Today, more than any other day, I seem to have VDI/End User Computing on the brain. Man I HEART EUC !!   It probably started a few weeks back when I decided it was time to update my home lab to VMware Horizon View 5.2.  Some of the new features like Unity Touch and HTML5 “Blast” started getting me re-excited about where this new(ish) Market is moving towards.  Dare I say, It seems that 2013 just might be the year of End User Computing.  At least if it doesn’t happen, it won’t be from a lack of trying ! 

What has happened for sure is a shift away from it just being a Virtual Desktop (VDI) conversation.  I think we’ve truly started to recognize that End User Computing/Mobile Computing is way more involved then just spinning up a Windows 7 desktop onto an iPad device. Think about this, what applications can you currently not live without?  For me, it’s things like Evernote (I LIVE in this), it’s Syncplicity (Dropbox, Horizon Data etc), it’s Gmail (vTexan, StorageTexan etc), Facebook/Linkedin and Clash of Clans (I know…I’m a nerd) and you know what each of those applications allow me to do?  Access it from any sort of end point device I may own, and it doesn’t require me to have a Windows 7 desktop to access it.   By the way, blocking access to these services via firewalls doesn’t stop them from using them.  TRUST ME. 

You know what else has gotten me excited about EUC, and why I think this might be the year?  Its probably because of the answers I’ve seen when I ask the following questions at each of my presentations:

1. How many of you in the room have a Smartphone of some sort?  100% of the room will usually raise their hands.
2. How many of you in the room have some sort of Tablet/iPad type device? 75% of the room will raise their hands.
3. How many of you in the room have a laptop of some sort? usually 100% of the room will raise their hands.
4. And my FAVORITE QUESTION!!  How many of you in the room, have used all 3 devices already today? – 75% of the room raises their hand and laughs at how nerdy we collectively all are

The funny part is I could ask this same question at my next family reunion and get the same kinds of results.  My wife (and kids) has a smartphone, we own a couple of tablets and she has a laptop and she uses all 3 of them on a daily basis’s.   Guess what, I used to think I was just a “Power User/Nerdy-Nerd” but then I started realizing that more and more people are fitting that description.  Just go ask some random people at your company those same questions and you will start to realize that end users have shifted their habits and access to be more mobile friendly. 

I think EUC/Mobile Computing is becoming to big to simply ignore.  Because end users are utilizing public cloud services like DropBox, IT has to make sure they are not loosing relevancy inside their own organization.  There needs to be a renewed focus around IT Transformation (I blogged about this here: http://www.vtexan.com/2012/10/23/it-transformation/ ) and End User Computing is one of those focuses in the IT Transformation process.

This is why I keep hammering home that it’s no longer about Virtual Desktops, it truly is starting to be more and more about End User Computing and EUC is WAY WAY more then just VDI.  Sometimes you need VDI to deliver access to a certain application or a document.  Sometimes you need things like Citrix XenApp or Microsoft AppV to deliver applications and other times, and I would argue a LOT of the times, you just want access to your “My Documents” folder from multiple devices.  Syncplicity, VMware Horizon Data and Dropbox are becoming mandatory.

Take it to the next step, I’m starting to see more and more of a use case for Syncplicity/ HorizonData/ Dropbox as a GREAT disaster recovery solution for the mobile workforce.  Just ask yourself the following question.  If you’re laptop/workstation were to die right now, what is that ONE thing you wish you could get back.  It’s not applications I bet !! it’s your MyDocument’s folder (or for those of you that live with EVERYTHING on your desktop screen, it’s your Desktop Folder).  Imagine using shared folder solutions as a disaster recovery option for your end users. 

So all of these examples above are why I feel like I’m seeing a larger shift towards End User Computing strategies.  It’s becoming to big for IT Departments to ignore. This is why I HEART EUC so much.  It such a crazy and fun time to be in IT !

