Unidesk Blogs

Unidesk Adopts a Northborough Family for the Holidays

Andrew Nadeau — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:54:00 +0000

This year Unidesk is going to make Christmas very special for a local family that has fallen on tough times. In the spirit of giving, we adopted a family in Northborough for the holiday season. Everyone in the company pitched in to buy gifts on the family’s wish list. Through the generosity of everyone, we were able to buy every gift on their list as well as wrapping paper and $400 in gift cards to Stop & Shop for groceries.

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Awesome work everyone! This is certainly going to make huge difference and a Christmas to remember.

How to Operationalize Desktop Support with Unidesk Desktop Management for VDI

Andrew Nadeau — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:30:00 +0000

How does a city with 1,300 user accounts and 800 desktops streamline their service desk by moving to virtual desktops?

With a majority of their desktops over five years old and an understaffed service desk, this was exactly the question that James Hettrick, Technical Services Manager at City of Kent set out to answer.

Some of the key insight James Hettrick shared during the webinar included how the City of Kent was able to…

Solve their image management challenges by using Unidesk to get to one pristine gold image for Windows XP and one pristine gold image for Windows 7
Package and deliver 40+ applications as “layers” in Unidesk
Deliver a virtual desktop with a 23” LED monitor for a unit price that was equal to a physical desktop ($781 per desktop w/ monitor)
Justify the cost of using Pano Logic Zero Clients through energy savings alone
Operationalize their service desk to be more efficient and better serve their end-users

One of the more interesting aspects of the City of Kent’s VDI deployment was how they were able to put a process in place between their technical services team and system services team to create, test, and deploy new layers using Unidesk desktop management software for VDI. Here is a flow chart of the process…

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(Click to Enlarge)

To hear the City of Kent’s full story watch the on-demand webinar recording below…

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Adjusting VMware View’s PCoIP for video intense applications

Ron Oglesby — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Last week a Unidesk customer emailed us asking about poor performance in an Auto-CAD application on a PCoIP thin client. Everything else in the desktop seemed fine except this application. I then received an email from a customer asking how to improve video (like Youtube) in their View/Unidesk environment (when it rains it pours right?).

We knew there were adjustments that could be made to PCoIP to turn down the bandwidth used in low bandwidth situations (turning down the frame rate, limiting the bandwidth, changing default image quality, etc) and assumed that these same settings could probably be “turned up” from the defaults to allow for better video performance… Turns out we were correct.

After finding Andre Leibovici’s (twitter @andreleibovici) article on these settings we began playing with them and doing further research. We then found the View 5 documents on the bandwidth variables and session variables available in the View ADM templates.

But, what we wanted to see was what these settings could improve in something like a full screen video playing back from Youtube. I mean if you just set the settings and see no difference in the video, whats the use?

To test this I recorded my PCoIP session watching the Armageddon trailer on Youtube with the default PCoIP settings. I then re-rerecorded the same desktop with some additional PCoIP “tuning” to see if the video playback got any better.

If you watch the video as it starts (the scene where Ben Affleck is twirling Liv Tyler in the air with a sunset in the background) you can see the default settings make this video look like three of four still frames pieced together. If you then watch that same spot in the modified session you can see it looks ALMOST smooth and is significantly better. (Beware, the sound is the same and without choppiness in both videos. this can throw you off. I was watching without sound and noticed the differences even more)

Default Video:

[univideo:3378:thumb,large,image_width=338,image_height=198]

After recording this I created the following registry keys (which would normally be applied/created via the GPO) and restarted the VM:
HKLM\Software\Policies\Teradici\PCoIP\pcoip_admin
REG_DWORD: pcoip.max_link_rate 900000
REG_DWORD: pcoip.maximum_frame_rate 120

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The Max Link Rate entry tells PCoIP how much bandwidth can be consumed. Based on the View 5 guide the default (when nothing is set) is 90,000 Kb or just short of a 100Mb connection. I set this to 900,000 Kb or just shy of my 1Gb connection I had on the LAN.

The Frame Rate (which is defaulted at 30) I adjusted to its maximum of 120.

Modified PCoIP Video

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Ok, Ron the video seems better, but will these settings eat more bandwidth?

Yes. So I wouldn’t set this in your gold image unless everyone needed it. Instead I would leverage the ADM template from VMware and apply a policy to only the desktops that A: need higher end/better quality video response, and B: are on a LAN with the available bandwidth.

Are these all the settings or the best settings?

