also allow you to add a projector to your laptop without restarting your virtual machine.
• Virtual machines can now support up to 64GB of memory. The host system should have more than 64GB of memory to use this feature.
• An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2 guests. The HD Audio device is compatible with the RealTek ALC888 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio Codec.
• USB 3.0 support is available for Linux guests running kernel version 2.6.35 or later (Ubuntu 10.10) through a new virtual xHCI USB controller. To enable this feature, add the following line to the .vmx file: usb_xhci.present = “true”. Do not enable this feature for Windows guests. Because Windows does not currently have a generic xHCI driver, this feature will not work in Windows.
• Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. With the latest hardware version, Bluetooth devices that are paired to the host system radio are available to Windows guests and can be paired from within the guest. You should not pair Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice, to a guest.
• You can now enable Virtual VT-X/EPT or AMD-V/RVI in the processor settings interface. With this feature, applications running in a guest can take advantage of these virtualization technologies. You can also run 64-bit guest operating systems inside of vSphere running inside Workstation.

New User Interface

The Workstation user interface has been updated to include new menus, toolbars, and an improved preferences screen.

• The favorites sidebar has been replaced with a virtual machine library. Instead of identifying every virtual machine created in Workstation as a favorite, the library is a comprehensive list of all of the virtual machines that Workstation users create, open, or access.
• A new folder summary page helps you to better manage a group of related virtual machines. Live thumbnails make it easy to see what is happening in running virtual machines.
• The full screen toolbar has been updated so that you can do more without having to leave full screen mode. Quick switch mode is no longer needed.

What Happened to Teams?

Although at first it might appear that the teams feature has been removed, you can add team attributes to any virtual machine in this version of Workstation.

• The team structure has been converted to a simple folder of virtual machines.
• A new advanced settings dialog box has been added for network adapters to let you throttle the bandwidth of incoming and outgoing transmissions and simulate packet loss.
• You can perform power operations on several virtual machines at the same time by selecting virtual machines on the folder tab and pressing the power button on the toolbar. If all of the virtual machines in a folder are in the same power state, you can select the folder to perform a power operation on all of the virtual machines in the folder.
• You use a global Workstation preference to configure the delay between powering on virtual machines.
• To implement LAN segments, you can use traditional VMnets or put all of the virtual machines that you want to communicate on the same custom VMnet.

Shared Virtual Machines and AutoStart

You can share virtual machines with remote users in this version of Workstation. A shared virtual machine can be accessed remotely by other instances of Workstation. Workstation moves virtual machines to the shared virtual machines folder, where the VMware Host Agent service manages them. The VMware Host Agent service is used by other VMware products, including VMware Server and vSphere, and provides additional capabilities required by professional users. An extensive permissions interface lets you control the users who can access and use shared virtual machines.

You can use the new AutoStart feature to configure shared virtual machines to start with the host system. You can also configure AutoStart for shared virtual machines on remote hosts running Workstation and ESX 4.x and later.

Remote Connections

In this version of Workstation, you are no longer constrained to working only with virtual machines that your computer has enough power to run. You can use the new Connect to Server feature to connect to remote hosts running Workstation, ESX 4.x and later, and VMware vCenter Server. After connecting to a remote host, all of the virtual machines that you have permission to access are displayed in the virtual machine library.

Upload to ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server

VMware OVF Tool is now integrated with Workstation so that you can upload a virtual machine from Workstation to a remote server running ESX, ESXi, or vCenter Server. After connecting to a remote server, you drag the virtual machine from the local My Computer section of the virtual machine library to the remote server. A wizard walks you through the process.

Documentation Changes

This version of Workstation includes several important documentation changes.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0 enhances your ability to build, manage and execute reliable disaster recovery plans for your virtual environment. With the release of version 5.0, VMware has expanded the capabilities of Site Recovery Manager to provide unprecedented levels of protection. New use cases have been made possible through the addition of the following capabilities:

