I attended a total of four sessions today kicking off with Hyper-V for VMware Administrators by Mike Nelson, whilst I’m quite happy with the features and functionality of Hyper-V 3.0, I was keen to know if my somewhat biased opinions when it comes to vSphere vs Hyper-V were indeed correct. I found the session really insightful and it was good to get engagement and different opinions from delegates as well as the presenter. Of course the outcome as expected is there is only one hypervisor worth looking at being VMware vSphere (I joke). It was good to hear about the different configuration maximums as well as the meaningful comparison between features and functionality and the considerations when deploying a Hyper-V solution. The general feeling seems to be Microsoft have done a good job with Hyper-V 3.0 but the pricing and packaging regarding the management tools can cause further cost considerations to be a barrier and still leave vSphere a cost effective solution.

My next session was Brian and Gabes 5 x 15mins sessions covering many topics, a few of interest to me were are user installed applications really a requirement, all wifi users should be treated as external users and VDI vs RDS. This was a great session again with audience interaction but it was also great to see how Brian and Gabe work together, with Brian happy to make radical and sweeping statements and Gabe standing back and taking the considered approach, between them they are sometimes able to agree on the middle ground. Im not going to micro analyse this session but if you were at BriForum London and missed it check out the video or be sure to attend Chicago.

During the break I had a chance to catch-up with the few vendors I missed yesterday one stood out for me and that was Lakeside Software, I met these guys at VMworld last year and was pleased to learn that as of July 2012 they now have a UK based EMEA team which has grown significantly since I last saw them, prior to this it was ran purely from the US and this made engagement very difficult. Lakeside make desktop analysis and monitoring software. I have used many other solutions in this space and was pleased to see how Lakeside works in comparison, their UI looks slick and purposeful and I was particularly impressed by the dashboards, reporting and tools that not only help you get the information to plan your desktop refresh but also have tools that help you compute that information to make the final decisions. I’m looking forward to following this conversation up after the conference and seeing it working in my lab. Watch the blog as a blogpost is sure to follow.

My final two sessions were by the guys from PQR and Login Consultants that run the Virtual Reality Check, if you are not aware of what these guys do, I strongly recommend you head over to their website http://www.virtualrealitycheck.com as ever their sessions were insightful and backed up heavily with their various findings. Watch out next week for some new white papers from them.

This was the end of BriForum finished off with a final word from Brian Madden, no announcement was made about next year but hopefully I will be able to attend again.

I had originally planned to get on with some work on the train to London but unfortunately my lack of access to my business documents and poor internet connection had meant I was unable to collect them via VMware View, this does highlight the importance on the availability of users data to be productive on mobile devices, as even though I had a device capable of editing and working on my documents I was let down by the fact they were only stored on a CIFs share rather than another more available platform or at least a method for receiving one document over a low bandwidth connection. There are of course a number of solutions to this such as a VPN, Sharepoint Server or something more modern like Horizon Data, AppSense Data Now etc.

During my day I was able to effectively use it for tweeting, emailing, connecting into View sessions to catch up with work where needed, taking notes, I was surprisingly also able to charge my iPhone twice without draining the surface and also download my photos via the USB cable to use in a blog post written in Word. So far I have no regrets only bringing my RT based device.

BriForum London kicked off yesterday taking place near St Paul’s Cathedral at the ETC Venues conference facility. Once I stopped trying to follow google maps to get there (Which was trying to take me somewhere about a mile away) I joined the registration queue and quickly headed into the opening keynote by Brian Madden. The first part of the keynote was a review of what was said last year during the keynote, with the end concentrating on the improvements that have happened since, that are starting to make VDI a more cost effective and viable solution from where we were in the past. These included hardware offloaded graphics processing and single instance block storage.

Brian was keen to push that VDI only works in persistent mode, as users want to customise their desktop and install their own apps as they always have done amongst other reasons. I don’t agree fully with this sentiment, whilst having a persistent desktop is certainly an easier option to get you VDI project off the ground we won’t be making full use of the benefits of a VDI solution and moving forward when we are looking to allow the user to become decoupled from one device (or desktop source) the movement of data, apps and customisations will be increasingly important. Admittedly if you are a power user and need to be installing your own applications that aren’t part of an enterprise app store like Horizon Workspace a persistent desktop maybe your best and only option unless you are going to look into solution like Liquidware Labs Flex Apps, but most task and knowledge workers in companies from my experience are not concerned by not being able to install applications (or potentially have ever been able too) or only being able to select from the enterprise catalogue. With the wide variety of persona management solutions around there is no reason why user customisations shouldn’t be persistent between non persistent desktops. By having a non-persistent desktop configured correctly with persona management and application layering technologies we are able to refresh the base image for security and consistency on a regular basis without issue and the desktop itself becomes worthless meaning there is no requirement to back it up, unlike a persistent desktop which presumably is persistent because it has some worth to an individual or the business.