No. I just grabbed the two that seemed to me to have the best changes at impacting video and I tried them. There are more options for tuning PCoIP to increase or decrease bandwidth and video performance. You can check out Andre’s article I mentioned before and I would suggest the View 5 doc also noted above. The View doc will give a detailed description of each available setting and what it does. You can then tune the protocol to your needs.

How to Disable Firefox Auto Updates

Ron Oglesby — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000

When packaging an application in Unidesk or any other software distribution technology commonly used in virtual desktops (think ThinApp and AppV here) you generally will need to disable any auto-update functionality in the application to ensure the package is updated by IT and not the end-user. This is a second in a series of articles about auto-update functionality in commonly used applications. The previous article was on the more elusive Google Chrome settings.

Disabling Firefox auto updates is fairly straight forward within the GUI. And with Mozilla seeming to put out a new version of their browser every 6 seconds, you really need to keep your packages from attempting to auto update.

But, as with most applications, I think you should know more than where the check box is. So below are 2 options for disabling Auto update: the GUI, and a Group Policy Template.

Option 1: In the GUI

Of course, unlike Chrome, Mozilla offers you a GUI interface for disabling auto-updates for the browser. You can disable both the updates for Firefox and disable any checking it will do for Add-ons and Search Engines. http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Updating%20Firefox

Firefox pull down menu – Options – Advanced Tab – Update Sub-Tab

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Option 2: The Group Policy

I personally like to use Group Policies or Policy Preferences to set application settings. There is a Firefox GPO Template that you can find here at Sourceforge.net

This zip file will extract and contain two ADM files. One is for default settings (like the start page and what not) generally found under HKCU in the registry, the user’s profile. The other ADM is for “locked down” firefox. This will add settings to HKLM, the machine, and can be used to disable the auto updates:

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I am a fan of the GPO, though in certain application packaging methods this is not workable as the policy may not apply to the package. A Thinapp package for example needs the settings baked into the package and to change them you must update the package. This could be something as simple as the default start page or something as critical as the auto-updates. In either case the package has to be updated to make the change.

Using a GPO though (as you could with the application in a Unidesk Layer, or in the gold image) will allow you to self-document that changes that have been made and make it easy to back them out or change them if needed

Profiling Customer Success: City of Kent's path to 800 desktops virtualized

Andrew Nadeau — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Next week, another Unidesk customer joins us on a live interactive webinar to discuss their VDI project. On Wednesday, November 16^th at 2:00 PM ET James Hettrick, Technical Services Manager at City of Kent, WA, will talk about how the combination of Unidesk desktop management software for VDI and Pano Logic Zero Clients are allowing the city to virtualize 800 desktops, streamline their desktop operations, and future-proof their desktop fleet.

When talking to James to prepare for this webinar, we quickly realized his story is unique in how the City of Kent has been able to systematize the various processes of desktop management and support. Before embarking on their VDI project back in March of 2011, the City of Kent had 3 helpdesk employees that managed their 1,300 PCs as well as the phones systems and technology needs of their fire engines and police cars. With James and his team maxed out in terms of resources, he knew he needed to build a desktop infrastructure for the future in order to free up resources for more strategic projects like moving to mobile.

The City of Kent’s VDI project had several key goals including:

Creating a simple, yet flexible VDI environment
Making the helpdesk more manageable
Building systems, processes, and accountability into their desktop management practices
Providing workers “anywhere, anytime access” to their desktop
Reducing operating system images to one gold image
Standardizing their applications to make them easy to update and deliver

I won’t steal James’s thunder, so you’ll have to join the webinar where you will learn:

Best practices and lessons learned from the VDI deployment
The processes the City of Kent put in place to manage their virtual desktops
The applications that have been “layered” with Unidesk
How City of Kent was able to get to one pristine gold OS image
How departmental applications – apps needed by only a few people – are being handled
Performance and end-user satisfaction
And ultimately, laying the foundation for the future.

Here are the details on how to join us on November 16^th…

Date: November 16^th at 2:00 PM ET
Time: 2:00 PM ET
Register: http://www.unidesk.com/landing/customer-webinar-city-of-kent-website

We look forward to having you join us.

A Wild October: Extreme Heat, Record Snowfall, and Helping Hands

Andrew Nadeau — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:00:00 +0000

We are a pretty lucky group of people here at Unidesk. We have well-paying jobs that give us the ability to not have to worry about some of the basics in life – a roof over our heads, food on the table, heat, warm clothes, clean water, etc. Sometimes it is easy to take all that we have been afforded for granted, so a few times a year we come together as a company to give back to the community and those less fortunate.

