VMware View

Apr

I have presented at BriForum from 2011 – 2012, vForums and various VMUGS but never at VMworld. I had a pretty lack lustred effort this year on my submission to BriForum and it showed. I was also betting on two other vendors for my APEX + GPU + View 5.2 to become a reality at BriForum so I am not surprised nor mad.

I’ve made serious efforts with VMworld sessions in the past with out much luck. I am very hopeful this year though. My session this year – 5060 Benchmarking the Horizon Workspace Appliance with Performance and Scalability – is pretty cool. The session is a chance to showcase new a approach to load testing the Horizon Workspace. I hope I get the chance to co-present with Manrat Chobchuen from VMware.

If doesn’t happen it will be great for my local VMUG!

Pick want you want to see at VMworld while the voting is open

Apr

Brian Madden Discusses Strategies for Scaling VDI Infrastructure with @langonej

By dlessner | Featured, Nutanix, Storage, VMware View

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* Predictable scalability
* Largest Customers today all started with one block
* One node at a time
* Server and Desktop Virtualization are not the same

Apr

Nutanix RA VMware Horizon Suite Overview – 5000 connections & 400 Desktops

By dlessner | Horizon, VMware View

1 Comment

In a 2U Block 5000 Horizon Data Connections & 400 desktops

I normally don’t brag but it’s a known secret is I told Steve Poitras to use black marker, you’re welcome.

Apr

How to deliver GPU-like experience remotely with a Teradici APEX 2800 Card

By dlessner | Featured, Horizon, VMware View

1 Comment

I had the opportunity to watch a webcast on the Teradici APEX 2800 card I wanted to share the import bits.

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Apr

Nutanix on Scaling Horizon Mirage

By dlessner | Featured, Horizon, Virtualization, VMware View

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Nutanix was the first vendor to release a VMware Horizon Reference Architecture (RA) laying out the suite on one Nutanix Block, including Horizon Data and providing load test data in the RA. There was one piece that was left out, Horizon Mirage. Horizon Mirage today was built for physical PC’s but some people in the community have already talked about how to make it work with Horizon View, including VMware employees. Mirage can be used to help manage Branch Office Desktops(BOD) utilizing VDI and Nutanix has a co-authored solution for BOD with VMware but this post is focusing on Mirage with Physical PC’s

VMware Horizon Suite Reference Architecture

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Mar

Old or New, It’s a GP 4 U: NVIDIA VCA

By dlessner | Featured, VMware View

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Now that GPU virtualization is being supported at the hypervisor layer both user and vendor alike are rushing to use and get new products out the door, Nutanix included. Like anything new in the Enterprise space, the wheels of change can sometimes be slow. Upgrading a 2,000+ VDI enviroment consisting of hypervisor and your favorite flavour of VDI can take some time to sort out and push through the bowls of change management. On the vendor side of the house the GRID K1 & GRID K2 cards are huge power sucking beasts, new hardware is going to be needed. If your thinking about putting these cards in a server that’s not listed you might want to talk to the NVIDA rep that the server has enough airflow to cool the card.
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Mar

Horizon View Composer Appliance

By dlessner | Featured, Nutanix, VMware View

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View Composer gets stuck with a lot of the heavy lifting but is also the source of a lot problems with View. Now that you can split off the View Composer service onto it’s own machine why not turn it into your own appliance? I’ve always liked the idea of fast all in one recovery of services. SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Database size limit was increased to 10GB so it should be more than sufficient to hold your View Composer Database.
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Mar

Horizon View: PCoIP Transport Header

By dlessner | VMware View

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There isn’t a good way to sex up this title! New Horizon View 5.2 documenation finally calls out a GPO setting that was there since 5.1, Configure the PCoIP transport header. It will be intresting to see what vendors will come out with features to take advantage of the this new header. My money is on Riverbed and F5, I guess we wait and see.
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Mar

Horizon View 5.2 & Lync 2013 Support – Are You Covered?

By dlessner | Featured, Horizon, VMware View

I think it’s amazing that VMware and Microsoft are working together to support Horizon View 5.2 and Lync 2013. From my understanding the two companies have only come together since last summer so this is great work at bringing the engineering teams together. The problem though for most enterprises that I see is the deployment of Zero Clients, which is will not supported for Lync 2013 when View 5.2 goes GA.

Lync 2013 features with VMware View desktops

Presence	Supported
Instant Message	Supported
Desktop Sharing	Supported
Application Sharing	Supported
PowerPoint Sharing	Supported
Whiteboards	Supported
File transfer	Supported
Online meetings	Supported
Office Integration	Supported
Audio	Supported (with Lync 2010, this used to only be supported via IP-Phone)
Video	Supported (with Lync 2010, this was never supported)
Recording audio	Unsupported

You will have to deploy Lync software components on your virtual machines and client devices. So the client devices can only be Windows 7 or Windows 8 devices.

Different components of the VMware View and Microsoft Lync 2013 architecture

The Lync VDI plugin that runs on the Windows client needs to be at least have 1.5GHz CPU and minimum of 2GB RAM.

On your Lync Server 2013, ensure that EnableMediaRedirection is set to TRUE for all VDI users. As part of the Lync Server setup, make sure you generate a certificate and add this certificate to their Windows Client Machine. The certificate will need to be placed in the “Trusted Root Certificate Authorities” directory. The Lync VDI 2013 plugin will not pair up with the Lync 2013 client running inside the remote desktop if this step is not completed. You may also have to place a host file on the endpoint if the endpoint is not on the same domain as the Lync Server.

It’s also good point out you want to make sure the USB headsets and WebCams are not redirected to the VM. You want the traffic to go between the clients via the plugin.

Overall the Lync 2013 support is great but just make sure you know that zero clients are still not covered. Zero clients will still suffer from hair-pinning traffic in the datacenter and not get the benefits of WAN optimization for Voice traffic. Zero Clients can still work you just really need to nail down the Network Best Practices for PCoIP. Other clients will be added but it appears the ball is in Microsoft court. Microsoft still needs to provides it’s components to the other clients but Zero client support seem away down the road.

Feb

View Accelerated – 3D Graphics with Horizon View 5.2

By dlessner | Featured, VMware View

13 Comments

View 5.2 brings Hardware accelerated graphics for 3D and high performance graphical workloads. vSGA (Shared Accelerated Graphics) in View 5.2 will allow uses cases such as Adobe, CAD, CAM, HTML5 and will even give better user experience to Microsoft Office that is increasing using more 3D features.

vSGA will also help to increase user densities by allowing multiple VMs sharing single GPU. vSGA supports DirectX and OpenGL and doesn’t prevent the use of vMotion, HA or DRS. vSGA will allow you even to vMotion from a host with a supported physical GPU to host without a physical GPU. Desktops remain portable regardless of the Hardware.

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