Archive for March, 2009

Making Quest vWorkspace Web Access The Default Website March 22nd, 2009 by Michel Roth

Using Quest vWorkspace Web Access is a very popular way to provide users with a single consolidated entry point to all their applications and desktops. Here’s a tip to make it even easier to use Web Access.

The default URL for Web Access is http://<webservername>/provision/web-it . Not exactly the easiest URL to make users remember. Here’s how to make life a little easier. The first method uses aspx (which is our best practice)

  1. On the Windows Server 2003 webserver add default.aspx as a default document. Refer to this Microsoft article on how to do this exactly. The short version is to just open the IIS manager and from the properties of the websites, select the documents tab and add default.aspx as a default document (try using the “move up” button if it does not work for you):
    Default Documents
  2. Create a file called default.aspx in the root of your IIS webserver (c:\inetpub\wwwroot) with the following text: 
    <%@ Page Language="VB" %>
    <% Response.Redirect("/Provision/web-it") %>

 

Alternatively, you could Java to achieve the same goal. To use Java:

  1. On the Windows Server 2003 webserver create a file called default.htm in the root of your IIS webserver (c:\inetpub\wwwroot) with the following text:
<noscript>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; URL=provision/web-it">
</noscript>
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
 
var sTargetURL = "provision/web-it";
 
function doRedirect()
{
    setTimeout( "timedRedirect()", 0 );
}
 
function timedRedirect()
{
    window.location.href = sTargetURL;
}
 
//-->
</script>
 
<script language="JavaScript1.1">
<!--
 
function timedRedirect()
{
    window.location.replace( sTargetURL );
}
 
//-->
</script>
<body onload="doRedirect()">
</body>
</html>

Whatever option you use, when this is done users are redirected to http://<webservername>/provision/web-it when they just enter the name of web server in the address bar of their internet browser. You could be even smarter with this and create a DNS record or alias for the Quest vWorkspace Web Access server and allow users to come to the Quest vWorkspace Web Access webpage by just entering something like “wa” into the address bar of their browser. How’s that for easy?

vWorkspace 6.0 Feature Spotlight: User Profile Management March 15th, 2009 by Patrick Rouse

For anyone that’s ever worked on a helpdesk, as a desktop administrator or Terminal Services/Citrix administrator it’s no news that user profile management is, and has been an issue since forever. 

Let’s define the problems with Windows User Profiles:

1.  Profile Corruption - Users logon and their profile does not load, leaving them with a temporary profile without any of their personalizations

2.  Logon speed (or lack thereof) - as profiles age the ntuser.dat file grows and the number of files associated with the user’s profile increases.  These cause the user’s logon time to increase over time, starting at 10-15 seconds when the profile is new, and increasing to minutes as time goes on.

3.  It’s not generally accepted to use the same profile for diffent OS, i.e. XP and Server 2003.  In an environment with Terminal Services this typically leads administrators to using two completely different user profiles, for example one for the client OS and one for Windows Terminal Services.

4.  Support for application silos - In a Terminal Services or VDI environment users may access multiple hosts to get their applications, often without their knowledge.  Administrators have the option of using local profiles for each system, or risking use of roaming profiles getting bloated and corrupted due to the registry, start menu and app data being populated with items that have nothing to do with the system being used.

5.  Local user profile cleanup (or lack thereof) -  These profiles can consume massive amounts of disk space on shared systems, so administrators usually have to account for this space, or write scripts to delete them.

Via acquisition of Provision Networks in 2007, Quest acquired one of the only commercially available User Profile Management solutions.  The problem was that it only supported Windows Terminal Services.

In January of 2009 Quest released vWorkspace 6.0, the successor to Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite.  in vWorkspace 6.0 User Profile Management (also known as Metaprofiles) now fully supports Terminal Services, Virtual Desktops and Physical PCs.

So how does it work?

User Profile Management in vWorkspace is a client-server application, where there is an agent on the Virtual PC/Physical PC/Terminal Server, and one or more storage servers for maintaining the user settings. 

pnconsole

 

Everything is managed from the vWorkspace Management Console, and the components are:

Quest Metaprofiles Agent - Installed on virtual and/or physical desktops running Windows XP/Vista, or Terminal Servers running 2000/2003/2008.  Responsible for downloading compressed user settings (xml files) from the storage server, applying the settings at logon, exporting the settings deleting the local profile at logoff.