In early October, we decided to participate in the 3^rd Annual Northborough Helping Hands Winter Coat Drive. A few days after circulating an email to bring in your gently used winter gear, we had record temperatures. Boston hit 87 degrees, which was an all-time record – not exactly the type of weather where you think about pulling out your winter gear. However, the team rallied and we put together quite the assortment of coats, jackets, snow pants, boots, gloves, mittens, and more.

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Our donation was just in time as Mother Nature was ready to quickly turn on us in the Northeast. Starting on October 29^th, an area stretching from Washington DC to Maine got hit with one of the worst Nor’easters in history – and this was October! Some towns in western Massachusetts and New Hampshire received up to 3 feet of snow. Where Unidesk is headquartered, we received less snow, but the fact that most trees haven’t lost their leaves yet and temperatures were hovering around the freezing mark – creating a heavy, wet, sticky snow – caused severe damage including fallen trees and downed power lines.

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With the storm hitting on Saturday and into Sunday, towns were forced to reschedule their Halloween festivities. It is now Wednesday; some towns still don’t have electricity, while others have come back online in the last 24 hours. It is always humbling when you lose something that most of us take for granted, and hopefully this will act as a reminder of just how fortunate we are.

Will VDI decrease or increase your desktop TCO?

Chris Midgley — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:17:00 +0000

What's the top benefit you expect to get when you virtualize your desktops? I'll bet most of you will say you expect to substantially reduce the cost of ownership. And that makes a lot of sense, as desktop management is one of the largest cost centers in IT. The approach to managing desktops has changed little in over a decade, making it ripe for improvement.

According to Gartner, the total cost of ownership of desktops is dominantly operational costs (human time), and not capital costs (hardware and software). That's a good thing for VDI, where vendors struggle to get costs even close to physical desktops and laptops. So the question is, does VDI substantially improve operational costs?

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Non-persistent desktops to the rescue

Why is desktop management so expensive? One big reason is that desktops degrade. They start fresh and new and wonderful, and over time get cluttered, confused and slow. So an obvious solution is to make the desktop brand-spanking new each time we use it. Which is exactly what the non-persistent VDI desktop does.

For use cases where everybody can use a homogenous desktop (one that is exactly the same for everyone, and can be flushed out after each session), the benefits are substantial. Desktop not working? Just restart it - you will get a brand new one. The savings potential is tremendous - some IT departments report a 20% or more reduction in help desk and desktop management costs. No level 2 or 3 escalation to fix a desktop - just get a new desktop.

But how many users can adopt non-persistent desktops? This remains a deeply debated topic, with extremes from 90+% to none. The truth is that it depends on too many factors for there to be a "golden rule". But it is well recognized that there are many application needs and personalization requirements, and trying to shoehorn them all into a single desktop has proven impossible. There are many reasons why - from users that need administrative rights (developers, power users, ...), to the high cost and complexity to trying to virtualize all the departmental and user required applications (see How many applications have you virtualized?).

For this model to be successful, you need to be able to have a substantial number of desktops using it. If only 20% of the users can use a non-persistent desktop - then 80% of your costs remain unaffected. That's why VDI is most successful today in the largest of organizations, where they have substantial call centers and task workers that can benefit from this approach - where saving opex costs on even a small fraction of the desktops turns into big savings.

Persistent non-persistent desktops

The latest trend in non-persistent desktops is adding a layer of persistence to them. Technologies such as RingCube (acquired by Citrix) are now providing an ability to add a persistence capability to non-persistent desktops. Now, when users install applications, change settings or do anything else to their desktop, the changes will persist ... they will be there the next time the log in.

The desktop itself is still non-persistent, but what does that mean now that all changes persist? The benefits of easy patching and provisioning desktops generally remains, but the big opex savings of getting a new desktop have disappeared - because the desktop isn't new and fresh each time you get one. It will age and get crufty just like before. And before long, even patching the base O/S and apps in the gold image will start to fail, as settings and executables in the personalization layer start to conflict ... resulting in falling back to using traditional desktop management tools and expensive level 2 and 3 support to debug these problems. And things get even worse when you install departmental applications in individual desktop persistence layers, as those end up being no more supportable than before virtualizing.