After the keynote we were given the opportunity to engage with the vendors attending the conference, I was very disappointed to not see VMware and Citrix attending this year, this event is a great showcase for these companies especially when there is so much focus on end user computing from VMware at the moment. I really enjoyed chatting with a number of vendor’s especially, AppSense regarding their DataNow and MobileNow products, Atlantis ILIO, nVidia with their GRID GPUs, Nutanix with their block based compute and storage platform and Xangati with their Virtualisation monitoring product. The vendor hall in my opinion could be 2 or 3 times the size for this event, what better opportunity is there for End User Computing focused vendors to have a dedicated audience of End User Computing professionals to talk too and wow with their wares, where are the likes of Dell Wyse, DevonIT, Liquidware Labs amongst others?

A key part of any BriForum is the breakout sessions, where industry experts share their knowledge, in the morning I joined Jack Madden’s session regarding Enterprise Device Management (EDM) this is a relatively new subject area for me so I was pleased to learn more as Jack walked us through his new book that will be out shortly. My next sessions was AppSense’s Bring Your Own Dad (Device, Application, Data) session. I was keen to attend AppSense’s session after enjoying theirs so much last year, they seem to know how to engage the audience and mix knowledge with live demonstrations, a lot of vendors need to learn from these guys, as when talking to a technical audience the sales pitch won’t cut it. My remaining technical sessions of the day were regarding RDS 2012 and Storage improvements in vSphere 5.1 which I really enjoyed and I am hoping to catch up with presenter Jim Moyle today to discuss further how Atlantis ILIO assists in VDI solution as Jim works for Atlantis. I also attended the vendor session by Nutantix and Streamcore, I’m not sure what went wrong in this session as it appeared to finish 45 minutes early and I would have loved to have seen a live demo by Rob Tribe during the Nutanix presentation as his passion for the product and technology always comes across really well. The StreamCore presentation was just that “a number of slides” and unfortunately wasn’t very engaging.

Overall I had a good first day and even managed to pop into the new Giant bike shop downstairs during a break, I know Brian is a cycling fan (after discussing over beers at the last BriForum) and would recommend he pops down! Today I will be looking forward to attending Ruben Sprujit’s from PQR’s sessions as they were amongst my favourites last year.

I’m not going to teach you all how to suck eggs here but you will obviously want to create a group policy to deploy these templates against your View Desktops or Clients depending on which template it is you are deploying, you will do this as usual through Group Policy management and creating a GPO.

Once you are inside the Group Policy Management Editor you are able to expand Computer Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates then Select Add / Remove Templates

You can then browse to the admin templates and add them to your GPO.

Once imported you will see the policies listed under Classic Administrative Templates (ADM)

From the user guide the breakdown of the adm files is as follows.

Also don’t forgot when configuring these templates you will need to enable loopback processing. This is configured under

Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > Group Policy.

I hope to put some articles up delving a little deeper in the configuration of these group policies in the future.

From Page 61 of the User Guide

1. Delete the ThinApp package subfolder from the Windows application network file share.

2. Delete the application from Horizon Workspace.

a. Using a browser, log in to the Horizon Workspace Administrator Web interface.

b. Click Catalog > ThinApp Packages

c. Click the icon of the ThinApp package you want to delete.

d. Click Delete, read the message, and if you agree click Yes

3. Use the Connector virtual appliance interface to issue commands to remove the ThinApp database.

a. Select Login and Log in to the underlying Linux operating system of the Connector virtual appliance.

b. Issue the following command to stop the ThinApp service:

/opt/likewise/bin/lwsm stop thinapprepo

c. Issue the following command to delete the ThinApp database:

rm /var/lib/vmware/tam/repo/repodb

d. Issue the following command to restart the ThinApp service:

/opt/likewise/bin/lwsm start thinapprepo

4. Exit the Connector virtual appliance interface

https://HorizonWorkspaceFQDN/admin

Administrator Web interface (Active Directory user)

Manage the Catalog, users and groups, entitlements, reports, etc. (Login as Active Directory user with administrator role.)

