Just as a quick heads-up, for those of you that were not aware yet, recently we released MR2 (Maintenance Release 2) for Quest vWorkspace Web Access 6.2. Be aware that this is an update specifically for the Web Access component of Quest vWorkspace 6.2, not for other components of Quest vWorkspace. Next to the necessary hotfixes, there’s also one cool updated feature in there.

This updated feature allows you to hide a vWorkspace Web Access download from unauthenticated users. As with many features in vWorkspace, this makes a lot of sense. For example: you might only want to make client software, company certificates or other downloads (because vWorkspace allows you to host any download you need to your users) available to your - so authenticated - users and not to anyone that happened to come to your Web Access page.

Since MR2 fixes a fair amount of issues, we strongly recommend to everyone using Quest vWorkspace Web Access 6.2 to apply it. Before you do though, please read through the entire associated release notes.

MR2 (Maintenance Release 2) for Quest vWorkspace Web Access 6.2, as always, can be downloaded from the download section of vWorkspace.com under the “hotfixes” section.

Recently we updated the Quest vWorkspace Mac Client to RC3. This new version adds some new functionality and fixes some bugs. This gives the Quest vWorkspace Mac Client a pretty impressive feature list. This Mac native client for vWorkspace now has the following features (amongst others):

• Creating and editing connections; saving them to and loading from a persistent storage (disk database).
• Retrieving application lists from the broker.
• Launching applications in an RDP session.
• Sharing RDP sessions for new applications when a session is already running (session sharing).
• Local devices redirection.
• Password management.
• Desktop Integration mode.
• RDP apps auto launch.
• Custom resolution.
• Sound redirection.
• RDP experience.
• Graphics Acceleration.
• Desktop-integrated mode.
• Printer mappings.
• Drive mappings.

The RC3 of the Quest vWorkspace Mac Client can be downloaded by anyone from the download area of vWorkspace.com. Your feedback is extremely important to us so we’d love to hear what you think!

As a part of our ongoing effort to provide customers with leading applicaton and desktop delivery technology at a pace that gives customers great value for money, after a little more than 3 months after our release 6.1 of Quest vWorkspace, we are happy to announce the next version of Quest vWorkspace: version 6.2!

Quest vWorkspace 6.2 brings several new exiting features, such as:

vWorkspace NetApp Integration

vWorkspace is now integrated with NetApp FlexClone technology. Here are some of the benefits of this integration:

• Rapid deployment of virtual desktops.
• An average of ninety percent disk utilization reduction saving valuable SAN or NAS storage (savings vary based on use case).
• Continuous desktop access due to advanced protection and fail over.

      VMware Platform support only.

Enhanced Multimonitor Support

Improvements have been made to enhance the user experience when using multiple monitors supporting a wider variety of orientations and mix/match resolutions.

Enhanced Graphic Acceleration Support

Graphics Acceleration improvements expand the applications which are accelerated, as well as improved speed and quality. Applications that use Microsoft DirectDraw are also now accelerated.

Enhanced USB Redirection

The USB Redirection feature has been enhanced with the following features:

• Improved support for audio and video USB based devices.
• Overall improved performance.
• Additional tuning and device exclusion options are included.

 Web Access and Microsoft SharePoint Integration (Experimental)

vWorkspace Web Access can now be used with Microsoft SharePoint.  Please note this feature is experimental, and currently not supported by Quest Support.  It is important that the Quest vWorkspace Web Access and Microsoft Office SharePoint Integration Release Notes are reviewed before implementing this experimental feature.

Other Features

• An alternative sysprep mode has been added for provisioning virtual machines on VMware platforms for use with provisioning domain joined machines which will be joined to an AD OU. This overcomes limitations introduced since Virtual Center Update 3..
• Additional status information has been added to the vWorkspace Management Console when Desktops or Other Servers nodes are selected.
• Modifications have been made to the database verification process to allow for version upgrades without including a database upgrade.

 It is important that you review the vWorkspace 6.2 documentation and release notes for further information on resolved and known issues.

