Hyper Info

VMware Horizon 7 v 7.6 Technical What's New Overview

2018-09-10T08:32:00.001+02:00

VMware End-User Computing (EUC) solutions empower the digital workspace by simplifying app & access management, unifying endpoint management & transforming Windows delivery. To learn more visit Digital Workspace Tech Zone at https://techzone.vmware.com

Introducing Frame to the Nutanix Family

2018-08-03T16:27:00.002+02:00

Nutanix is thrilled to welcome Frame and its employees to the company. Hear from Sunil Potti (Chief Product and Development Officer, Nutanix); Greg Smith (Vice President, Product Marketing, Nutanix) and Rajiv Mirani (CTO, Cloud Platforms, Nutanix) about what makes Frame and Nutanix a perfect match and how Nutanix plans to incorporate Frame into the Nutanix product suite to further its commitment to customer choice and flexibility.

Nutanix Beam Demo's

2018-08-02T13:42:00.000+02:00

Cost Visibility and Optimization

Nutanix Beam provides businesses with deep visibility into their multi-cloud environment and ability to optimize cloud spend with one-click. Beam identifies underutilized and unused cloud services and provides convenient single click remediation suggestions, empowering cloud operators to realize cost savings immediately.

Intelligent Consumption Planning

Nutanix Beam uses machine intelligence and recommendation algorithms to analyze workload patterns and continuously suggest optimal purchasing decisions. Beam simplifies the planning process for purchasing cloud resources to drive higher cost savings.

Central Financial Governance

Nutanix Beam provides cloud operators and business owners with appropriate tools and controls to track overall cloud spend and map consumption to business units easily. Beam provides policy-based reporting and chargeback, so that teams can ensure consumption is within budget and aligns with business objectives.

Security Compliance Checks

Beam automates cloud health checks so you can easily monitor and ensure security compliance. You can gain insights into your multi-cloud environment based on 250+ health checks and security best practices to ensure continuous cloud security compliance.

LSI Logic SAS vs VMware Paravirtual SCSI disk

2015-02-27T12:49:00.001+01:00

Within virtual machines, there are different SCSI controllers available for writing the data to the actual disk. For the different operating systems, there are best practices which gives the best performance. Windows XP uses the BusLogic Parallel SCSI driver and the results are acceptable. With Windows 7 the commonly used controller is the LSI Logic SAS controller. Which is selected automatically when creating a virtual machine of this type.

Different vendors have different best practices, some of them advice to use the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller. The VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller needs to be selected manually and needs some additional actions before it can be used. Creating a small additional disk with VMware

Paravirtual SCSI controller connected will force the OS the use and installation of the correct driver. The additional drive can be removed after installation and the initial drive must be connected to the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller.

The question is which of these controllers gives the highest performance. For that I have started some tests with IOmeter in a virtual Windows 7 machine. The first test was with the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller and using an additional disk beside the system disk. The results of the test is show below:

The second test was performed with the LSI Logic SAS controller and was using the additional diks.
This configuration could not give the same performance as the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller, the results of this test are placed below

The other test we did was with the system disk instead of the additional disk. The same results are showed as the previous tests. The use of the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller performs a little better then the LSI Logic SAS SCSI controller.

The results of above are within the virtual machine, with Xangati i was able to measure from the outside. The following picture will show the light better performance of the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller, where the first and last test includes the VMware Paravirtual SCSI driver:

For now, the conclusion can be drawn that the use of the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller lead them a slight performance gain in these test.

VMware Remote Console 7.0 Released

2015-02-27T12:42:00.000+01:00

VMware Remote Console (VMRC) is a standalone Windows application that provides console access and client device connection to virtual machines on a remote host. You need to download this installer before you can launch the external application directly from a vSphere Web Client.
In the VMware Remote Console Windows application, you will have access to:

Mouse and keyboard functionality in the VM
Send Ctrl + Alt + Delete
Full screen mode
VM power operations
Client-side device connection such as CD-ROM, USB, and Floppy (requires administrator access)

Internationalization

VMware Remote Console 7.0 is available in the following languages:

English
French
German
Japanese
Korean
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Russian
Italian
Spanish
Portugal
Nederlands

Download at source

Atlantis USX 2.2 Released

2015-02-27T12:39:00.000+01:00

Atlantis USX is a software solution that accelerates performance and consolidates storage, increasing effective storage capacity to support running server workloads such as business-critical applications. USX builds on proven Atlantis compression, caching, deduplication, and tiering capabilities to provide a dramatically reduced storage footprint and improved performance, including built-in high availability. USX satisfies the storage requirements demanded by server workloads, removing the constraints of traditional storage.
With the new release the following new features came available.