Complexity ... the enemy of savings

Why is this all so complicated? It's no surprise when you consider all the different, disconnected components involved in delivering the desktop ... operating systems from the broker, applications from app-virt, user and departmental apps in a personalization layer (and that's a simple view - often there are 5-6 different management consoles to operate VDI). There is no overarching and integrated management of these components, so no surprise that the opex benefits are elusive.

A desktop for everyone

Unidesk takes a different approach. We deliver every aspect of the desktop in individual, tightly integrated layers. One layer for the operating system, multiple layers for the corporate apps, one for more layers for departmental apps, and two layers for the personalization. Instead of different technologies at each of these levels, one holistic solution delivers the entire desktop. Operating system needs to be patched? Do it with a single image across all desktops. Need departmental apps? Put them in layer - manage once, deliver many. Users need administrative rights? Or special one-off apps? Install them directly on the desktop. No need to sequence, package and virtualize your apps just to support them - just install them into a layer once and you are good to go. There are immediate savings just in terms of simplicity and the ability to deliver desktops across the vast majority of your desktop use cases.

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Unidesk holistic layering

But the real savings come when you look at the benefits of a integrated layer solution. By delivering two layers for user personalization, we are able to separate user installed apps and settings (that might break a desktop), from the valuable documents and data. We then automatically snapshot them on a regular basis, allow for complicated desktop problems to be repaired simply by rolling back the applications and settings layer to a recent but prior point in time. All the documents and data remain, and whatever damage the user may have done to the desktop is removed. You might think of this as surgical non-persistence - only remove the damage, not the data.

Maybe even more powerful is our ability to repair a broken application. Let's say Word is failing to work. The only way this can happen is something has changed in the user's persistence layer - as all other layers are non-persistent. You could roll it back, but even easier is to just tell Unidesk to "repair Word". We automatically examine the layer that has Word, and eradicate any conflicts that are found in the users persistence layer. Like magic, a level 1 help desk person can solve a problem that would have required hours and escalation to level 2 or 3.

Real world savings

Want proof? In Ohio, the State’s Department of Developmental Disabilities is 2/3rds through a 1,500 desktop conversion to VDI. With Unidesk, they’ve been able to reallocate 7 of their desktop support staff to finally address their more strategic IT project backlog. In California, Menlo College is in the process of virtualizing all desktops on campus. It was taking Menlo IT staff a combined 800 hours to patch & update their PCs each year. With Unidesk, it's 125. And in Wisconsin, the CIO of the Department of Children and Families recently said "We've realized a 30% savings for workstation support, and about a 40% decrease in call volume to our help desk" since implementing Unidesk and VDI.

One management console. Simple application packaging and delivery. Holistic layering. Innovative desktop repair. Support for nearly all use cases.

That's how you find real opex savings with VDI.

How to disable Google Chrome Auto-Updates (for VDI applications)

Ron Oglesby — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:00:00 +0000

When packaging an application in Unidesk or any other software distribution technology commonly used in virtual desktops (think ThinApp and AppV here) you generally will need to disable any auto-update functionality in the application to ensure the package is updated by IT and not the end-user. This is a first in a series of articles about auto-update functionality in commonly used applications.

Recently a customer was distributing Google Chrome as a Unidesk application layer. After searching the Chrome interface for a bit he could not find a way to disable automatic updates. After a little google-fu and some reading we figured out that Google placed the ability to shutoff updates into an Active Directory policy template (an old school ADM). This also led to the registry location of the setting to disable auto-updates.

So now you have a choice:

You can disable the auto-updates in the Application Layer/Package by setting the registry entry manually.

You can download the policy template and make the setting part of your GPO.

I often moan about admins hacking the gold image with registry entries, but in this case, an application specific change that ONLY changes that application… I can say either method is acceptable.

Method 1: Change the registry entry in the application layer/package

Once you have completed the install of Google Chrome (this should be done with the MSI and not the web installer) launch regedit.exe
Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies
Under Policies add Keys to create the structure of \Google\Update This will result in a key structure of: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update
Within the Update key create a new string value (REG_SZ) named: AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes
Once created set the value to “0” (zero)
Close Regedit.exe

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Method 2: Configure via an Active Directory Group Policy

Detailed Google created instructions can be found here. The following steps are simply an overview for those very familiar with Group Policies and Administrative Templates.

