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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

I have been working to build a test VDI environment for windows 10 and been working with login times. I found this really nice blog series by Sven Huisman that can be found here . If you have been working windows 10 login times I recommend checking this out.

This week I had the opportunity to attend VMware SociaLab Indianapolis - vSAN 6.2 from A to Z with Paul Braren. You can find Paul at  https://tinkertry.com/ . This was my first opportunity to attend a VMware SociaLab and it was a great experience that i would highly recommend to anyone that can get the time to attend. To Find a SociaLab near you please visit VMware's SociaLab Site .

On February 7, 2017 VMware Announced VMware Horizon 7.1 with this update came a lot of great improvements to the Horizon View platform. Below i am going to cover the top items that have been new or improvments in this relese. Just-in-time Management Platform (JMP):  The following three VMware technologies is how we get to the Just-In-Time Management Platform. Instant Clones for ultra-fast desktop provisioning App Volumes for real-time app delivery User Environment Manager for contextual policy management. As I am sure you all know all three of the above technologies where part of the last release of Horizon. So what is so new? That is now not only virtual desktops but also published applications for both on premises and in the cloud can take advantage of JMP. To see this in action VMware has posted this quick video showing published applications with JMP Instant Clone update: As you may know or may not if you are running instant clones today you cant ...

This is one of the top issues I have seen when working with Horizon View. I think the hard thing with this is the fact that there is so many different things that can cause this issue. This also seems to be one of the hardest things for tier 1 staff to work with. I am going to try my best to provide a complete list of possible things that can cause this.  VMware Agents not being installed in the correct order. I am starting off with this one as it is one of the first things i check when i don't know the view environment i am working with. It is also a good thing to have in any VMware Horizon View health check. This is also a easy fix and can really help stabilize the Horizon View environment. VMware has a great KB 2118048 that includes all the details on what order agents must be installed in. Incorrect video driver version installed on the view virtual machine  This issue goes with the one listed above. If you install / upgrade the VMware Tools after view ...

VMware Horizon View 7 added a new security feature  that is enabled by default for RFC 6454 Origin Checking. This Security feature protects against cross-site request forging. What this feature does is when you go to the View Administrator page it will check the origin URL for the web request. When it does the check it will reject the request if the URL is not https://localhost/admin or https://URL_used_in_Secure_Tunnel_URL_Field/admin. Do keep in mind this feature was around in earlier versions but was disabled by default. The big impact I have seen from this is if you try go to Horizon view administrator web page in Google Chrome or Safari. When you use one of those browsers you will see a blank or incomplete site with text missing from buttons. Below is a example of what you will see. If you want the simple way out you can disable the feature by modifying the  locked.properties  file on each of your connection and security servers. If you do not want to ...

One thing that can really be a pain for your Horizon View users and support people is users that remove the VMXNET 3 network adapter. When a user does this they will be disconnected as the VM they they where using will not have a network card anymore. This is a configuration issue on your View Pool templates that can be fixed with not a lot of work. Keep in mind this fix is for View Pools that meet the following critria Must be a VM using the VMXNET 3 network adapter. Using linked Clones or Instant Clones for your  Horizon View Pools.  If you are using Full Clone desktop pools you will need to update the VM template as listed below but skip the snapshot steps. You will also need to update each full Clone VM that has already been created. For those of us that still love the old school C# vSphere Client follow the following steps to complete the fix. Start the vSphere Client and connect to your vCenter Server.  On your parent VM used for your Hori...

The Horizon View Portal Page is the main page when you go to your Horizon View Connection Server or VIP web address on your web browser. HTTPS:\\Connection Server or VIP There are a few reasons why you might want to make changes to the Horizon View Portal page. You can make the following changes to the Horizon View Portal Page: Hide the HTML Access Icon Hide the View Client Icon Set a custom URL for downloading the Horizon Client Set custom links to a specific Horizon Client Version. To Customize the portal page do the following: Log into one of your Horizon View Connection Servers and go to C:\ProgramData\VMware\VDM\portal\ and open Portal-links-html-access.properties in a text editor.  Set the configuration properties based on your desired configuration.  Options you can configure: Options Property Settings Disable HTML Access Enable.webclient=false If this option is set to false but the enable.download option i...

High DPI screens: One case I have ran into is using a Surface Pro 4 or any device that has a high DPI monitor for that fact to connect to a Horizon View Desktop. You will find that all the icons and text are so small it is almost not possible to read. I have found 2 solutions to fix this issue Option 1: Use the display scaling option in VMware Horizon View Client Requirement: VMware Blast Extreme or PCoIP display protocol After you connect to the Virtual desktop you can select  options from the top menu then select display scaling menu item. or you can select Enable display scaling check box in the settings window for the remote application or desktop. Option 2: Editing Registry on the client system. Requirement: VMware Horizon View Client 3.4 and higher Add the following registry key: KEY: HKCU\SOFTWARE\VMware, inc.\VMware VDM\Client Value DWORD: EnableSessionDPIScaling = 1 A value of 1 = on A value of 0 = off Allowing users to adjust display size wi...