Latest generation virtualization techniques doubles capacity terminal servers

With that statement Ruben and Jeroen have just released Phase II of Project Virtual Reality Check (VRC) to create this whitepaper they have done more than 150 tests with Login VSI to measure the performance of servers while being stressed by a great amount of simulated users. This whitepaper has a few advantages to whitepapers published by the vendors themselves and whitepapers published by blogs that are only testing one hypervisor:

• The whitepaper is truly independent
• The whitepaper is approved by the different vendors
• Everybody can repeat the tests with the free available Login VSI
• The authors aren’t biased
• You can compare the results easily (the servers have been stressed the same way)

One of the most interesting conclusions of Phase II: The performance increase measured is not caused by improvements to the hypervisor but mainly by Intel’s innovations in the Nehalem architecture VRC states that it can be almost solely accredited for the performance improvements seen with TS workloads.

Get your free copy of the whitepaper at www.projectvrc.com

• Official Citrix Whitepaper with 5000 XenDesktop users. http://bit.ly/c5a0n5

Use free and reputable tools like LoginVSI from Login Consultants to simulate real-worldlike
user workloads.

• Official Citrix Whitepaper Single server scalability with XenDesktop http://bit.ly/b4MH75

VM density results are highly dependent upon workload characteristics. We used a
workload called Login VSI, created by an independent company, Login Consultants.
Login VSI, is well known in the VDI and terminal services community with testing of
8 various terminal services and VDI solutions from multiple vendors in a comprehensive,
ongoing test project called Project Virtual Reality Check
http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net/.

In everyday usage i use AutoIT to create most parts of VSI, its perfect for emulating the user workloads because it works like a real user and because i dont have real programming skills the rest of VSI is also created in AutoIT script.

You would think a large company would do this a little different, maybe they would create the workloads in AutoIT scripts but creating the configuration GUI’s would be done much more professional…. Well VMWare dissagrees apparently.

Conclusion: +1 for the AutoIT team and –1 for VMware!

As of 2010-03-25 (March 25^th, 2010), EdgeSight 5.0 and 5.1 (all service packs) will stop functioning.

Customers will receive the following error message for payload uploads:

“Archive load error: The archive '/edgesight/app/suser/ZRemoteLib.zpd#12!lsync.htm' is not appropriately signed.  The system cannot find the file specified.”

General symptoms: Payloads will not be uploaded and many of the EdgeSight components will not work properly resulting in different errors.

Congratz to Citrix for reintroducing a bug the already discovered in version 4.5 of their software product!

We all remember the last tool created by Peter Nap: App-V on a stick, but Peter didn't stop there. Yesterday Login Consultants released a new tool: The App-V Self Support Tool. One of the things that you will find out early on when actual users start working with App-V, is that sometimes they manually need to reset, preload and refresh their virtualized applications. As a result, you will need to give users access to the App-V client MMC plug-in.

The problem is, the MMC is typically off-limits for normal users in the enterprise because of security policies on desktops and laptops. And even when users have access, try explaining non-technical users how to work with the App-V client MMC plug-in. The App-V client configuration is simply way too clunky for normal users.

The great thing about the App-V Self Support tool is that is consists of just 2 files that do not have to be installed, one executable and one XML file for the configuration. This makes enterprise deployment quite easy: just drop the files anywhere on the client and provide the users a shortcut to start the application.

The interface is deliberately simplified, so users can find their way around. There are only a few options: View, Language, Repair, Cache, Start and Refresh. Users do not need anything more, and more importantly, they are not required to ask the helpdesk to support them.

Download the App-V Self Support (App-V SST) tool here.

[Virtualizing the App-V Support tool is not recommended! (No really.. it breaks)]

Fortunately there’s a workaround for this:

Change the SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS environment variable

Within your script, temporarily change the SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS environment variable to 1.
Note Do not use this as a permanent system environment variable because it will disable all Zone Checking.

VBScript example:

set oShell= CreateObject('Wscript.Shell')
set oEnv = oShell.Environment('PROCESS')

oEnv('SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS') = 1

oShell.Run 'somecommand',0,True

oEnv.Remove('SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS')

Note: I replaced all double quotes with single quotes in this example because of the syntax highlighting, if you want to use this example, find and replace all single quotes ( ' ) with double quotes ( " )

Powershell example:

$env:SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS = 1

somecommand.exe

Remove-Item env:\SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS

To build these WMI Queries, in the past I always used the WMIC commandline tool. A very handy tool, but the syntax for this tool is a bit different then your average:

SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE model LIKE ‘%DC7900%’

In WMIC this query would be translated to:

WMIC PATH Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE “model LIKE ‘%DC7900%’

For this particular query it’s not that different, but what if you only want to get certain values?

SELECT Model FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE model LIKE ‘%DC7900%’

Would be translated to:

WMIC PATH WIN32_ComputerSystem WHERE “model LIKE ‘%DC7900%’ GET model

As you see, it’s not really hard translating the commands, but there’s an even easier way to get your WMI Queries

Use the builtin Windows Management Instrumentation Tester: wbemtest.exe
Start>Run>wbemtest.exe

Click on connect and type the namespace you want to connect to: (Default for WMI is root\cimv2)

Now we have all sorts of buttons available… we can easily open and explore a class and see it’s methods and properties… we can create a query in the syntax of:

SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem

Happy exploring and testing with WMI

So I decided to go old school, whip out my favourite MSI editing tool: Orca and create a transform that removes the Full UI requirement.

Now all you have to do is: msiexec /i waikx86.msi TRANSFORMS=waik.mst /qn and voila… fully unattended WAIK installation…

Disclaimer: This is very much NOT supported by Microsoft… so use at your own risk.

Download