Following on from creating an RDS Farm within Horizon View Administrator and an Application Pool based on applications hosted an RDS session host, we are going to create an RDS desktop pool.

 

That's right, you can now have a desktop which is a shared/hosted desktop on an RDS session host (much like Citrix XenApp).

In some use cases a group of staff may not require a full virtual desktop to perform their job. In which case giving them access to a desktop hosted on a shared RDS host would be a more economical solution.

But the access to this shared desktop could be published via the same method access their virtual desktops and using the same PCoIP protocol, which is quite exciting for me and another design option available for those solutions where a group of users just use IE, email, file and print and have a low resource utilisation. 

 

One of the most prominent new features of VMware Horizon View 6, is the ability to utilise Windows Server RDS Hosts to provide server based applications and desktops to users.

This is quite possibly the most desirable feature of recent releases. As a consultant covering both VMware and Citrix solutions, this levels the playing field somewhat in terms of publishing applications (but not entirely) between the two vendors. If anything this will make it more interesting in the next couple of releases as VMware advance this functionality.

So what is all the fuss about? After all you could have created an RDS host with RemoteApp previously and given View users access to these.

The VMware EUC development team has developed a way in which PCoIP can be used as a protocol on RDS hosts, much like Citrix use the ICA protocol. This has required VMware to work very closely with Microsoft to achieve this.

The result is that it's now possible to present applications on an RDS host (or a Collection of RDS Hosts) via VMware Horizon View Administrator. Managing entitlements in the same place and offering these RDS based applications (and desktops) via the same Horizon View Client. All the while using these applications via the same PCoIP protocol as View virtual desktops which should improve the users experience compared to using the standard RDP (RemoteFX protocol).

 

DirectAccess is a feature of the Remote Access role in Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2, however it has actually been around since 2008 R2.

The client component of DirectAccess is actually built into Windows 8.x and does not require any additional roles or software installing.

 

DirectAccess is a remote access solution which can replace traditional VPN (either MS based or otherwise).

Instead of the client having to initiate a VPN connection to the office/datacentre after they logon, DirectAccess automatically connects computers and users to their corporate network if they are connected to the internet. 

 

VMadmin.co.uk is a personal blog with a primary focus on virtualisation within IT, but also covers other related infrastructure technologies. 

I've been running VMadmin.co.uk since 2008, when it initially it begun life as a wiki containing my personal configuration tips and notes, which I could access as I travelled. These were not publically available, however I soon decided to open them up to the world and the interest from the audience inspired me to continually add more posts.

At the time of writing this in 2014, (some 6 years on) there are currently 325 posts ranging from how to series guiding through the installation of vSphere, to best practice tips and advice on resolving issues I've personally come across out in the field.

 

Automated desktop pools contain desktops which are provisioned by vCenter server from a master image.
 
A virtual machine created in vCenter (with a snapshot) is used to create several unique copies of the same desktop.
 
When using View Composer, linked clones are created instead of full clones. Linked clones use a parent disk (aka replica), then View Composer creates what is known as a "diff disk" which contains the differences from the replica. All changes are written to the VMs individual diff disk.
 
 
Here we are going to create an Floating assignment Automated Desktop Pool using View Composer and the Windows 8.1 master image we created previously.

 

 

To provision and present a Windows 8.1 (or Windows 8/7) virtual desktop via VMware View, there are a couple of VMware components that need to be installed on the master image and a number of steps performed.

In this part I will guide you through the steps to build a Windows 8.1 master image which will used to provision a desktop pool with View Composer linked clones.

 

Summary of Steps:

  • Create Virtual Machine
  • Install Operating System
  • Configure Operating System
  • Install VMware Tools
  • Install View Agent
  • Shutdown VM
  • Snapshot VM 

 

 

So far in this Horizon View 6.0 how to series, we have installed a single View Connection Server and installed View Composer on the vCenter server.

 

We are now going to proceed configuring the service accounts for View to connect to vCenter and join desktops to the domain followed by the events database. Additionally we need to create an OU and delegate permissions on this OU.

 

 

VMware View Composer is a component of VMware Horizon View (all editions).

Horizon View Composer offers features such as storage reduction, improved OS management and rapid desktop deployment.

 

VMware Horizon View Composer uses linked clones to provide a 50% to 90% reduction in storage requirements for virtual desktops. If View Composer is not used, 100's or 1,000's of desktops 25GB+ in size would exhaust expensive SAN storage.

Horizon View Composer does this by using creating linked clones from a parent disk, instead of full clones. This creates what is known as a "diff disk" of the differences between the parent disk and itself once the virtual desktop is powered on. Without the parent disk the linked clones will not work. 

The different could be instead of each desktop requiring 25GB+ of space each, the linked clone may only be around 5GB in size. This varies depending on the amount of changes in the desktop during the day, memory/pagefile size and also if the virtual desktop is refresh or deleted after each logoff.

 

 

Firstly, what is VMware Horizon? It's a collection of products which covers both virtual desktops, physical desktops, RDS hosts and virtual applications.

There are 3 editions of VMware Horizon;

Standard, Advanced and Enterprise (Feature comparison: http://www.vmware.com/products/horizon-view/compare.html)

 

Horizon View Standard simply provides virtual desktops via View like it always used to. However it also includes View Composer, licensing for vSphere/vCenter Desktop and ThinApp (like was the case with the old View Premier edition).

The Advanced and Enterprise editions add features such as RDS hosted applications, VSAN and vCOps monitoring amongst other features such as physical desktop image management (aka Mirage).

  

 

When trying to remove a vCenter Server from VMware Horizon View Administrator, all pools and desktops managed via that vCenter server must be deleted first.

 

If they are not, you will get the following warning message and the vCenter server will not be removed:

"The pools and transfer servers associated with this vCenter must be deleted before this vCenter can be removed"

 

 

 

 

Updating the firmware on a Juniper SSG or Netscreen firewall is simple. Here I am going to update a Juniper SSG5 from 6.1.0r2.0 to 6.3.0r16a via the Web UI.

 

Note: This requires a reboot of the firewall device and must be carried out during a maintenance window.

 

1. First you will need go to www.juniper.net and login with a CSC account which is what entitles you to download updates for your specific device.

If you haven't got an account you can register and provide your serial number.

 

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