 The release and product documentation are available on the vWorkspace web site at http://www.vworkspace.com, as well as the Quest SupportLink web site at http://support.quest.com/.

Quest vWorkspace 6.0 introduced a little known yet valuable new commandline option for the vWorkspace AppPortal Clients called the “autodelete” option. Let’s take a quick look at what this option does. If you add the /autodelete parameters to the command to start AppPortal (for example “C:\Program Files\Quest Software\vWorkspace Client\pnap32.exe” /di /autodelete” ) all farm definitions will be deleted and the AppPortal Client will be reconfigured using the auto-configuration feature of vWorkspace. For more information on how to auto-configure vWorkspace clients read this blog post.

Our customers typically use this feature if they want to have central control over configuration of all clients without the need to visit or connect to each client machine. Updating the configuration of 1000’s of clients becomes a breeze using the auto-configuration feature of vWorkspace in conjunction with the /autodelete parameter!

Remember that I mentioned the public Quest vWorkspace BETA program about a week ago? Yesterday we added two, publicly available, connections to this program. One is BETA 1 of Quest vWorkspace 6.2 and the other is BETA 1 of our Mac Client. We would very much love to hear what you think!

Participating in the BETA programs is as easy as signing in to our website with your existing account or, if you do not have an account, to register for one. Anyone can sign up for a account. A small note about our beta program: Quest Support does not support Beta and Release Candidate software via the normal support channels. Please email vWorkspace_beta@quest.com to provide feedback or obtain help with this pre-release software.

We look forward to welcoming you on our beta program soon!

If you are curious about some of the new technologies that we are working on at the Quest Desktop Virtualization Group, there is great news. Recently we launched a public beta program that allows anyone to participate. It’s very easy to take part in the program. Simply sign up on our website or use your existing account and access the downloads section. At the bottom there is a special section for beta software releases.We would love to hear your feedback!

Today the available beta programs are our new Multimonitor functionality (you could have virtual monitors within your RDP session!) and our new Linux vWorkspace client. More beta programs will become available as times passes. Look for the public beta of Quest vWorkspace 6.2 soon.

A small note about our beta program: Quest Support does not support Beta and Release Candidate software via the normal support channels. Please email vWorkspace_beta@quest.com to provide feedback or obtain help with this pre-release software.

We look forward to welcoming you on our beta program soon!

Today, at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas, we released vWorkspace 6.1. There is no coincidence in us announcing 6.1 at the biggest Microsoft event geared towards virtualization management. Quest vWorkspace 6.1 is all about new and improved with various Microsoft virtualization products. My personal favorite is the integration of Quest vWorkspace 6.1 with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). Through this deep integration, Quest vWorkspace adds automation and improved management-level support, enhanced user experience and flexibility throughout the virtual desktop lifecycle, utilizing the unique characteristics of SCVMM.

SCVMM is not the only key Microsoft technology that vWorkspace integrates with. Quest vWorkspace 6.1 also has tight integration with Microsoft App-V, right from the vWorkspace Management Console. It does not stop there, either. Quest vWorkspace 6.1 also has advanced MSI support to allow customers to configure and deploy MSI to any amount of (Virtual) Desktops right from the vWorkspace Management Console. Finally, Quest vWorkspace’s unique “task automation” feature provides customers with a comprehensive configuration and maintenance framework to allow customers to take virtual desktop management to a new level.

Take a look at the new features of vWorkspace 6.1 on this webpage: http://www.vworkspace.com/aWinningPartnership !

For those of you who are keeping count: yes Quest vWorkspace 6.1 has been released only 3,5 months after our major 6.0 release. The desktop virtualization market is the most dynamic out there today and to stay in the lead we feel the need to keep providing customers with new and improved vWorkspace features as often as we can. We hope that you are as excited about Quest vWorkspace as we are! As always we value any feedback that you might have.Feel free to leave them in the comments.

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. 

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.

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:

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:

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

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.

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.