• vSphere Replication. When used in conjunction with VMware vSphere 5.0, Site Recovery Manager 5.0 introduces a new capability to utilize the vSphere 5.0 host to perform replication of powered-on virtual machines over the network to another vSphere 5.0 host, without the requirement for storage array-based replication. As virtual machines change with use, the changed blocks are replicated to a shadow copy of the virtual machine resident at the recovery site, in accordance with a Recovery Point Objective set as a property of the virtual machine itself.
• Planned Migration. A new workflow designed to deliver migration while minimizing the risk of data loss. Planned migration will stop the workflow from continuing if an error is encountered, providing an opportunity to fix the problem, ensuring that systems are properly quiescent and that all data changes have been completely replicated.
• Automated Re-Protection. Re-protection is a new extension to recovery plans for use only with array-based replication. Automated re-protect enables the environment at the recovery site to establish replication and protection of the environment back to the original protected site through a single click.
• Automated Failback. Automated failback returns the entire environment to the originally protected primary site. This can only happen after re-protection has ensured that data replication and synchronization have been established to the original primary site. Failback will run the same workflow that was used to migrate the environment to the protected site, ensuring that the critical systems encapsulated by the recovery plan are returned to their original environment. Automated failback, like re-protection, is only available for use with array-based replication protected virtual machines.
• Enhanced Dependency Definition. This includes the addition of more (5) priority groups, and the ability to set virtual machine dependencies within a priority group. Virtual machine dependencies can be defined to ensure that required systems are available before dependent virtual machines are powered on. This enables highly organized workflow control, ensuring that required services are available before dependent virtual machines are powered on.

This release of VMware Fusion adds the following new features.

• New Installation Experience
• New User Interface
• Designed for Lion
• Virtual Hardware Improvements
• Encrypted Virtual Machines
• Pause State for Virtual Machines
• Remote CD and DVD Drives
• Shrinking Disks with Snapshots
• Mirrored Folders
• OVF Support
• Other Technical Changes

New Installation Experience

VMware Fusion is now installed by dragging and dropping to the Applications folder. Users of older versions can upgrade using the included utility. VMware Fusion can be uninstalled by quitting the application and dragging it to the trash.

New User Interface

VMware Fusion includes a new user interface designed to maximize screen space dedicated to running virtual machines. By keeping the interface minimal, we have improved user productivity for Windows applications. It is now more consistent with the overall Mac desktop experience than previous versions of VMware Fusion.

The new user interface includes the following key features.

• The Single-window experience is optimized around each running virtual machine, keeping related options and settings together. A new collapsible toolbar provides quick access to common virtual machine actions including switching networks, connecting and disconnecting devices, and sharing options. The Control-Alt-Delete key combination is now available as a menu button.
• The Virtual Machine Library Welcome screen has been refreshed to make it easier to get up and running quickly.
• The Virtual Machine Library is updated with thumbnails of virtual machine desktops and shortcuts to common activities.
• The Settings have been redesigned to make it easier to perform common tasks. New settings subsections for Compatibility, Default Applications and Startup Disk are included.
• The Snapshot viewer provides powerful new features for working with snapshots using a timeline-based view, inspired by Time Machine.

Designed for Lion

VMware Fusion 4 is designed for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and includes support for using Mission Control to switch between Mac and Windows applications. Support for Spaces and Exposé has also been improved to make it easier to switch between applications.

Mac OS X Lion and Mac OS X Lion Server are now supported as guest operating systems. Mac OS X Lion can be installed by dragging the Lion installer icon to the virtual machine wizard.

Virtual Hardware Improvements

As always, VMware continues to improve our virtual hardware performance and capabilities. You must upgrade the hardware version of your existing VMs or create a new VM in order to get the best features and performance from your virtual machines. Upgrade the hardware version of your virtual machine from the new virtual machine settings page under Compatibility.

An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista and Windows 7 guests. The new HD Audio device takes advantage of the latest sound drivers provided with Windows and produces high sound quality even under heavy load.

Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. Bluetooth devices, such as a Bluetooth phone, are paired to either the host system or to a Windows virtual machine. VMware does not recommend pairing Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice to a guest.

Link-state propagation enables applications to seamlessly communicate when using NAT-based networking even when moving between networks. For example, communication between applications will continue seamlessly when you move from a wired network to a wireless network.

Our graphics team continues to improve rendering correctness and to tune our graphics drivers. VMware Fusion 4 is up to 2.5 times faster than VMware Fusion 3 for some 3D operations. Improved support for AutoCAD, SolidWorks and Altium Designer on Windows XP and Windows 7 is also included.

Encrypted Virtual Machines

Fusion now enables security best practices by providing virtual disk encryption using industry-standard AES-128. Encryption can require a per-virtual-machine password whenever the virtual machine is powered on.