https://HorizonWorkspaceFQDN/SAAS/login/0

Administrator Web interface (non-Active Directory user)

Use this URL if you cannot login as the Active Directory user with the administrator role. (Log in as an administrator using the username admin and the password you set during configuration.)

https://HorizonWorkspaceFQDN/web

Web Client (end user)

Manage files, launch applications, or launch View pools. (Login as an Active Directory user or virtual user.)

https://ConnectorHostname/hc/admin/

Connector Web interface

Configure additional ThinApp settings, View pool settings, check directory sync status, or alerts. (Log in as an administrator using the password you set during configuration.)

https://ConfiguratorHostname/cfg

Configurator Web interface

See system information, check modules, set license key, or set admin password. (Log in as an administrator using the password you set during configuration.)

We are starting with a basic ThinApp installation, I recommend having two VMs one with ThinApp installed and the installation directory shared and a second with the base Win 7 or XP installed.

Run Setup Capture.exe and complete the PreScan process

Once you have completed the prescan you are in a position to be able to install and configure your application. For the purpose of this blog post I am using the installed version of Putty.

Once your application is installed and configured you are in a position to run your Postscan.

The Postscan and compare will complete and you will be asked to select the entry points for your application.

We are now able to tell the ThinApp that we will be managing the Application with Horizon. This will negate the need for us to set our permissions for the application as Horizon will manage this element for us.

We will now run through the rest of the ThinApp process, I haven’t documented this here but I have chosen all the default options. Once the application has compiled I will edit the package.ini to set the Application to stream rather than be downloaded. We are also able to edit the Horizon URL here if needed.

We will now build the ThinApp.

Once finished we will see our exe and MSI in the bin folder, if we try and run the application on this machine we will see that it is unable to be ran as the Horizon agent hasn’t been installed on our build machine.

We will now copy the two files within the bin folder to our ThinApp share, please note these need to be placed into a folder named after the application for Horizon Workspace to pick it up correctly, if it is placed in the root of the folder it will not be picked up.

We are now going connect to the Horizon Configurator and ensure the ThinApp module is enabled.

As we can see above the ThinApp Package module is enabled and we are going to follow the Connector hyperlink to configure it.

Once at the connector management page, we select the ThinApp Packages section on the bottom left, edit in the middle of the screen and then configure the location of our ThinApp packages. As you can see above I am saving my ThinApps on a share on my domain controller, this obviously isn’t recommended in a production environment. You can also set how often Horizon should sync with this share to check for new packages.

As you can see above we are able to manually sync using the button in the top left and when the sync completes we are then able to see the new application appear.

We are now going to move over to the workspace admin page to entitle the users or groups to use the new application.

Once logged into the workspace admin page, we are going to select Catalog and select the application that we have just added.

As you can see above we have selected the add group entitlement button in the top right, we are then able to choose the group we wish to entitle the application for and finally choose whether the application is automatically installed on the user’s desktop or alternatively whether the user is able to choose to install the application. We have chosen to automatically install the application.

If we connect to one of our desktops with the Horizon Agent installed, with an entitled user connected we will see the application will automatically appear, you may also see very faintly that we received a notification telling us the application was now available.

Similarly if we remove access to the application it will disappear and we will get a further notification.

Finally if we had chosen User Activated the user is able to install the application to their desktop by using the Horizon web interface.

By selecting the Add button above the application is installed to the machine.

Conclusion

Whilst this functionality has been around for a while now with Horizon application manager it is nice to see this now packaged with the rest of the Horizon Workspace functionality and even the Horizon Suite. Whether you are using VMware View or not this is surely the must have way to be managing your application deployment to your desktops.

By many I am seen to be an Apple Fan Boy, I have owned every iPhone since the 3G, I use my Mac Book Pro daily, I also own an Apple TV and an iPad one, however I also own a Google Nexus 7 a Samsung Galaxy S2 and use my Windows 8 laptop on a regular basis.

I am going to focus this blog post on my use case for my tablet devices, I am very much classed as a business worker, by day I’m attending meetings, traveling, creating and editing documents, installing and configuring hardware, to be honest in the evenings my use case changes very little as I’m usually working on something in the lab or replying to email or blogging etc. Both the iPad and Nexus 7 are fantastic devices for consuming content such as Music, films, books games etc but I have always been somewhat disappointed by the ability to create content in my work life. Whilst it is possible with the iPad with the larger screen typing on screen is less than ideal and carrying a separate Bluetooth keyboard seems counterproductive (I may as well just carry an ultrabook) a big gripe for me with the iPad is even if I have a fantastic desktop experience using solutions like VMware View the fact I am unable to connect a mouse of any kind makes a VDI solution on my iPad have limited usefulness.