XenServer – USX now supports Citrix XenServer. XenServer can use any of the USX volume types. USX configuration, deployment, and management is the same for all platforms.
New volume types:
- The Hyper-Converged volume type supports server or VDI workloads and consumes only
  local resources. Hyper-Converged volumes are associated with an Infrastructure volume that
  provides shared storage so that the Hyper-Converged volume can migrate before entering
  maintenance mode even though the Hyper-Converged volume uses only local resources.
- The Simple All Flash volume type supports persistent VDI deployments and enables you to
  use flash for both performance and capacity.
Maintenance mode – A host can be placed into maintenance mode from the new Hypervisors Management screen in the USX GUI.
Volume power operations and reboots can be performed from the Manage Volumes screen.
LDAP authentication – Use the new LDAP Authentication screen to bind to an LDAP server so that members of a specified LDAP group can log into USX.
Tree hierarchies are implemented for the display of datacenters, clusters, and hypervisors.
SNMP configuration – A new document, Atlantis USX SNMP Configuration, provides a listing of the USX MIB and information about configuring USX to communicate with an SNMP trap host.

Atlantis USX 2.2 is now available in the download portal

Multiple Sessions in VMware Horizon View

2014-04-16T16:44:00.001+02:00

When connecting to a floating pool using the View client, a user ended up receiving a new session despite having an existing session on another VM.

Analysis showed two desktop launch requests that came in from the same client connection in quick succession, spaced two seconds apart. Client log files imply the most likely scenario is that the user requested the desktop, immediately hit cancel on the wait dialog after the request was dispatched, and then launched it a second time. The View Connection Server correctly identified an existing disconnected session for the user while processing the first request at 13:18:57 for example, and provided the client with details to reconnect. The client dropped the Connection Server's response and sent a second request at 13:18:59. This in turn was routed to the same VM, but the request was rejected as the first connection was still being set up by the View Agent. At this point the Connection Server then fell back to providing the user with a new session as the original was unavailable.

Solution:
View 5.1.1 and onwards contains a hidden configuration option that will inform the Connection Server to not fall back and allocate a new session if it knows the user already has one, even if reconnecting to the session failed. In the specific case analyzed, if this was toggled the user would have received a connection error on the second launch request with the option to retry. Retrying a few seconds later would have succeeded.

VMware recommends that the option to disable the default fallback behaviour is enabled. Instructions for this are below:

Ensure connection servers are running 5.1.1 or later
Follow the steps to connect to the ADAM database at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2012377
Navigate to the object CN=Common,OU=Global,OU=Properties,DC=vdi,DC=vmware,DC=int
In the Attribute Editor for the object, edit pae-NameValuePair attribute
Making sure not to adjust any other values, add a new string to the attribute with value "cs-allowfallbackfromexistingsession=0" (no quotes)
Click OK to close the editor dialog, your change is applied with no need to restart the servers
To reverse the change, edit the attribute again and remove the above line

Verification:
To verify the fix has been applied, you may find the allowFallback value in a debug level line on any desktop launch. The line will have the following format:

DEBUG getSessionForApplication, userDn: , appMap: {=, [...], allowFallback=false, [...]}

How to use VMware Horizon View Multi VLan

2013-05-29T19:06:00.000+02:00

With the release of VMware Horizon View 5.2, the functionality made available that allow to create an automated pool where multiple VLANs to be linked. The administrator can use multiple network labels to a linked-clone virtual machine or an automated pool containing full virtual machines. Multi VLAN configuration is performed with PowerCLI from the View Connection Server. Functions are used from the PowerCLI for vSphere, so these need to be installed to.

Before a virtual machine as a golden image can be used within a multi-VLAN configuration. The hardware version of the virtual machine to version 9 be amended. Within hardware version 9, the functionality is present which is required for the use of the functionality.

There are different steps to create the the automated pool. The first step is exporting the availabele VLans for the golden image. The exported file needs to be configured and will be used for creating the Horizon View Pool.

Export Configuration

To create an export of the used VLans of the golden image, the following command is used for the export of the golden image configuration. When exporting the settings for a full cloned virtual machines, the command Export NetworkLabelSpecForLinkedClone need to be replaced with Export-NetworkLabelSpecForFullClone:

Export-NetworkLabelSpecForLinkedClone `
-vc_id "7d87df91-bf73-47b3-b01a-f54214e6ff61" `
-clusterPath "/myresourcepool/host/Cluster1/" `
-parentVMPath "/myresourcepool/vm/Win7-Parent" `
-parentSnapshotPath "/Win7-Parent/snapshot" `
-maxVMsPerNetworkLabel 5 `
-networkLabelConfigFile "C:/Win7.txt"

The vc_id identifies the vCenter Server. To obtain the vCenter ID, the following command can be used:

Get-ViewVC | select vc_id

The following output is displayed

vc_id
-----
7d87df91-bf73-47b3-b01a-f54214e6ff61
c0ed93c8-c5b5-42d1-aeed-99764921d29c

Edit Export file

The exported file needs to be edited before used for creating the View Pool.