Pause State for Virtual Machines

The new Pause state suspends the virtual machine while retaining the in-memory state. This state can be useful when system resources will temporarily be taxed and the guest virtual machine is not immediately needed.

Remote CD and DVD Drives

Remote CD and DVD drives shared from another Windows PC or Mac are supported for installing operating systems on virtual machines.

Shrinking Disks with Snapshots

VMware Fusion now supports shrinking virtual disks without the need to remove the snapshots first. Shrinking virtual disks without removing snapshots allows users to maintain their virtual machines and reclaim disk space more easily than in previous releases of VMware Fusion. Look for the new virtual machine clean up capability under the Generalsection of the virtual machine settings.

Mirrored Folders

Downloads and Movies folders are now mirrored from the Mac.

OVF Support

Support for creating OVF-format virtual machines is provided by the standalone OVF tool. This tool is available for download from: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/ovf?view=overview

Other Technical Changes

VMware Fusion 4 is now 64-bit throughout. In addition, services and kernel extensions are loaded and unloaded on-demand. The application can now be run from non-standard folder locations. The PC Migration Wizard has been updated to provide even faster migration.

VMware View 5.0 includes the following new features:

• PCoIP WAN performance optimization – Improves PCoIP protocol performance in low-bandwidth WAN environments. Users who connect to their desktops over an external WAN have enhanced desktop experience.
• Support for 3D graphics on vSphere 5.0 – This feature provides View desktops with vGPU graphics enablement available on vSphere 5.0 platforms. View users can take advantage of desktop graphics enhancements provided by AERO (such as peek, shake, and Flip 3D) and the 3D capabilities of Windows Office 2010 (such as picture editing, slide transitions and animations, presentation-to-video conversion, video embedding, editing, and 3D rotations).
• View Persona Management – The View Persona Management feature manages user profiles in a secure and centralized environment. (User profiles include user data and settings, application data and settings, and Windows registry settings configured by user applications.) View Persona Management allows IT organizations to simplify and automate the capture and management of a user’s persona while providing a rich user experience. View Persona Management offers the following benefits:
  • Provides a user profile that is independent of the virtual desktop. When a user logs in to any desktop, the same profile appears.
  • Lets you configure and manage personas entirely within View. You do not have to configure Windows roaming profiles.
  • Expands functionality and improves performance compared to Windows roaming profiles.
  • Minimizes login impact by downloading only the files that Windows requires, such as user registry files. Other files are copied to the local desktop when the user or an application opens them from the local profile folder.
  • Copies recent changes in the local profile to a remote profile repository at configurable intervals, typically once every few minutes.
• Updated client certificate checking for View clients – View clients now follow the well-known browser model for handling certificates, displaying errors detected in the certificate presented by View Connection Server, or in the certificate trust chain. Administrators can set the Certificate verification mode group policy to enforce strict certificate checking; if any certificate error occurs, the user cannot connect to View Connection Server. Alternatively, administrators can use the default Warn But Allow mode, which supports self-signed server certificates and lets users connect to View Connection Server with certificates that have expired or are not yet valid. If necessary, administrators can also set a No Security mode that lets users connect without certificate checking.
• Support for vSphere 5.0
• Support for hardware v8 – Remote View desktops can be hardware v8 virtual machines. Hardware v8 is not supported for desktops that run in local mode.
• Removed support for HP RGS display protocol
• Localization support for Korean. – View Client and the documentation, online help, and release notes are available in Korean.

Note: The version of View Client for Mac that was bundled with View 4.6 is also bundled with the View 5.0 release. This is the latest View Client for Mac and is compatible with View 4.6 and View 5.0.

• Fast Provisioning: Utilizing linked clones dramatically speeds up provisioning time and reduces storage costs.
• vApp Custom Properties: Allows developers and other users to easily pass user data into guest OSes using OVF descriptors.
• Blocking Tasks and Notifications: Programmatically connect vCloud Director to enterprise systems (e.g. CMDB) enabling end-to-end system automation.
• Expanded vCloud API: Additional commands added to the vCloud API namespace to include all GUI-accessible actions and enable broader integration and scripting using the API.
• Microsoft SQL Server Support: For new deployments of vCloud Director, Microsoft SQL is supported for the vCloud database in addition to the previously supported database servers.
• vShield Edge VPN integration: Programmatically create site-to-site IPSec-VPN tunnels to connect across clouds.