As my iPad is getting older now (it’s an iPad 1) I was in the market for a new 10″ device, I was looking at the Nexus 10, the iPad 4, the Asus Transformer amongst others. I had ruled out the iPad at an early stage because of the limitations I mention above and to be honest because of the lack of innovation since the original iPad, I have never felt there has been a killer feature that would have me upgrade such a device to a newer one as yet. I also like the idea of having a tablet that had the ability to attach a keyboard and mouse as I would really like the ability to treat this device as a thin client into my View desktop when traveling. Whilst I do love my Nexus 7 I felt that the Nexus 10 and other Android devices wouldn’t offer me the software to create the content I wanted without having to use my View desktop all the time, I was keen to have the ability to work both online and offline. This really left me with the choice of looking at Windows devices.

One of the things I like the most about tablet computing is the simplicity and constant performance, going back to a full Windows device did not appeal to me and this is what led me to look at RT. A quick search online will find you a bunch of mixed reviews for devices like the Surface RT and the Dell XPS10 however most of these are trying to compare these devices to the likes of the iPad that offer a personal consumer experience, hands up now if that is the kind of device you a looking for e,g. play some games, browse the web then buy yourself an iPad you won’t be disappointed. With a little bit of further digging I started finding some business users talking about their love for the device my main requirement for the device was as follows.

• Ability to create and read email
• Ability to create and edit Microsoft Work documents
• Ability to create and edit Powerpoint Presentations
• Ability to create and edit Excel Documents
• Evernote
• Dropbox
• VMware View Client
• RDP Client

With my use case clearly defined and fully understanding the functionality of Windows RT it seems that a device with Windows RT would suit my use case down to the ground, this also meant I could avoid going down the full Windows install route for a simple continuous experience, longer battery life and maybe a cheaper point of entry.

Looking at the devices on the market I had considered the Surface and the Dell XPS 10, one of the main reasons I chose to go with the Surface was that I was fully able to test the device in my local John Lewis store where as this wasn’t the case with the Dell, for me hands on experience with a device prior to purchasing was important, also for me the touch keyboard on the surface appealed as I could get the mouse and keyboard functionality without any real further weight or girth.

So a week ago I decided to buy the Surface RT, now I fully understand that at present I am still in the honeymoon period and I will certainly be blogging if my experience changes.

So far I have used the Surface at home, in the office, on the plane and as my only device during a short business trip to Ireland. I have found that the ability to create documents and blog posts with Word on the device has been no different to using a Windows 8 laptop, the keyboard takes a bit of getting used to but it is more than adequate. The USB support has allowed me to pair my wireless RF mouse with ease and also my Logitech Slide Presenter with ease. Adding our work based HP printers has been hassle free although as yet I haven’t been able to add my home Kodak MFP. The Mail applications within Windows 8 is somewhat limited without the ability to create new folders but does the job I need, although I would love Outlook on the device.

The current third party vendor support is currently a bit poor with both the Dropbox application and Evernote applications falling short of where I would like them to be. I have found the Evernote application has been good enough to not need to switch to Onenote or similar but I am now embracing Skydrive as an equivalent to dropbox for my needs on the device, hurry up and get a Horizon Workspace application out VMware!

One of the huge wins for me on the device is the ability to utilise VMware View and RDS to create a full desktop experience, whilst I am spending 80%+ of my time consuming applications directly on the Surface there are some times the need to use a legacy desktop application, an example of the is Visio. I have found that using the View Client has allowed me to connect to a View desktop and consume these applications with ease and it offers an experience equal to using the view client on a laptop rather than a tablet (from the point of view of usability not functionality as the View client for RT is currently preview only)

I have also extensively used the remote desktop app and the built in mstsc functionality to connect to my lab servers and install a complete View and Horizon Workspace environment without any issue at all. This has been made all the more easier by having the ability to connect a second screen via HDMI.

I will attempt to keep this blog post up to date with any new findings but for me I couldn’t be happier with the device I have chosen.

p.s. 3^rd blog post today created on the Surface, who would have thought of using Word to write and publish blog posts on a tablet would have been possible and functional!

BriForum is once again coming to London for 2013, it will be taking place on the 16^th to 17^th of May at the etc Venues St Pauls Conference Center.