Thanks,

@vTexan

Hopefully you have been keeping up with my blog series on updating your VMware View 5.2 environment.  So far we’ve done the following:

Updated the VMware Connection Broker

Added the new End User Experience Pack to the Broker

We’ve updated VMware View Composer

Updated the View Agent & Installed the Remote Experience Pack into the desktop

Created a new Desktop Pool in Horizon View 5.2

By the way, this is also pretty close to the steps needed to install Horizon View 5.2 from scratch. 

Anyway, all the work we’ve done to upgrade our Horizon View 5.2 environment is so that we can take advantage of some of the new features.  HTML5 was formally known as “App Blast” at all of the latest VMware shows and conferences.  Unity Touch was relatively new add but in my opinion, the most significant and cool feature to the Remote User Experience pack.  I’ve dedicated this blog posts to these two features.

If you are not familiar with HTML5, it’s a feature that allows you to run your Virtual Desktop inside an HTML 5 compatible browser.  It looks, feel, acts just like you were running this in a dedicated RDP session expect it’s a TAB in your browser.  This is a 1.0 release and with that it has a lot of limitations when compared to the full blown View Client, but if you are just looking to jump into a Virtual Desktop quickly, you can’t beat HTML5.

Unity Touch is my favorite of the new features.  This really allows smaller end point devices like iPad’s (Mini and full blown) as well as Android Tablet devices to be a TON more useable.  If you have big old man hands like mine, it can sometimes be REALLY difficult on an iPad Mini to select the applications or documents you want.  Unity Touch offers a slidebar tab inside the client with lots of shortcuts to apps and documents.  Like I said, its probably my most favorite new feature.

So lets get into it already !

Fun with VMware Horizon View 5.2 HTML5

First things first, let’s look at the new HTML5 access feature.  If you have not had a chance, point your web browser to your View Connection Server https://VIEWServer.FQDN/ –

1. From this screen you can see that you have 2 options. You can download the View Client, or you can click on the HTML Access box. Click on the VMware Horizon View HTML Access button.

2. Next screen will ask you to log into your view connection server.  Enter in your credentials.

3.This screen will show you all of the desktops your account is entitled to use.  In this case I have one called Testing Pool, let’s click on the Testing Pool.

4. And that’s it, if we set everything up correctly, you should now see your Windows 7 Desktop image.

5.  You want to see Microsoft Visio running on a Mac   Check this out !!  BOOOOM

So that’s it for HTML5.  As I pointed out above, this is a 1.0 release that has a TON of promise. 

Let’s get into Unity Touch now.

Fun with VMware Horizon View – Unity Touch Feature

Unity Touch is probably the #1 reason I would recommend going through the process of updating your View 5 environment to 5.2. It just makes using the iPad VMware Horizon View App so much more useable !

Open up the VMware Horizon View Client on your iPad and launch the view client.  Make sure you are running the latest and great version of the client by the way.

1. First things first, if you don’t already have your View Connection Server setup, click on the + Symbol and add your Horizon View Connection Server into it.  Once you do that, you will see it show up under the Cloud Symbol.  Click on it:

2. This will prompt you to type in your credentials.

3.  This will take you right into your Desktop session.  Notice the little tab “thingy” (Technical Term) on the left.  That’s the Unity Touch area.  Just drag it to the right and you will see all sorts of cool things

4.  The first thing you will notice is the All Programs Area as well as My Files.  This makes finding and running your applications really quick.  Instead of trying to click on Start, Programs, Click on the folder that the app sits in and then finally clicking on the app, you can do all that from this window. 

5. Let’s say you want to launch Visio using Unity Touch.  Click on All Programs, then Microsoft Office  (By the way – lessons learned on this – I installed Visio from my ipad’s desktop session so I could show these screen shots, it didn’t show up in the Unity Touch All Programs area until I rebooted the desktop. So keep that in mind if you run into an issue getting an app to show up.)

6. Now you will see Microsoft Visio 2010 – just click on that:

7. BOOOOM there is Visio running.  Sooooo cool and really easy to move around the desktop.

8. If you go back to the Unity Touch Tab, you will see that various applications you have running.  In this case I opened up Notepad and Calculator just to show multiple applications running.  If I want to switch between the three, I don’t have to go to the task bar and mess around with trying to click on a running app, I can just go to the side panel and select it.  By the way, while this might not be a big deal on a giant iPad, on the iPad mini this makes it (Mini) SOOOO much more useful for an end user.