Quest Metaprofiles Storage Service - Installed on a Windows server OS hosting the storage service.  This is typically a dedicated virtual machine but could also be on a physical server.  Since this is a client-server application, there is no Windows File Share associated with the storage service.

Quest Connection Broker Service - responsible for directing the Metaprofiles Agent to the correct Storage Server.

A typical deployment of Quest User Profile Management consists of:

1.  Customized local Default User Profile, containing the minimum base user settings for all users logging on.  Common tweaks include removing desktop icons, favorites and eliminating the “Customizing your user preferences” dialog that appears logon for the first time.

2.  Use Group Policy to redirect My Documents, Desktop, Application Data and Start Menu to network file shares, so theses are not copied back and forth at logon/logoff and so roaming profiles are not configured.

3.  Define the application settings that users may customize, which users may customize the settings and on which desktop groups or terminal servers the settings will be applied.  These may be registry entries, directories or files.  Best practice would be to let GPO Folder Redirection manage the majority of files, and only use Quest User Profile Management for specific individual files or folders that are not handled by GPO.  Settings may be marked as “global”, meaning they will apply on any system, or “silo”, meaning they will only apply on specific desktop groups or terminal servers.

4.  Install the Microsoft User Profile Hive Cleanup service to ensure that user profiles are successfully unloaded at logoff.

What are the benefits of implementing Quest User Profile Management:

1.  Stable User Profiles - reduced administrative overhead and helpdesk calls

2.  Fast user logons - typically about 10 seconds, vs 30-60 seconds with roaming profiles

3.  Reduced storage requirements for profile data, since only compressed deltas are maintained, not the entire user profile

4.  Reduced number of Virtual PCs to maintain, as administrators can deploy non-persistent (temporarily assigned) desktops, where the user settings are dynamically applied at logon.

5.  No need to cleanup local user profiles or configure mandatory or roaming profiles.

6.  Quest User Profile Management is included in all versions of Quest vWorkspace, so it’s another critical feature that won’t require the purchase of another 3rd party user profile management tool.

 

vWorkspace 6.0 Feature Spotlight: Seamless Terminal Server and VDI Session Management March 13th, 2009 by Michel Roth

One of the core design goals in Quest vWorkspace is to supply customers with a agnostic application and desktop delivery platform. We aim to take this design goal as far as our customers ask us to. At Quest we know that just providing users with applications and desktops is only half the proverbial battle. There also is a lot of administrative effort associated with the management of these published applications and desktops. Management of existing user sessions is a perfect example of this. An existing Quest vWorkspace customer that was using Quest Terminal Servers very heavily was slowly but surely also deploying VDI to facilitate certain usage cases (in this case their remote developers). As the VDI environment grew so did the support requirement. They wanted to be able to use the one vWorkspace Management Console to also manage the sessions of their VDI users.

That’s why in this vWorkspace feature spotlight I would like to talk about the enhancements we made to session management in vWorkspace 6.0. What we’ve done is taken the session management tools that were available for Terminal Server and also make them available for desktop sessions (note that we say “desktop” on purpose because VDI for us is just another “desktop”). So this means that you can Remote Control (or Shadow for those Terminal Server lovers out there) any session running in a vWorkspace farm.

So you can still view all the Quest Terminal Server sessions running in your farm and manage them as you were used to. In addition you now can do exactly the same for desktop sessions running in a vWorkspace farm. We even have created a special, unique, option in our management console that provides a single consolidated view of all user sessions, regardless of the delivery method used. Take a look at this example:

Session Management regardless of delivery platfrom

The screenshot shows the session differentiated by delivery platform but you can sort by any criteria you , such as user name. I sometimes say that the mere fact that a desktop is going to virtualized does -unfortunately- not mean that they are going to be perfect and self-managing. For example: users will still contact the helpdesk to complain that their “computer has frozen up”. The patient and understanding person and the other of the line will now to terminate (no offense Microsoft) explorer.exe. This can all be done from our console. Take a look at these screenshots that show the querying of the processes running in a certain desktop session:

View running processes

And the subsequent unfortunate termination of the explorer.exe proces:

 Manage processes inside user Desktop session

This way vWorkspace 6.0 is able to provide a seamless session management experience regardless of the delivery platform used, all from a single console. No need to buy another tool or upgrade your license just to be able to manage all of the users in your environment. Remember that our advanced delegated control capabilities allow you to use this feature even more efficiently.

vWorkspace 6.0 Feature Spotlight: Reconfigure Virtual Machine Disk Persistence March 9th, 2009 by Paul Fisher

In vWorkspace 6.0 one of the many features we have released is the virtual machine reconfiguration tool.  This tool allows changes to virtual machine memory and virtual disks.