#Network Label Configuration Spec

#WARNING! Setting enabled flag to false will
#turn off the automatic network label assignment
#for newly provisioned desktops.
enabled=true

#Parameter Definition for NIC
nic1=Network adapter 1

#Parameter Definition for Network
network01=vlan10
network02=vlan20
network03=vlan30

#Network Label Attribute Definition
#Expected format:
#..maxvm=

nic1.network01.maxvm=5
####nic1.network02.maxvm=5
nic1.network03.maxvm=5

Within the configuration file, the different VLans availabele for the golden images are shown. A VLan can be selected by removing the #### before the line. In the above example, the used VLans are set network01 and network03, the maximum used IPs witin the VLan is maximized to 5.

Create View Pool

The exported configration file from the previous step will be used for the creation of the Horizon View pool. The following command can be used:

Add-AutomaticLinkedClonePool -Pool_id -displayName "" -NamePrefix "-{n:fixed=3}" -Vc_id 7d87df91-bf73-47b3-b01a-f54214e6ff61 -Persistence NonPersistent -VmFolderPath "/myresourcepool/vm/" -ResourcePoolPath "/myresourcepool/vm" -ParentVmPath "/myresourcepool/vm/Win7-Parent" -ParentSnapshotPath "/Win7-Parent/snapshot" -DatastoreSpecs "[Moderate,OS,data]/myresourcepool/host/VMFS01” -Composer_ad_id 12232fbf-1dbd-42e5-84dd-f18848e5bcf5 -UseUserDataDisk $false -UseTempDisk $true -MinimumCount 1 -MaximumCount 5 -HeadroomCount 2 -PowerPolicy AlwaysOn -SuspendProvisioningOnError $true -NetworkLabelConfigFile "C:/Win7.txt"

The composer_ad_id parameter specifies the ID of the View Composer domain. To obtain the Composer id the following command can be used:

Get-ComposerDomain | select composer_ad_id

The following output is displayed

composer_ad_id
--------------
12232fbf-1dbd-42e5-84dd-f18848e5bcf5
a7e97ac8-1c61-4a41-8bd6-666a7e2eda17

The Horizon View pool is created and will start provisioing the linked clones. Additional configuraton steps can be made after creation of the pool.

What’s New in VMware Horizon View 5.2

2013-03-05T09:46:00.005+01:00

VMware Horizon View 5.2 delivers valuable enhancements to end user experience and ease of management, while further driving down the total cost of ownership for VDI.

What's New with End User Experience

Support for Windows 8 based desktops
Hardware Accelerated 3D Graphics
Improved video and VOIP communications with Microsoft Lync 2013 support
Streamlined access to View Desktops from Horizon
Easily connect to desktops from any device with HTML Access
Enhanced productivity from mobile devices with new 'Unity Touch' functionality

What's New with Ease of Management

Large pool creation with elimination of 8 host limits, and multiple vLAN support
View Administrator performance improvements with large numbers of desktops
Accelerated provisioning and recompose operations.
Tech Preview of a new Integrated Service Console in the vSphere Web Client
Support for vCenter Server Virtual Appliance based deployments

Removing vCenter Extensions

2013-02-09T13:57:00.000+01:00

Many different products that provide additional functionality within a vSphere environment, use the registration method within the vCenter Server. These so-called vCenter Extension used for integration. This may sometimes happen that a new installation of the product must be carried out where the vCenter Extension not properly removed. These vCenter Extensions can also be manually removed.

To remove a vCenter Extensions, go to the URL:

https:// //mob/?moid=ExtensionManager

Here, an overview is given of the present Extensions.

Select the Extension that needs to be removed and select Unregister Extension.

In the opened window, the name of the Extension need to be filed. For example com.vmware.vShieldManager to remove the Extension of the vShield Manager software. Then select the option Invoke Method to the registration within the vCenter Extension Services to remove the Extension.

Adding AD domain to vCenter 5.1

2012-11-14T07:54:00.000+01:00

With the new vSphere 5.1 release, authentication can be done with local accounts and additional sources from existing authentication sources. When adding additional sources, one of the possibility to add Active Directory as a authentication resource.

In the following sample an environment will be added to the vCenter environment which contains a single domain controller.