That’s it for Unity Touch !

So as you can see, there is a TON of new features put into VMware Horizon View 5.2 Remote User Experience Pack.  If HTML5 feature is not enough to motivate you to upgrade, then I think Unity Touch probably puts you over the upgrade mark.  It’s that impressive and from a usability perspective, your users will love the new capabilities !

Once again, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave them as comments below.

Thanks,

@vTexan

Updated the VMware Connection Broker

Added the new End User Experience Pack to the Broker

We’ve updated VMware View Composer

Updated the View Agent & Installed the Remote Experience Pack into the desktop

Now, we want to take advantage of all of that work and create a pool that supports these new features.  Normally, you could just recompose with the updated Golden Image (with 5.2 and the Remote Experience Pack add on) and make adjustments in the pool settings but since I’m on a home lab, I’m just going to create it from scratch.

So lets log into the new Horizon View Console and get ready:

1. Go to “https:\\YouViewConnectionBroker.FQDN\Admin and log in.

2. Notice everything is green, green is good ! – Click on Pools

3. Now lets create our first pool – click on Add

4. I’m going to select Automated Pool and click next

5. What fun is having a dedicated desktop in a lab !?! Lets choose Floating

6. Again, what’s the fun of full virtual machines, lets do View Composer Linked Clones !

7. Now it’s time to name the Pool – pick a good one because you can’t rename it once you are done.

8. Just one thing I want to point out on this screen, first feel free to make the changes you want to, but at the very least make sure you check the box on HTML Access for this desktop pool

9. For the naming pattern, I kept it really simple.  Just keep in mind, if you are interested in fancy you can try Desktop={n:fixed=2} which will cause the desktop names to be Desktop01, Desktop02 etc.  If you want it to say Test_Pool then just type Test_Pool={n:fixed=2} etc.  If you want 3 digits, change the =2 to =3 etc etc etc.  I’m sure you get the idea.  Either way, lets move on.

10.I selected to not redirect the disposable files – you can keep the default if you want.

11. Depending on how you have you lab setup, you can choose to separate out your Replica’s and LinkedClones on to separate Datastores.  For instance, I happen to have 2(ea) SSD’s in my Iomega PX6-300D that I setup as a Datastore.  I normally put my replica’s on it because Replica’s are mostly reads and that works well with SSD.  For this I’m just taking the default of keeping it all on the same datastore.

12. So this screen is where you make most of your choices on desktop images, which cluster and folders you want the desktops to deploy to etc.  The Parent VM is the one we installed the updated View 5.2 agent as well as the remote experience pack.  You should have shut down that VM and made a snapshot of it.  Once you did that, it will show up in the Browse section of the ParentVM area.  If not, go make sure its powered down and with a snapshot.

13. here are some new advanced options in View 5 as well as a tech preview of some NFS VAAI features.  Sadly, my Iomega doesn’t support it so I’m going to move on.

14. On this screen, I’m changing my AD container to one I setup a while back for my View5 Desktops.  This is also where you can choose QuickPrep or SysPrep.  I chose QuickPrep

15. We are just about done, the last thing I’m going to do is check the box to entitle the users after the wizard is done.  You can do it then, or wait for the desktops to be provisioned and then go in and entitle the users.

16. The next window asks you to pick users or groups to entitle.  I simply chose the Admin group.  Click okay and lets go watch it go – move over to vCenter and check the logs

17. In vCenter you can start to see it creating the Virtual Desktops machines.

18. Once that is complete, you should be able to click in the Pools area and see that the desktops have completed.  Don’t forget to hit the refresh button on the right side if you don’t see any changes.

Boom – We are done creating the pool and now we are ready to play around with our new desktops !  Make sure you have updated your VMware View Client to the latest and greatest – if you need to download it, just surf over to https:\\ViewConnectionServer-FQDN\ (no admin at the end) and you will see a screen that will allow you to download the client, and if you did everything right you should also see a new option to launch an HTML Browser version !  W0OT !