Download the ADM template from here.
Launch your Group policy Editor and create or edit the Policy that will apply the Google Chrome Setting(s)
Under Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates Add the GoogleUpdate ADM
Navigate to Administrative Templates > Google > Google Update > Preferences.
Enable the Auto-udpate check period override policy and check the box for Disable all auto-update checks

References:

http://dl.google.com/update2/enterprise/GoogleUpdate.adm

http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/turning-off-auto-updates

"VDI in Education" Webinars Showcase Desktop Virtualization Successes at Colleges and Universities

Tom Rose — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:08:00 +0000

We just aired the third and final webinar in our Fall 2011 "VDI in Education" webinar series, highlighting desktop virtualization deployments at University of Connecticut, Southwestern Michigan College, and William Woods University. Over 600 people registered to hear the VDI project leads at these schools talk about their technology choices, lessons learned, and benefits realized. That 600+ registered proves VDI is hot in higher ed. But it also shows colleges and universities are searching for true VDI success stories, and want to hear about real implementations from their peers before they get too deep into their projects. Well, if you missed the live events, full replays of all three are available on-demand here.

You'll find that while each school had similar goals, they all had their own unique spin on VDI:

The UConn vPC project is a large, collaborative effort spanning the School of Business, School of Engineering, and Library, and features a diverse mix of persistent and non-persistent faculty, lab, and library desktops. UConn's VDI solution set includes Samsung/Teradici integrated zero clients, VMware View brokering software, Unidesk virtual desktop management software, VMware vSphere virtualization infrastructure, Dell PowerEdge servers, and Dell EqualLogic storage. In addition to the webinar replay, you can find a detailed account of their VDI journey at the UConn vPC web site http://vpc.uconn.edu
Southwestern Michigan College wanted to benefit from enhanced lab access, greater student mobility, improved classroom flexibility, and lower desktop support costs - without a high upfront CapEx investment. They achieved this by using a mix of Pano Logic zero clients and re-purposed PCs for virtual desktop access, VMware View for connection brokering, Unidesk for desktop management, and VMware vSphere running on Dell servers with local storage for infrastructure (taking advantage of Unidesk's ability to provision virtual desktops using only locally attached disk).
William Woods had similar goals as the others. But they needed to implement VDI in a compressed time frame - just 4 weeks! Their solution was Wyse zero clients, VMware View, Unidesk, VMware vSphere, HP servers, and Dell EqualLogic storage.

When people registered for the webinars, we also asked them to fill out a short survey. We now have lots of great data on what broker, storage, and hypervisor are being considered for VDI, what the biggest concerns are with VDI, and how many desktops are being virtualized. In an upcoming blog, I'll share some of these results.

Thanks to our co-sponsors and technology alliance partners Dell, VMware, and Wyse for participating with us in these webinars. But our biggest thanks goes to UConn's Jeremy Pollack (@JeremyPollackUC), Southwestern Michigan's Don Magee (@donmagee), and William Woods' Steven Goodson for their excellent presentations, and their willingness to share their VDI (and Unidesk) success stories.

Slow IE 9 Performance and Printing in VDI?

Ron Oglesby — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Last week a customer was complaining of sluggish performance and specifically that when using IE or attempting to print from IE 9 in their virtual desktops it took a long time to bring up the printing menu. When I say a long time… think a minute or more. Now that seems slow, but its really glacier slow in desktop terms. I mean, sit there and watch the second hand on your clock for 60 seconds and imagine waiting for ANYTHING from your PC for a minute. That is a long time.

Well after digging around we found that this had nothing to do with Unidesk and was instead a function of a setting in Internet Explorer that takes about a second to resolve.

So, let’s start with the fix first, then explain a little about what is going on under the covers.

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So you need to select "Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering". This setting tells IE to use the CPU instead of the attempting to access the GPU generally availble on regular desktops. Checking this and restarting the browser brought performance back to where it should be for our customer.

After finding the “fix” and doing some digging around we found this Microsoft KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2528233 that said:

Hardware acceleration is a new functionality of Internet Explorer 9 that allows Internet Explorer to move all graphics and text rendering from the Central Processing Unit (CPU) to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). In some cases it’s necessary to enable or disable hardware acceleration to check for hardware or software compatibility issues with viewing certain internet websites.

Sounds great, but in a VDI environment does your VM have access to the GPU? Probably not, for most of us! Also of note (from one of the IE blogs are Microsoft) is that when IE is attempting to use the GPU and you have bad/incompatible driver it can cause IE crashes (this is besides the slow performance).

Basically everything I have seen is pointing to setting IE9 to use software rendering in your VDI images unless you are hosting these VMs on Windows Server 2008 R2 w/ SP1 with a processor that supports SLAT.

For now… I’ll be using the software emulation.