The main configuration settings which must be set are the Primary server URL, which is the ldap source. In this sample a IP adress is used, but a FQDN will work to. The second configuration setting which have to be made is the Domain name of the active directory.

The last configuration is the authentication type. When using the Password type a UPN name of an administrative account and password will do.

Adding Users and/or Groups
After preparing the vCenter configuration for SSO, the user or groups can be added and given permission for using the vCenter environment.

Assigning Roles

After selecting the needed users or groups a role can be assigned to the selected user and/or group.

After hitting the OK button the user and/or groups are given the selected role within the vCenter environment.

VMware View 5.1 new features

2012-05-03T08:01:00.001+02:00

Yesterday VMware announced some of the new features of VMware View 5.1, its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure platform. This version is the follow up of version 5 which was released last year.

The most important features can be summarized as follows:

View Storage Accelerator, already announced for View 5.0 and lifted at the last moment, this feature is borrowed from vSphere’s Content Based Read Cache (CBRC) and basically caches frequently used disk blocks into VDI host’s RAM avoiding frequent reading of the same information from central storage.
View Persona Management is now extended to physical machine with the main purpose of VDI migrations or OSes migrations.
vCenter Operations (vCOPs) Manager for View is a new version, optimized for virtual desktop deployment, that provides end-to-end real time monitoring of desktop and users. Already announced at VMworld Europe last year now includes a very requested feature: the ability to monitor PCoIP performance.
Cluster nodes, support for 32 cluster nodes when using NFS

SBSMonitoring shows heavy disk usage

2012-03-02T13:18:00.001+01:00

The server disk usage is high with no particular reason, the service useing all the disk resources was mssql.exe reading from SBSMonitoring.mdf.
Searching the net took me to a TechNet post talking about this exact issue.
After applying this fix everything got back to normal.
To perform the fix:

Log on as an administrator.

Start SQL Server Management Studio. (Express edition is fine)

Attach to SBSMONITORING instance (replace SERVERNAME with the name of your server):
Server Type: Database Engine
Server Name: SERVERNAME\SBSMONITORING
Authentication: Windows Authentication

Once connected, from the Menu, click: File -> New -> Query with Current Connection. This creates a new query window.

Copy the commands below into the window, then press F5 to execute.
USE SBSMONITORING
GO
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IDX_Alerts_GetAlertsPerID] ON [dbo].[Alerts] 
(
   [DefinitionID] ASC,
   [ComputerID] ASC,
   [DateOccured] ASC,
   [IsSet] ASC,
   [ID] ASC
)
GO
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IDX_WMICollectedData_GetSecurityProductPerComputer] ON [dbo].[WMICollectedData] 
(
   [WMIInstanceID] ASC,
   [WMIPropertyID] ASC,
   [DateCollected] ASC,
   [ID] ASC
)
GO
 
create index IDX_WMIObjectProperties_ObjectID on WMIObjectProperties(ObjectID,ID)
Go

create index IDX_WMIObjectInstances_ObjectID on WMIObjectInstances(ObjectID,ID)

VMware View 5.0 new features

2011-06-24T11:52:00.000+02:00

The next version of VMware View will have better PCoIP performance, more client device support,a storage management feature similar to Citrix IntelliCache and -- finally -- integrated profile management.

A VMware View integrator based in New England who is privy to company details said VMware View 5 will have a storage management feature similar to Citrix IntelliCache. Storage costs and performance issues plague virtual desktop customers, so this would alleviate those issues.

Sources close to VMware also said Virtual Profiles will be part of the View picture later this year, but the functions will be limited. Specifically, it won't include the desired Windows XP to Windows 7 profile compatibility.

That means many VMware View shops will still need to buy third-party profile management tools. VMware endorses Liquidware Labs profile management product, and Liquidware offers its ProfileUnity product at a discount intermittently for View customers. The company's profile management offering does much more than the Virtual Profiles management tool VMware acquired from RTO Software in 2010.

VMware declined to comment on View 5. However, IT pros expect the company to disclose the product's advances at VMworld 2011 in August.

Source: http://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/news/2240036965/VMware-View-5-to-add-profiles-PCoIP-and-client-support

vCenter with Oracle 11g

2011-05-02T09:50:00.003+02:00

The latest release of VMware vCenter 4.1 is capable of using difference database systems, mostly these installations are done on SQL databases. But also DB2 and Oracle databases are supported. At a customer site is Oracle 10g used as a default for all databases. Within a few months the customer will upgrade these databases to Oracle 11g. Using these difference versions for now and in the feature, we decides to use the Oracle 11g client for installing vCenter and View Composer. The Oracle Install Client 11g is used for connecting to the Oracle 10 database.

vCenter will be placed on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise with slip streamed SP1, and is using a double vCPU with 4 GB of RAM.

