When you select the option to encrypt the drive, BitLocker then encrypts the whole disk (rather than just the files). At our customer however, when doing this over VMware View 4.5 USB redirection in an RDP session, the user was rewarded with “Access Denied” instead.

With PCoIP, it worked fine. It also works fine on RDP if you are an administrator. We quickly established that what looked at first like a USB redirection issue was in fact environment specific. We were able to encrypt the drive without issue in our test lab over both PCoIP and RDP. A day or so of fun inside Process Monitor and the (non-obvious) answer was found:

Set a DWORD called
HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\RemovableStorageDevices\AllowRemoteDASD
with the value
1

Fortunately there’s a corresponding GPO setting for this: Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Removable Storage Access > All Removable Storage and set Allow direct access in remote sessions to Enabled.

Click for full size version showing the path

We set that, rebooted and BitLocker then worked fine. PCoIP seems to be unaffected by this issue, likely because it’s not a remote session/separate session in the same way an RDP session is.

Credit for the hard work goes to my colleague Reno Finch. Well done, Reno.

Ian Gibbs

Ian works for Virtual Clarity who consult on enterprise scale virtualisation.

VMware Desktop Technical Marketing & TS Research Labs are jointly announcing the availability of VMware Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator (RAWC) version 1.1.    With RAWC 1.1, Solution Providers can better anticipate and plan for infrastructure requirements to support successful VMware View deployments for Windows 7 Migration.

RAWC 1.1 now simulates user workloads in Windows 7 environments and can be used to validate VMware View designs to support Windows 7 Migrations.  RAWC 1.1 supports the following desktop applications in Windows 7 and Windows XP environments: Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Java code compilation simulator, Adobe Acrobat, McAfee Virus Scan, and 7-Zip.

RAWC 1.1 also includes bug fixes and several enhancements in test run configurations, usability and user interface.  Please see RAWC 1.1 product documents for more details.

VMware partners can download RAWC 1.1 software and the product documents from VMware Partner Central:Sales Tools > Services IP.

We started by testing a job typical of the users; a PDF consisting of scanned black and white pages. He we measured the data passed on the network for each of ThinPrint’s compression settings.

Pretty decent, we thought, for a test document that is all A4 images. Now to try a pilot.

One all VDI office has 63 users. All of them use Wyse terminals, so using the ThinPrint compression built in to VMware View is not an option. We wanted to test whether or not ThinPrint was worth buying. Of the 63, 40 use only ThinPrint printers. For them, their print jobs go from VM to the .print Engine for VMware View in the datacentre, to the Windows print server in the office. The others print direct from their VDI desktop hosted in the datacenter to the Windows print server in the office.

There are four printers, three HP A4 monochrome lasers and one Xerox A3 colour printer (with the colour drums removed…). Each printer is accessible via ThinPrint and directly. ThinPrint is set to ‘Optimum’ compression.

I dragged out the stats on the amount of print data transferred for each of six consecutive business days:

Not that interesting in and of itself, unless you know how many jobs were sent by each method, but it gave me an idea of the degree of variability. So then I chose to look into day 6 a bit further.

So over that day over a whole range of print jobs, the average ThinPrint job was 21% of the size of the normal job. Pretty good – and much better than the 90% we experienced with the single test document. This shows if you want to test its performance, use a real world selection of documents.

The real question is, if I switch all the office to ThinPrint, or abandon it altogether, what is my predicted print data for a day?

Hmmm. The amount of data transferred over the line would be equivalent to a constant background rate of 125Kbps. I know my print traffic is peaky, but QoS settings on the link will smooth that out. That’s just 6% of a 2Mbps line for 60 people. Hardly a killer. In fact, since we can only get 30 RDP sessions on a 4Mbps line, I will need 8Mbps of capacity for my 60 users, making the print traffic just 3% of my line.

What about the other features of .print Engine for VMware View? We pretty quickly had to abandon driver-free printing to get features such as double-sided printing and A3 to work, and none of the other features have been of any practical use to me. You might find the ability to limit the print traffic to a certain rate useful if you don’t have that level of control over your line.

At €23 per user, and my SDSL line at €200 per month, it would take me 19 years to recoup my investment in ThinPrint. I think I’ll pass, thanks…

Ian

• VMware View with PCoIP – PCoIP provides an optimized desktop experience for the delivery of the entire desktop environment including applications, images, audio, and video content for a wide range of users on the LAN or across the WAN. PCoIP can compensate for an increase in latency or a reduction in bandwidth, to ensure that end users can remain productive regardless of network conditions.
• PCoIP includes VMware View Display with support for up to four monitors and the ability to deliver the optimal resolution and pivot orientation to each monitor independently.
• VMware vSphere Support – VMware vSphere 4 support enables improved virtual machine scalability, performance, and management, with continued support for VMware Infrastructure 3.x.
• Enhanced single sign-on – The Log in as current user feature is integrated with Active Directory and smart cards to help simplify the process of logging in to a VMware View desktop.
• Restricted entitlements – Administrators can control user access to virtual desktops based on the View Connection Server being used for authentication.
• Smart card policies – Administrators can set group policies to force desktop disconnection and require reconnection when users remove smart cards.
• Domain filtering – You can use vdmadmin.exe to control the accessibility of domains and traverse trust relationships more quickly.

The full release notes can be found here.

VMware Player is one of the most under-appreciated VMware products in my opinion. Especially now that VMware has released version 3 I expect to see and hear more of VMware Player. Why? Well because it is FREE, and it basically is a slimmed down version of VMware Workstation. With version 3.0 you are not only limited to using pre-build VMs. No, with version 3.0 you can create VMs! Again, it’s free… it’s 80MB of awesomeness.

Release Notes |  Download Link

Here a couple of new features I think are worth knowing about:

• Virtual Machine with Easy Install — Create a virtual machine and install any supported guest operating system with Easy Install.
• New User Interface — Use the new user interface to create virtual machines and edit virtual machine settings.
• Windows 7 — Create and run Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines using VMware Workstation. VMware Workstation has been enhanced for performance and to take advantage of the new Windows 7 features including Live Thumbnails and Aero Peek.
• Aero Glass — A new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) graphics driver has been developed for Windows Vista and Windows 7 virtual machines. The WDDM driver can display the Windows Aero user interface, OpenGL 1.4, and Shader Model 3.0.
• 3D Graphics Improvements for Windows XP guests — OpenGL 2.1 and Shader Model 3.0 support is now available for Windows XP virtual machines. The XPDM (SVGAII) graphics driver works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. However, only Windows XP virtual machines install the XPDM graphics driver by default. To switch graphics drivers in the guest operating system, see How to Switch Between SVGAII and WDDM Drivers.
• Multiple-Monitor Display — Virtual machines can now take advantage of multiple monitors.
• Virtual Printing — Print from virtual machines without mapping network printers or installing printer drivers in the virtual machine. With virtual printing enabled in the virtual machine setting, all of the printers installed on the host operating system are available in the guest operating system. This functionality is enabled through a partnership with ThinPrint, Inc.

VMware View Open Client is available under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPL v 2.1) and is accessible from http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/. Some of the features included in this release support secure tunneling using SSL, two factor authentication with RSA SecurID, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client Add-On RPM package and a full command line interface. Support for the source code distribution is available through the VMware View Open Client community at: http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/.

I’ve just downloaded the PRM and installed it on OpenSuse 11.1 without a problem:

Now I would need to request a virtual desktop so I can actually use the client.