For those of you who haven’t been to a BriForum before, the conference exclusively covers end user computing from an independent stand point. Hosted by Brian Madden and TechTarget it is a must attend event for anyone involved in the administration, configuration or design of end user computing solutions. Expect the show floor to be filled with companies demonstrating and talking about their latest technologies, the conference rooms to be packed while there are presentations on how to get the most out of your environment or find the right solution for you and the whole conference jam packed with likeminded individuals.

I covered last year’s event and you can find my blog posts here >> http://virtualisedreality.com/?s=briforum

Of course I will be covering this year’s event with more information and more photographs than before so I hope you can make it and I look forward to catching up and of not be sure to join in on twitter and va my blog.

I have been lucky enough to have these products running in my lab for a while whilst taking part in the beta so let’s have a look at some of the features.

Horizon View 5.2

Although a minor update there has been some big changes and long awaited features making appearance in this version of View. The first I want to talk about is VMware Blast, announced at VMworld a couple of years ago as AppBlast the HTML5 remoting technology has now made its first appearance within View, for the time being it only support full screen desktop and not individual applications it is also only supposed to be used as an alternative to the full client when it is not possible to install the full View client or where the full client isn’t available.

VMware Blast is installed as two components at present, you install the client on your View Connection Servers, and the blast technology on your golden images. When connecting to the View Connection server you now get two choices.

When selecting the HTML access you are connected directly to your desktop from within your browser as can be seen in the photograph below on my Microsoft Surface

There are a number of limitations at present with this technology such as no audio or remote device support, but to use in an emergency when you can’t get to a device with the View Client installed it certainly does the trick and a hell of a lot better than the legacy java clients we have seen previously for this type of use case.

With View 5.2 we are also seeing Windows 8 support for the first time, an increase to 10,000 desktops per vCenter and clusters with up to 32 hosts per pool for VMFS volumes now as well as NFS volumes that have previously had this support.

Two of the more important inclusions in this release are support for Microsoft Lync 2013 when used with a Microsoft based thin clients or traditions PCs and support for space efficient disks to efficiently reclaim disk space from desktops to allow the available storage to be better used without the administrative overhead of having to recompose images.

Horizon Workspace

Horizon Application Manager has been about some time now allowing you seamless access to your applications in an enterprise App store fashion, allowing you to consume ThinApps and SAAS applications seamlessly without the need for multiple logons. Whist that product is now end of life the functionality has now been rolled up into Horizon Workspace and it has now been enhanced with Horizon Data that has come from project octopus, allowing enterprise controlled cloud storage for end users and by integrating for VMware Blast access to your desktops.

For me Horizon Workspace is the glue that is bringing VMware’s vision for the next generation desktop to a reality, we still have a little way to go before we will be fully there but Horizon Workspace is becoming the central hub for the user allowing them to access their data and applications whether they be the more modern SAAS or App based applications or legacy applications running inside a View desktop, you can see when the app remoting technology is finalised you will have a seamless experience no matter what type of application you are loading.

Horizon Workspace is installed as a vApp containing 5 VMs

When booting the vApp for the first time only the configuration virtual appliance will start, you start the installation process by connecting to the console of this machine, you will need to answer a number of questions before it will go away and complete the base install of all the other VMs for you. Prior to doing this you will need to ensure you have setup the DNS entries and IPs for all the VMs above, the gateway VM will be the VM that the users will access Horizon Workspace from so be sure to name it appropriately.

Once the configuration has completed all the VMs in the vApp will be started and configured before you then login to the web interface of the configurator to carry on with the configuration.

Whilst it is very easy to configure and manage I do hope there is more of a combined management interface on the

cards at some point as you do find yourself having to switch between the management interface on each of the VMs in the vApp quite a bit whist doing the initial configuration however after this you will spend most of your time connected to the gateways management interface for your daily administrative tasks.

From a user perspective they will get a seamless view of their data and applications no matter which device they are using.

The above image shows the IOS client with Horizon Data and Applications which can launch either a web application or application from the App Store or your device

The image above shows the web client for Horizon Workspace allowing you to launch a desktop via the blast technology.

Conclusion

I am really excited by VMware’s end user computing vision at the moment and whilst I think it still has a little way to go we are really starting to see the combined products coming together to deliver on this vision. Over the next few weeks I will dig a little deeper into these technologies on my blog and also record some videos of their functionality. I haven’t covered Mirage yet and I intend to be covering its functionality in depth in the coming months.