Before the ODBC connection to the database can be made, the Oracle 11g client is places on the vCenter server, therefore the Oracle version 11 packages are extracted to C:\Oracle

instantclient-basis-windows.x64-11.2.0.2.0.zip
instantclient-odbc-windows.x64-11.2.0.2.0.zip
instantclient-basic-win64-10.2.0.5.zip

After that the odbc_install.exe is executed for making the client software available within the ODBC connection software. A default tnsnames.ora Oracle configuration file, created by the customer is stored in the created sub folder NETWORK\ADMIN, which results in:

C:\Oracle\instantclient_11_2\NETWORK\ADMIN\tnsnames.ora

The installation of the Oracle 11 Client have been finished with these steps.

The next step is creating the ODBC connection to the database, the following steps are used for creating these connection:

Start Data Sources (ODBC) within Administrative Tools, and create a new System DSN

Select the Oracle in instantclient 11_2 and hit the Finish button

Supply the needed information for the connection and use the Test Connection button for testing the connection.

After these steps the installation of vCenter can be done and the created DSN can be selected during the installation and the connection will be used for filling the database.

The latest step is the extraction of the ojdbc14.jar file from the Oracle instant 10 client, and place the file in the /Infrastructure/tomcat/lib folder

Windows 7 View Client issue with Microsoft patch

2011-02-09T19:52:00.000+01:00

As part of our commitment to letting you know about emerging issues, we want to mention an issue a few VMware View users are running into after applying a Microsoft patch.

The Knowledgebase Team has prepared KB article: Unable to connect from the Windows 7 Client to the View Connection Server after installing the patch in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2482017 (1034262), and an alert has been placed on the Support page to alert customers of this issue.

This Knowledge Base article will be updated if new information becomes available (you can subscribe to rss feeds on individual KB articles for this purpose). If you have been affected by this, please read the KB.

RDP Parameters for Remote Desktop Services with UAG

2011-02-03T12:15:00.000+01:00

Both Remote Desktop application types (Predefined and User Defined) do not require import of TSPUB file. All necessary RDP parameters are automatically generated by the Microsoft Forefront UAG Terminal Services RDP Data service.

Publishing a Remote Desktop, UAG Management Console reads an RDP parameters template file at the moment a new Remote Desktop application is added to the portal. All parameters specified in this file will be added to the RDP data the UAG automatically generates for particular Remote Desktop application unless these parameters are controlled in the RDP data generation. Such parameters will be always overwritten whatever their customization is.

The template file is not reread in the moment of RDP data generation, configuration activation or whatsoever. Its content is read at the moment the application is added to the portal, and its content in this very moment is stored internally within the UAG application data. Thus the template can be modified before addition of each new Remote Desktop application, and these applications will use different sets of additional RDP parameters. Unfortunately, this set cannot be edited or reviewed later. Therefore a Remote Desktop application should be removed and added again if modification of the customized RDP parameters is necessary (the new template file will be read upon application addition).

The default RDP data template file is located as

\common\conf\rd-template.txt

It is a plain ASCII text file expected to hold RDP parameters in the same way RDP files do this. Currently, the default template file contains a single parameter for illustrative purposes only (it has no actual effect since it is always overwritten during RDP data generation). It is urgently recommended not to modify this file directly but create a custom file according to the current UAG conventions:

\common\conf\CustomUpdate\rd-template.txt

The template’s file content is validated for being a syntactically correct RDP file but RDP parameters themselves are not validated for existence, correctness of values, etc.

vCenter 4.1 on Windows Server 2008 R2

2010-12-01T08:53:00.001+01:00

When installing vCenter 4.1 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 instance there are some prerequisite, which have to be fullfiled before the actualy installation can be started.

When using a SQL Database server which resides on a different host, the installation of the SQL Server Native Client is required. When not installing the software, the ODBC connection to the database isn't working. With the following URL the required software can be downloaded:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/4/D/44DBDE61-B385-4FC2-A67D-48053B8F9FAD/sqlncli_x64.msi

While creating the ODBC connection to the SQL Server Database with the Data Source Administrator program, the connection needs to be created with the selection of the SQL Native Client.

On the SQL Database server the database need to be created and some specific SQL Server user account needs to be created. The created SQL Server account is given some specific permission to get the installation to work. The account needs the db_owner permission on the database just created and the same permission on the msdb database. The last permission can be released after the installation of vCenter is finished.

When doing the actualy instllation of the vCenter machine the just created ODBC connection can be selected as the installtion destination, and all the database information is written to this database.