This introduces the ability to change the virtual machines disk mode.  The available modes are Persistent and Non Persistent. When using non persistent disks changes are not saved during the session and are lost at the end of the session (that is, when the virtual machine is powered off or reset). Non persistent  disks are convenient for people who always want to start with a virtual machine in the exactly the same state. 

Example use cases include providing environments for software testing, technical support users, demonstrations of software, or maybe to provide software installation classes for students.

As with many features in vWorkspace there is great flexibility in how you can leverage the disk non persistence feature. To help you understand how this feature can be used, we have created a small guide. The guide will describe the following:

  • Supported Virtualization Platforms
  • More detail on disk persistence
  • Use cases
  • How to configure disks on newly deployed virtual machines
  • How to configure disks on existing virtual machines
  • The methods to revert to the original virtual machine state
  • Other considerations

Download the guide here.

vWorkspace 6.0 Feature Spotlight: Reconfigure Virtual Machine Memory March 5th, 2009 by Matthew Evans

Expanding on the existing integration with hypervisor management tools, we have introduced the ability to reconfigure the memory of a Virtual Machine or a group of Virtual Machines. This is a useful feature should the requirements of a User change and the memory need to be increased or decreased. This feature can also be used to change the memory configuration when provisioning new desktops from a template, should the memory size in the template be insufficient.

By simply right clicking on a computer name and selecting ‘Reconfigure…’ you can access the memory configuration tool, this option is also available when you right click the computer group. Please see the screenshot below:

 reconfig1c

As well as changing the memory size on the fly you can schedule a task at a computer or computer group level. This is done via the ‘Properties -> Task Automation’ option when right clicking a computer or computer group, please see the screenshot below:

 reconfig2c

Finally, you can set the date and time as to when you would like the change to occur, you may wish to apply the change out of hours to reduce impact on users:

reconfig3c

Example use case:
Company XYZ has a pool of 100 virtual machines that are configured with 512MB RAM. Due to a new release of an application used by this pool of machines, such as Visual Studio, the memory size needs to be increased to 1GB RAM. This tool would allow you to schedule the memory increase to occur outside of working hours, if there was an immediate requirement to apply this change it could be done at a group or individual computer level.

 

Hotfix Rollup Pack 1 for vWorkspace 6.0 March 3rd, 2009 by Michel Roth

Just as a quick heads-up, for those of you that were not aware yet, recently we released the first hotfix rollup pack for vWorkspace 6.0 (affectionately called Hotfix1). It fixes a fair amount of issues and we strongly recommend to everyone using vWorkspace 6.0 to apply it. Before you do though, please read through the entire associated release notes. The release notes, next to the bugfix list, has important instructions on how to apply the hotfix rollup pack. Especially customers using Quest Web Access should read the release notes carefully.

Hotfix Rollup Pack 1 for vWorkspace 6.0, as always, can be downloaded from the download section of vWorkspace under the “hotfixes” section.

Getting Started Guide for Quest vWorkspace 6.0 in a VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.x Environment March 2nd, 2009 by Michel Roth

As you probably know Quest vWorkspace 6.0 supports a broad selection of leading hypervisors. Among the supported hypervisors is VMware ESX (more specifically VMware Virtual Infrastructure). To make it very easy for you to evaluate vWorkspace 6.0 in a VMware Virtual Infrastructure we have created a “getting started guide” which details all the steps you need to take to be able to start evaluating all the cool features in vWorkspace 6.0.

The guide will describe the requirements and the installation and configuration steps to get started with vWorkspace 6.0 in a VMware VI 3.x Environment. The following procedures are detailed:

  • Downloading the Quest vWorkspace 6.0 Software
  • Installing the Connection Broker
  • Entering Customer Information
  • Adding a VMware Virtual Infrastructure
  • Creating Virtual Desktops from a template in the Managed Computer Group
  • Installing PNTools
  • Creating a Managed Application
  • Using Evaluation Licenses
  • Installing the Quest vWorkspace 6.0 Client
  • Configuring AppPortal
  • Launching AppPortal

Download the guide here: Getting Started Guide for Quest vWorkspace 6.0 in a VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.x Environment.

If you are looking for a version of this guide that applies to version 5.10, please go here.