Troy's IT Blog

Today I am going to talk about the design decision on how to manager your user profiles on VDIs. This topic has been evolving over the years as technology has made new solutions possible. The important thing to point out is out of all the solutions none of them are bad. It just depends on the use case you are working with as to what is the best fit. Below you will find 6 profile solutions and details about when to use each. Don't Use Any Solution - With this solution you chose to not do anything with the profiles. This means if you are running a non-persistent VDI when the VDI is refreshed all user data will be deleted. This has no real impact in a full persistent VDI environment. Recommended use case: Full Persistent VDI or Non-persistent VDI where you do not care if you do not retain user data. Horizon Persistent Disks - With this solution you redirect the user profile to a 2nd hard drive on the VDI. This allows you to be able to refresh the C drive of the VD...

With the recent release of VMware Horizon 7.5 a new feature was added to the product. This Feature is called JMP Integrated Workflow. JMP is a marketing term used by VMware to mean Just-in-Time Management Platform and really this is just a combination of 3 products inside of VMware Horizon Enterprise. The 3 products are Instant Clones, App Volumes, and User Environment Manager. With the introduction of the workflow in Horizon 7.5 it adds a new HTML5 console for user centric management. This is VMware's solution to bringing all the solutions under a single console to define what the users workspace will be and automate the creation of that workspace. Recently VMware created a Quick Start Guide for using this new console if you are using the 3 products i listed above or are looking into using them i would highly recommend giving this guide a look over.

As the title states you are wanting to run the new Windows 10 build 1709 in your VMware Horizon environment but are still running View 6.x. I got some good news for you VMware Horizon View 6.2.6 released on March 29th now supports 1709. I would like to point out if you can start looking to move to Horizon View 7.x as 6.x is end of general support on 06/19/2019. You can find find more information in the release notes listed here and you can download View 6.2.6 here .

VMware Release Notes Release Notes What's New? The latest release of App Volumes includes many enhancements that improve end user login times, security, Microsoft Office support, and Windows 10 support. Performance improvements for faster user login and application launch Optimized handling of application registry hives by not blocking end-user login. Addressed a bug that caused the App Volumes agent to scan Appstacks and Writable Volumes before the Windows explorer shell is available. Integration with Active Directory You can manage application and writable volumes assignments across multiple Active Directory domains and forests. You can add multiple domain controllers that App Volumes Manager leverages to query Active Directory users, computers, groups, and OUs. You can move and retain application and writable volumes assignments even when Active Directory objects are moved out of an OU or Group. Security Enhancements By default, communication between App ...

Today i am going to talk about how to setup the VMware Horizon View GPO templates. Using the VMware Horizon View GPO templates you can add value to your overall Horizon View Solution.  Prerequisites: Create GPOs for the different Horizon 7 components and link them to the OU that contains each Horizon 7 components. Ensure you have a user account that has rights to modify GPOs. Ensure you have the Group Policy Management snap-in MMC installed.  Download the Horizon 7 GPO bundle from VMware download site here . This will be found under the VMware Horizon download. Setup: unzip the GPO bundle you downloaded above it should have a name like VMware-Horizon-Extras-Bundle-x.x.x-yyyyyyy.zip This next step you have two options Option 1: Copy the ADMX and ADML files from the GPO bundle to the GPO central store. I am not going to go into details on how to configure a GPO central store as that is out of scope for this blog post. Option 2: Copy the ADMX and ADML files...

When setting up the Unified Access Gateway (UAG) for the first time you might run into network issues or trying to prove to your network team that a port is not open. The options you have when doing this troubleshooting include 5 tools (Ping, nslookup, tracepath, curl, and tcpdump) from the UAG console interface. Another tool that might help is wireshark to run on your connection servers or VDI desktops. Using nslookup to check DNS: First make sure that DNS is working by using nslookup command from the UAG console. This should be tested on the following items. Connection Server FQDN Load Balanced VIP for Internal Connection servers Should also check that your External URL can be resolved on public DNS. Using Ping to troubleshoot UAG network issues: Next check basic network connectivity with ping by running the ping command from the UAG console. This should be tested for the following items. Ping each internal connection server Ping the load balanced VIP for Internal ...

VMware just made Horizon View and  Skype for Business solution a more complete feeling with the latest release of Horizon View 7.4 release. This is done with the Horizon Virtualization Pack for Skype for Business. The reason why I like this solution so much is the fact that it can enable Horizon View users both on the desktop and RDSH the ability to leverage features that would with out the Virtualization pack have a high resource impact.It does this by optimally delivering audio and video either directly between end-points for one-on-one collaboration, or offloaded to a central Multi-point Control Unit (MCU) for multi-party conference calls or meetings. So what is new with Horizon 7.4 that list can be found below but i think the support for Mac clients is a really big one as this now gets the solution to have support on Windows, Mac, and Linux clients. This allows more users to be able to have device choice and not lose out on this great feature. Support for Horizon...

This is going to focus on setting up Horizon View 7.x to run TLS 1.2 only including Blast Secure Gateway (BSG) and PCoIP protocol. I would recommend trying to implement this in your Horizon View environment if you can support the higher security requirements. Prerequisites: 1) Create backups of your servers using your desired backup tool. 2) Backup your locked.properties file on each of your Servers. This can be found in install_directory\VMware\VMware View\Server\sslgateway\conf\ 3) Take a backup of the View ADAM DB (KB for Backup Process Click Here ) 4) Check TLS 1.2 compliance for all your client types and versions. I can not stress this one more if you make the changes and one of your client types will not support TLS 1.2 those users will not be able to connect to your Horizon View Environment. 5) (Optional) Test all the changes in your devlopment Horizon View Environment before making the changes in production. Configuring Security Protocols and Cipher Suites on View Con...