After finishing these steps the installation is done and you end up with a working vCenter installation.

New VMware Certifications to be announced soon

2010-04-22T08:49:00.002+02:00

To already known VCP and VCDX certifications you’ll soon be able to add another one (or two). The partial information can be found on Scott Wessey’s blog http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com. The names of those new certifications had not been officialy announced by VMware and Scott also says that on his blog, but already one can imagine that there will be an intermediate level between VCP4 and VCDX 4, which is a good news since I don’t really feel to go for the VCDX…. at least not yet. The intermediate level could be the way to go for many VCP and VCP 4 certified persons.

On top of the existing foundation level VCP4 certification, there will be three new certifications for vSphere 4:

Enterprise Administrator Certification * (the final names to be confirmed)
Design Administrator Certification *(the final names to be confirmed)
VMware Certified Design Expert on vSphere 4 (VCDX4)

VMware to acquire RTO Software

2010-02-24T12:46:00.001+01:00

At VMworld 2009 VMware announced an OEM agreement with RTO Software, to integrate their Virtual Profiles technology into VMware View. This was an important step for VMware due to the gap of a Windows profile management solution. Today VMware announced the acquisition of RTO Software and their product portfolio. With RTO VMware View will have a great persona management in the View solution.

2010-02-19T12:04:00.000+01:00

VMware View 4.0.1 can be downloaded here. The Release Notes describes some bug fixes and this release also includes the following new features:

Localization of VMware View

The View Client and online help for View Client are now available in Japanese, French, German, and simplified Chinese. The View Manager Administration Guide, View Manager Release Notes, Getting Started with VMware View document, View Upgrade Guide, and View Architecture Planning Guide are also available in these languages.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5 Support

View Manager 4.0.1 includes support for VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5.

Enhancements to the PCoIP Display Protocol

PCoIP now supports the following features:

* Virtual Printing, which allows end users to use local or network printers from a View desktop without requiring that additional print drivers be installed in the View desktop.

* Single sign-on support for third party providers such as Sentillion and Imprivata.

* View Client supports international keyboards when using PCoIP.

For PCoIP-related bug fixes, see the View Client Resolved Issues section.

VMware View 4.0 (with software-only PCoIP)

2009-11-25T21:54:00.003+01:00

Last week VMware finally released the much awaited View 4.0, which supports vSphere 4.0 and introduces the software-only version of the Teradici remote desktop protocol PCoIP.

VMware is offering two versions of View 4: Enterprise (which includes vSphere and View Manager 4.0), priced at $150 per concurrent user, and Premier (which also includes View Composer and ThinApp), priced at $250 per concurrent user.

Of course the key aspect of this release is how well PCoIP performs on LAN and WAN scenarios.
Unfortunately the product will be available for download on November 19, so for now it’s impossible to make a performance analysis and comparison with Microsoft RDP 7, Citrix ICA/HDX and the other tens of alternatives that are flooding the VDI market.

The major problem with PCoIP is if its performance is so great to justify the adoption of a new proprietary remote desktop protocol at its 1.0 release (the protocol is more mature than that but so far relied on hardware components).
Many customers may want to be careful here, mostly considering that VMware and Teradici just have a co-development agreement, which is not even exclusive.
What happens if Teradici is acquired by a VMware competitor or if the company suffers major issues?
And most of all, what happens if one year from now VMware consider this protocol unpractical and too expensive to optimize and decides to replace it, for instance, with the just ratified Net2Display standard?

Anyway a lot has been already said.

Brian Madden already published a brief FAQ list, which includes a couple of interesting details:

* The PCoIP client only supports Windows at the moment. Linux and Mac OS versions are expected next year
* View 4.0 will fully support Microsoft Windows 7 as guest OS in early 2010

Chad Sakac already published a blueprint to design a View 4.0 architecture with the recently announced VMware/Cisco/EMC hardware called VBlock.
The solution (a VBlock 1) fits over 2,048 virtual desktops and costs $750 per seat all inclusive:

The paper includes some performance analysis. It doesn’t clarify if the numbers are obtained when using the RDP or the PCoIP protocol (assuming this will make any difference) but it’s really worth a check.

Update: With some delay VMware finally released the bits of View 4.0 (build 210939).
To install it you first need to update vSphere 4.0 with Update 1 (build 208156), released Nov. 19, 2009.

Source: virtualization.info

Using the esxtop tool to identify VMware ESX memory use

2009-08-12T07:42:00.002+02:00

Checking memory with the VMware Infrastructure Client

As an example, I have taken screenshots from a host with 64 GB of physical RAM with 29 VMs running on it. In the first screenshot, we go to the VMware Infrastructure Client (VI Client), select the host and watch the summary tab. In the right-hand corner, we see the “Resources” section. The image below shows that memory usage is at 41.06 GB out of 64 GB.