Lets move on to the next part, playing around with HTML Blast and Unity Touch.

@vTexan

So hopefully you’ve been following along on my adventures of upgrading my VMware View 5.1 environment to the latest VMware Horizon View 5.2 in my home lab.  So far we’ve done the following:

Updated the VMware Connection Broker.

Added the new End User Experience Pack to the Broker

We’ve updated VMware View Composer

Up to this point, we’ve been upgrading most of the major components.  Now we are going to upgrade the golden master desktop image to View agent 5.2 and also install the new Remote Experience Feature pack.  If you aren’t familiar with this, it’s the new HTML Blast as well as the Unity Touch feature that was talked about at last years VMworld.  – Andre Leibovici over at MyVirtualCloud.Net went into some pretty good detail on some of the new stuff: http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=4627

First things first, lets power up the master image and console into it to see what version I was running before.  To do that, go to Control Panel, Programs and Features and scroll down and we can see this image is running 5.0.0 so it’s time to take this to 5.2 !

1. Double click the VMware View Agent 64bit icon and lets get this started.

2. You should see the familiar splash screen:

3. Next you will see the “Welcome to the Install Wizard” screen…click Next

4 – accept the EULA

5 – In the Customer Setup area, you can pick and choose which options you want.  I took the defaults and clicked Next.

6 – At this point, it’s ready to install everything we’ve asked it to do.  So just click INSTALL

7 – We are almost done.  Just click FINISH

8 – Now you will see that the install requires a reboot.  Once the system comes back online, we will move to the next part which is installing the HTML Blast Feature pack.

Now that the Windows VM is back online, lets go ahead and install the Remote Experience Feature pack.  To do that go to the download folder and double click the VMware Horizon View 5.2 Remote Experience Agent

1. Double click the install icon

2. Accept the EULA

3. Here you will see the options to install the HTML Access and Unity Touch – take the defaults and click INSTALL

4. And you will see the progress

5.  If everything works, you will see the “Setup Completed” screen and you can click Finish.

That was easy.  I would release the IP from the command line and then power down the VM and get it ready for the pool creation process.

Now let’s go create a new pool to take advantage of these new features.

@vTexan

So far we’ve been going down the journey of updating a VMware View 5.1 environment to VMware Horizon View 5.2.  Let’s review what we’ve done so far:

We’ve updated our Connection Broker

We’ve added in the new End User Experience Pack

In this blog post I’m going to take you step by step through the process of taking an older version of VMware View Composer to VMware View Composer 5.2.0-xxxxx  which is now part of the rebranded VMware Horizon View bundle.

By the way, I think this changed in View 5.0 (Thanks Mr @TheSanzone for pointing this out to me – VDI rockstar !) , but you no longer have to install Composer on your vCenter server if you don’t want.  I do, simply because this is a home lab and I don’t need yet another 2GB – 4GB Windows VM running ! 

First things first, lets verify what version we are currently running.  To do this RDP into your VMware vCenter server, then click on Start – Control Panel – Programs and Features and scroll down until you see VMware View Composer.  In this case, I’m running 3.0.0.691993

So lets get this install party going !

1. Download from the Downloads.VMware.com – Horizon View Suite – VMware Horizon View 5.2 Area – Scroll down until you see the following VMware-ViewComposer5.2.XXXXX and download it to your vCenter Server.

.

2. Surf to the folder you downloaded the file to and double click the icon:

3. You should see a splash screen showing you that you are installing/upgrading View Composer 5.2

4. Go ahead and click Next on the Installation Wizard screen

5. The next box asks you to either accept or not the VMware End User License Agreement.  Click next.

6.Take the defaults on what folder to install this to.