If you have a Horizon View environment were you need assign a large number of users or have a high turn over rate in some of your pools you will not want to use the GUI to do this task. As we all know using the GUI takes a very long time to do this task. Requirements needed to run this script: Horizon View Environment must be running version 7.0.2 or newer PowerCLI Advanced Functions (Hv.Helper) Module - ( Download ) Text file with user names to be added to the pool Below is the script to do this task. 1: # ========================================================================================================= 2: # 3: # NAME: HorizonView_New_Entitlement.ps1 4: # 5: # AUTHOR: Troy Peters 6: # 7: # This will set a new user entitlement for a desktop pool 8: # 9: # 10: # ========================================================================================================= 11: # ======================== Import Modules ======================== ...

If anyone has been working with Horizon View for a long time you will remember that prior to Horizon View version 7.0.2 you had to run powershell commands for Horizon View on the local connection server or use powershell remoting. Now with Horizon 7.0.2 and newer you can run powershell commands using PowerCLI from a remote system. In this blog I will go over the requirements needed, how to get started, examples, and some resources that you can use to expand what is covered here. What is PowerCLI: PowerCLI is a powerful command-line tool based on Windows PowerShell that lets you automate all aspects of vSphere vSAN, SRM, VROPS, vCloud, and Horizon View. within PowerCLI is 100's of cmdlets to be used to create the automation. VMware PowerCLI - Horizon Module allows for integrated powershell support for Horizon View and is shipped as a module with the PowerCLI product. This allows access to the full Horizon View public API and supports remote connections from workstations or serv...

This Post will cover Objective 3.1 of the VCAP-DTM Deployment Exam Tools and References for Objective 3.1 Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View View Administration View Administrator Skills and Abilities: Determine appropriate pool configurations based on a deployment plan When using Horizon View you can create the following pool types: Desktop Pools - there are 3 types of devices that can be used to make up a desktop pool virtual machine based desktops, Session-based desktops, and Physical Computers. 3 types of desktop pools: Automated: Use a vCenter server VM template or a snapshot to create a group of identical VMs. Dedicated-Assignment Pools:  Each user is assigned a particular remote desktop and returns to the same desktop at each login. Users can personalize their desktops, install applications, and store data. Stateful Desktop Images:  Users who need a stateful desktop image have data in the operating system image itself that must be p...

Over the years of working with Horizon View the question I have been asked is how or what should our help desk staff do to support a Horizon View Environment. To answer this question a few things need to be answered. Will you give users access to View Administrator and if so what permissions? Will you give users access to vCenter and if so what permissions? Will you give users access to VMware VROPS or 3rd party monitoring tool (Liquidware Stratusphere)? After you answer the above question you can then start to plan how you will integrate your current help desk staff to support a Horizon View Environment. The good news is you might not need to do all this now as of yesterday on 6/20/17 VMware released VMware Horizon 7.2 code. In this release VMware has included an official help desk tool into the Horizon view product.  This new tool is a new simple interface that is great for help desk staff. It offers a great deal of features that your help desk staff will need to ...

This Post will cover Objective 2.3 of the VCAP-DTM Deployment Exam Tools and References for Objective 2.3 vSphere 6.0 Resource Management Guide vSphere 6.0 Availability Guide vSphere Client / Web Client Skills and Abilities: Create vSphere Resource Pools according to a deployment plan In the vSphere Web Client navigator, select a parent object for the resource pool (a host, another resource pool, or a DRS cluster). Right-click the object and select New Resource Pool. Type a name to identify the resource pool. Specify how to allocate CPU and memory resources. The CPU resources for your resource pool are the guaranteed physical resources the host reserves for a resource pool. Normally, you accept the default and let the host handle resource allocation. Shares - Specify shares for this resource pool with respect to the parent’s total resources. Sibling resource pools share resources according to their relative share values bounded by the reservation and limit. Reserva...

This Post will cover Objective 2.2 of the VCAP-DTM Deployment Exam Tools and References for Objective 2.2 Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View Optimization Guide for Desktops and Servers in View in VMware Horizon 6 and VMware Horizon Air Desktops and VMware Horizon Air Apps Image Management for View Desktops using Mirage VMware Mirage Administrator's Guide VMware OS Optimization Tool Skills and Abilities: Configure/Manage Horizon View desktop images Your VDI Pools will use the same hardware specs as the master image vCPU Memory Hard disk - should be set to Tin Provisioned should use a LSI Logic SAS storage controller Network adapter should be the VMXNET 3 Remove the Floppy drive as it is not needed If you have serial ports make sure to remove them as well as they are not needed. Items to install in master image VMware tools always make sure tools is installed before View Agent this includes if you update tools you have to make sure to reinst...

This Post will cover Objective 2.1 of the VCAP-DTM Deployment Exam Tools and References for Objective 2.1 View Administration Group Policy Editor ADM/ADMX templates Skills and Abilities: Configure View Persona Management settings A remote file repository must be configured to store user profiles when using Persona Management VMware documentation link for access permissions required for file repository  click here To be able to use persona management you must select the option when installing the View Agent. From the parent VM run the view agent installer in the options for features to install select Horizon View Persona Management You must add the View persona Management GPO template to your GPO that will be applied to VDIs Template File: ViewPM.adm VMware documentation link for settings  click here Settings that must be configured for Persona Management to work: Manage User Persona Persona repository location Configure PCoIP settings ...