From this image, we can see that 41.06 GB of memory is in use out of an available 64. But wouldn’t you also like to know which processes or VMs are using the 41.06 GB? To find out, we’ll use PuTTY as our SSH client to run VMware’s esxtop tool.

Let’s start a PuTTY session. Log on, start esxtop and press M for memory. The top of the screen features an impressive amount of info on your host’s memory usage.

Let’s take it from the top.

Physical memory

The MEM overcommit avg tells us that the average memory overcommitment over the past one is between five and 15 minutes. A value of 0.20 is a 20% overcommitment of memory. In the second line, we see the PMEM stats that describe physical memory in the host. This host has 65,534 MB (or 63.99 GB), of which 800 MB is allocated to the cos (i.e., the service console); 672 MB is being used by the VMkernel and 4,0437 MB (or 39.489 GB) is used by “other,” which leaves 23,624 MB of free memory.

Note: The memory used by “other” is officially described as: “everything other than the ESX Service Console and ESX VMkernel.” It is not necessarily all memory consumed by the VM. Each VM, for example, also has memory overhead. The amount of overhead memory depends on the type of guest OS,the number of virtual CPUs, configured amount of guest memory and on whether the guest is 32-bit or 64-bit. For example, a dual-CPU virtual machine with 2,048 MB memory will have 126 MB overhead as 32-bit system and 163 MB overhead as a 64-bit system.

Service console memory

The next line about VMKMEM is of less importance, though it does tell you how the VMkernel performs. But unless you’re troubleshooting an unusual problem, you won’t work with these values. Of more value is how the service console (cos) is doing, which is detailed on the next line. The first value (in this case, free) is the amount of idle memory in your cos. In our example, the cos has 92 MB RAM free out of the 800 MB allocated. Next, we see the swap space configured and swap space free, which are both 1,600 MB. Usually, I configure a host with a 1,600 MB swap partition and 800 MB cos memory.

While 800 MB may seem like a lot, third-party agents often run in the console and so the default 272 MB of memory is not enough. In that event, you want to increase cos memory and set it to 800 MB. You could set it for a higher number, but you might run out of partition space. I therefore always set the swap partition to 1,600 MB since you can also assign only a maximum of 1,600 MB to the cos. Since implementing that as a best practice, I haven’t had to resize a swap partition once.

Transparent Page Sharing (TPS)

Back to our example, the Non-Uniform Memory Access, or NUMA, values in MB. As with VMkernel you seldom have to worry about these. It only shows you how ESX is distributing the memory across the NUMA nodes (if you have NUMA, that is) but these are not values you will be working with. Pay more attention to the PSHARE line. This one tells us how much memory is saved by transparent page sharing (TPS), which in some environments can be quite a lot. In our example, 32,492MB is shared between the VMs, of which 3,779 MB is common, which leaves us with savings of 28,713 MB (or 28 GB) of memory.

Let me explain this in a different way. On this host machine, a total of 32,492 MB is somehow the same in a lot of guests. By using transparent page sharing, ESX only needs 3,779 MB to “store” 32,492 MB. So we are saving 28,713 MB of memory. In my opinion, that is a large amount of memory to save on a single host. Just imagine how much this could save you across an entire virtual environment.

What is transparent page sharing?
VMware ESX can save lot of physical memory using transparent page sharing, especially in environments where a lot of similar OSes are in use. The hypervisor checks each block of memory that a virtual machine wants to write to physical memory. If that block of memory is equal to a block of memory already saved in physical memory, there is no need to use extra physical memory. Instead, ESX only sets a pointer and remembers that this block is used by other VMs. As longs as the VMs only read this block and never change it, the block is saved just once. ESX will use this block until a VM wants to make changes to the VM (write to the block). When that happens, ESX will create an additional copy.

When looking at Windows Server 2003, for example, one can see that a basic Windows install without any extra applications will easily occupy 250 MB RAM after startup. Now suppose I run 20 Windows VMs on one hypervisor. 20 instances of Windows requiring 250 MB RAM each would cost a total of 5,000 MB physical RAM without TPS. With TPS, however, 250 MB would have been stored and used only once. In other words, a memory savings of 5,750 MB. That’s not something to take lightly.

Swap memory and ballooning

This may sound strange, but I believe both SWAMp and MEMCTL numbers should be 0. Let me explain what they are:

* The SWAP value displays the ESX server swap usages statistics, where “cur” is the current swap usage, “target” is how much ESX expects to swap and “r/s” and “w/s” show the rate at which the swapping occurrs.
* MEMCTL shows the total amount (cur) of physical memory reclaimed using the vmmemctl module or the balloondriver, the total amount ESX attempts to reclaim (target) and the maximum amount ESX can reclaim (max).