7. Here you will need the password you used when you setup your View5 Database.  If you don’t remember, see if this blog post will jog your memory (Creating View 5 Database in SQL 2008 R2)

8. Keep the default port settings and default SSL certificate (unless you need to change them for your environment)

9. If everything worked fine, you should get the Ready to Install box – click Install

10. Watch it gooooooooo

11. Again, if everything goes well you should see the following “Installer Completed” message.

12. The next thing you will see is the vCenter server needs to be rebooted.  Click Yes.

13.Once vCenter comes back online, go to Control Panel, Programs and Features and verify that it’s been updated to 5.2.  BOOOOM.  We are done with this.

That was EASY PEASY !  Lets move on to the next step in our upgrade process.  It’s time to tackle the Agents inside the master image and then recompose, or in my case create a new Pool to take advantage of the new features !

<Link to Blog post on Updating Agents>.  (Coming soon)

@vTexan

Some of the most anticipated updates in Horizon View 5.2 is bundled into something called the VMware View End User Experience Pack.  This pack includes some really cool features that the VMware View team has been showing off over the last couple of years. 

One of the really cool features in VMware Horizon View is the new HTML access capability.  This was formally known as “App Blast” and is now know as the HTML5 access feature.  It should be pointed out, this is a 1.0 release and with that it comes up a little short on what the expectations will be for the feature moving forward.  Don’t get me wrong, it is PRETTY COOL as it is now, but I know what they want to do with it and am looking forward to seeing that being delivered in future releases. 

The install is pretty straight forward, you just need to keep in mind that you need 2 things to install.  One is the Feature pack on the connection broker and the second is adding the feature pack to the Windows Desktop master image. 

Oh ya, in addition to all of that, your VMware Horizon View environment needs to be at 5.2.  If you aren’t sure where to start in this upgrade, never fear, I’ve documented it HERE  

So lets get on with installing the HTML5 Feature pack.

First, if you haven’t done so, check out the following VMware produced Installation and Administration Guide located here: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/horizon-view/horizon-view-52-feature-pack-document.pdf 

To download the bits, you can surf over to: downloads.vmware.com and go to VMware Horizon View (not Suite) and then scroll down to the bottom and you will see the Features Pack Area and click on View Download

Now scroll down to the VMware Horizon View HTML Access x86-1.0.xxxx and download the EXE file.

1.Double click on the install ICON.

2. The first window that pops up is the install box.  Click Next

3.Accept the EULA – or not :0

4. Choose your destination folder.

5. If everything is going well, you will see the “ready to install VMware Horizon View HTML Access” window below:

6. Once everything is done installing, you will see the “completed the VMware Horizon View HTML access Setup Wizard” screen.  Click finish.

7.  Now we can surf into Start – Control Panel – Features-Programs – and verify that VMware Horizon View HTML Access 1.0.0 is completed.

The next step in this upgrade process is to upgrade the View Agents as well as adding in the HTML Blast feature pack in the master Desktop Images.  We also need to go upgrade VMware Composer so that should be on next step, then we can tackle the Master Image/Agents etc.

@vTexan

I’ve been getting a lot of questions around VMware Horizon View 5.2 and some of the new features.  Unfortunately it’s been a while since I’ve updated my home View Environment so I figured I would take the opportunity to update the lab and get some hands on with some of the new features.  For those of you that are not familiar with the new stuff, check out Andre Leibovici’s overview here: http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=4627 

First things first, my plan of attack looks like this:

I’ve decided to update my environment in this order:

• Connection Broker
• Connection Broker Feature Pack
• Composer
• Agent + Feature Pack
• Scream at my home lab, and VMware about implementing and troubleshooting stupid Certificates
• Create Net-New Pool  (no reason other then I wanted to)

So with that said, let’s get started with updating VMware View 5.0 to VMware Horizon View 5.2

The first step in the View 5.2 Upgrade process is to get VMware View Connection Server up to 5.2.  First things first, lets see what version we are currently at.  To do that RDP into your Connection Server – go to Start – Control Panel – Programs and Features – and scroll down until you see VMware View Connection Server and in this case I’m running 5.1.0.704644. 

