Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Desktop

Blogging about View

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I had discussion with Richard Garsthagen during the Dutch VMUG about View/VDI related blogs, or better said the lack of. It appears that desktop is a topic bloggers are avoiding. The weird thing about it is that in the industry View is picking up more and more.

Yes there are a couple of bloggers out there who are focussing onView like my colleague Christoph Dommermuth but compared to the “core” product their share is tiny. For me personally there’s a simple reason you don’t see me blogging about View, it’s not part of my focus area.

Something I overlooked during the discussion are the two excellent whitepapers/articles Herco van Brugh wrote. The first one is a brand new whitepaper and discusses how to correctly scale your storage based on a couple simple formulas.

  1. Download whitepaper here. (NEW!)
    Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI, is hot. It’s cool, secure, centrally managed, flexible – it’s an IT manager’s dream.
    However, as it turns out, there is a hidden danger to VDI. There’s a killer named “IOPS”.
  2. Creating a VDI template
    This guide is based on Windows XP because of its low resources usage compared to Vista and even Windows 7. The general idea however also applies to those versions although specific services and registry keys will most likely not work. Skipping Vista, the next version of this guide will focus on Windows 7.

Another thing I overlooked when I was doing a little research were the Reference Architectures EMC did. There’s some good info to be found in these. So it seems that there is info out there, I guess the “problem” is that there are only 1 or 2 bloggers who are solely focusing on View. So if you are a VDI/View Consultant now it is time to speak up. Step into the world of blogging and let your voice be heard!

Cool Tool: vAudit

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For some weird reason I never picked up on this tool. Months ago Richard Garsthagen released a beta version of vAudit and recently it was updated to version 1.5.

Why would you use vAudit? vAudit has been developed to show you when your VDI Users are logging in and for how long they are using the virtual desktop. I think it is the ideal auditing tool during a Proof of Concept. Are your users actually using it as much as they are saying? When are they using it and for how long?

vAudit has an export to CSV feature which enables you to analyze trends regarding usage. Below you can find the release notes and a link to the download section of Richard’s site.

Download Version 1.5

  • vAudit now also checks for login failures, so you can detect if people are trying to hack into your system.
  • You can now resize the username column, so you can actually read the username if you have long domain names.
  • When you MouseOver a session, it will display the machine name and time information.

In the next release, I will try to add information about your top users, make an export function and at some point will give your a graph with daily concurrent usage.

VMware View is available!

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VMware View has just officially been released. (VMware View Manager 4.0 | 11/20/09 | Build 210939) Key features are:

  • 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.

Creating a VDI template

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Herco van Brug wrote a great article on how to build a solid VDI/View Windows XP Template. Herco recently designed and implemented a large View environment and this article is the outcome. I only quoted the first paragraph as the article is subject to change. Please visit the source article for the full details, it is worth reading!

A basic Windows XP machine can do a lot of things. Apart from facilitating an environment for a user’s applications, it can do things like self maintenance, updates, hardware changes, etc. This is nice in a physical environment with lots of different pieces of hardware but in a virtual instance things hardly change, the environment is pretty much set and all tricks to speed things up usually have an adverse effect on the infrastructure. All these virtual instances need to share the often rather limited amount of resources.

To keep things in check, there’s a lot of things that can be done to optimize an XP image for a virtual desktop. This guide is created from several documents that are already out there but also from our own experience and experience from a couple of other VDI specialists.

This guide is based on Windows XP because of its low resources usage compared to Vista and even Windows 7. The general idea however also applies to those versions although specific services and registry keys will most likely not work. Skipping Vista, the next version of this guide will focus on Windows 7.

80MB of awesomeness, VMware Player 3

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While everyone is talking about the new versions of VMware Fusion (Release Notes) and VMware Workstation (Release Notes) I would like to show my appreciation for VMware Player.

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.