Now, why should they be zero? Simply put, because they are both indications that ESX doesn’t have enough memory to give to the guests. The first thing ESX wants to do when resources are getting scarce is reclaim the least valuable memory from the guest OS. Because ESX can not talk directly to the OS, it uses the VMware Tools memctl-driver for this.

Ballooning
When VMware ESX runs out of guest VM space, ESX starts a process inside the guest which claims memory. The guest OS will then check the list to see if it has memory that is not in use. If there is, it will will give this to the process. Next, VMware Tools will claim this memory and tell ESX exactly which memory blocks ESX can reuse for other VMs. In this way, the last pieces of unused memory are squeezed out of the other guests to give it to the guests that need it more.

Swap to disk
If the ballooning technique isn’t sufficient, ESX will use its last resort: swapping out guest memory to disk. As disks are always much slower than physical memory, the guest VM will notice a performance degradation so that is not the way we want to go.

Therefore, as soon as you see the SWAP curr or MEMCTRL curr rise above zero, you should really start investigating what is wrong. As a rule of thumb, you should never load your ESX memory to more than 80% or 85%. This way you always have spare memory in case VMs start to use more physcial memory. Also, loading your ESX hosts in a cluster at more than 80% to 85% can get you into trouble with your VMware High Availability failover level.

virtual machine with input specifications already exists

2009-08-10T14:13:00.003+02:00

While in the progress of deploying new virtual machines the deployment of a virtual machine stopped in one particular pool. After doing some investigation the viewcomposer log gives me the following message:

Violation of UNIQUE KEY constraint 'IX_SVI_SIM_CLONE_GUEST_NAME'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'dbo.SVI_SIM_CLONE'

I created a support call with VMware, the responses I got where remove those particular record from the database. Removing those records didn’t solved the problem, cause those records were written in different tables, so we created a query which does the trick for us.

Doing a search first, so we know which records will be deleted:

# Finding VM from VM_NAME and BASE_DISK key

SELECT * FROM SVI_SC_BASE_DISK_KEYS

where PARENT_ID = (SELECT ID FROM SVI_SIM_CLONE

WHERE (VM_NAME = ''))

SELECT * FROM SVI_SIM_CLONE

WHERE (VM_NAME = '')

When I know which records will be removed I used the following query to actually remove the records:

# delete VM from VM_NAME and BASE_DISK key

delete from SVI_SC_BASE_DISK_KEYS

where PARENT_ID = (SELECT ID FROM SVI_SIM_CLONE

WHERE (VM_NAME = ''))

delete FROM SVI_SIM_CLONE

WHERE (VM_NAME = '')

After actually removing the faulty records i was able to deploy new virtual machines again.

VMware View Client as a shell for XPe and XP Pro clients

2009-06-26T09:55:00.000+02:00

Using the Win32 View Client on XPe or XP Pro will allow you to use the full featured View client with all the bells and whistles. The problem is that it's still XP and can be confusing to your users to have them log into one desktop just to send them to another virtual desktop. So how can we fix that? If you replace the shell with the View client you can eliminate the XP desktop and on a boot of the client the only interface presented to a user is the View Client. This makes logging in simple and clean. The problem with just replacing the shell with the View client is that once the user exits, logs out, or just accidentally closes the client, It will not start again automatically. Below is a way to have the Client restart automatically and hide the needed command window.

The following instructions will hide the XP desktop and present the user with just the View client and will restart if it gets closed. This was done on an HP t5730 Thin client but the process should be the same for most XPe Thin clients and even a repurposed XP Pro desktop.

Create a View.cmd file with the following.

@echo off

:View

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Client\bin\wswc.exe"

goto View

Place it where ever you like, c:\BatchFiles for example

Create a vbs script with the following in it. Place it wherever you like C:\BatchFiles for example.

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

WshShell.Run chr(34) & "C:\BatchFiles\view.cmd" & Chr(34), 0

Set WshShell = Nothing

Open Regedit and go to ;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Change Shell from explorer.exe to the new shell path and the Windows Scripting command, e.g wscript c:\BatchFiles\view.vbs

Commit the changes to the flash drive if using XPe.

ewfmgr c: -commit

Reboot. Enjoy the new View only interface!

Once this is done there will be no desktop for any users, including Administrator. You can still get to the Task Manager with a CTRL-ALT-DEL but the interface is gone. You can modify the Registry setting to use a specific user by logging in as that user and modifying HKEY_CURRENT_USER instead.