Go to  Downloads.VMware.Com – Horizon View Suite – VMware Horizon View 5.2 area and then scroll down to VMware-ViewConnectionServer-x86_64-5.2xxxxxx.  Download that to your current VMware View Connection Server’s desktop.

1. Go to the folder you downloaded the install file and double click on the install icon.

2. The first thing you should see if the Connection Server 5.2 splash screen.

3. Click NEXT to get the install process going.

4. Click the “I accept the terms” radio button (or not) and then click NEXT.

5. If everything looks good, you will see the “ready to install the program” window – click INSTALL

6. and away it goes !

7. If everything looks great, then click on the Installer Completed window and then click FINISH.

My recommendation is to reboot the Connection Server and then go into Start-Control-Panel-Programs and Features to verify that it’s been updated:

Next thing we want to do, and especially since we want to play with some of the cool new Horizon stuff is to install the Feature pack.  That’s the next blog post.

@vTexan

The good news is I’m pretty passionate about the topic so it makes content creation/stealing a lot easier   I’m also not a big fan of vendor specific keynotes so if you are expecting an EMC commercial, you will be sadly disappointed.   Just to give you an idea as to what I’ll be discussing, here is a brief description:

Over the last 10 years, virtualization has drastically changed the way IT Departments focus their time and effort.  After solving challenges such as time to deploy, availability, consolidation etc we have gained new challenges such as scale and complexity.  The great news is we can learn on the examples of other industries to solve these new challenges and learn from others’ mistakes !! 

So I’ll leave you with a little riddle:

What do the Boeing 747, Stealth Bomber and Google Car all have in common ?  Come to my keynote to find out !

The VMUG Details:

Sheraton Austin at the Capital
701 East 11th Street
Austin, TX 78701
Click here for directions.

Agenda is located here: http://www.vmug.com/p/cm/ld/fid=790

Registration starts at 8am in the Capitol View Terrace and then the VMUG welcome is from 8:30am to 8:45am.  Then all hell breaks loose with me at 8:45 to 9:45 !!  So you want to stick around and see that !!

By the way, the new addition to my team Brad Shive will be speaking at his very first VMUG so I would appreciate any support and friendly faces in his session as well !!  I’m looking forward to seeing him present, I’ve been told he’s pretty good !  No pressure Brad

So I would love to see as many friend faces as possible next week !!  Even if you can’t stay for the whole event, if you can sneak away for a couple of hours in the morning I’d appreciate the support !

Thanks and see you guys next week !

Tommy @vTexan Trogden

The results are in !!  In 2012 a vTexan.com was ranked 30th and this year we moved up 10 spots to #20 !!  W0OT !!   AWESOME!

First and foremost THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!  Secondly thank you Eric Siebert for working hard to pull this together !! 

Make sure you head over to http://vsphere-land.com/news/2013-top-vmware-virtualization-blog-voting-results.html to see all the results.  While you are there, I would encourage you to check out some of the blogs listed.  All 240+ add value to the greater community and you never know what sort of cool nugget of information you will pick up !!

Again – THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!

TommyT aka vTexan !

Vote here: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1165270/Top-vBlog-2013 

It’s that time of year again where Eric Siebert and group over at vSphere-Land.com start the process of ranking the top virtualization bloggers in the industry.  I can only imagine how much work goes into tabulating these results !  There looks to be well over 200 bloggers which is just CRAZY !!

I’m looking forward to seeing the results here in a few weeks !!  I’m also pretty excited to see the number of new bloggers entering the social media world !!

A word of advice, vSphere-Land is doing a lot of backend stuff to make sure that people aren’t running up the votes.  If you are on a corporate network, you might be better off submitting your vote via your phone/iPad (off of your company network) or from your home office.  Also, you will need a valid e-mail address to submit as well !  Oh, one last thing, after you pick your 10 favorites, the next screen will have you rank them 1 – 10.  If you rank someone #1 they get 10(ea) First place votes if you rank them #10, they only get 1 vote so keep that in mind. 

As always, if you’ve found my blog to be helpful, or entertaining at the very least I would appreciate your vote !! 

Thanks,
@vTexan