Teradici just released a new firmware version for their zero clients which are compatible with VMware View. There are loads of improvements for security, performance and also View related enhancements.

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Thanks to some of my colleagues who already posted this great video from Bradford & Airedale on Twitter and Facebook. That video shows the power of VMware View.

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At VMworld 2010 in San Francisco, VMware announced a new project they are working on called project Horizon. This looks like the future of End User Computing. A user can logon to a web interface and can access applications granted to him. It doesn’t matter which and device he’s using, Windows, Linux or Mac. Brian Madden did a video with Noah Wasmer who’s the Product Manager for the new project at VMware. Check this brilliant interview on www.brianmadden.com.

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Have a customer that is implementing View4 with PCoIP and dual screens.

They are very happy with the solution except for one thing, performance of Oracle Forms was bad, there was some extra latency when typing and moving between different input fields and they suspected PCoIP and asked if there where some settings to tweak.

After some investigation it turned out to be a problem with the Java version and Oracle Forms in the virtual machine and had nothing to do with the display protocol.

The solution was to start Oracle Forms with this extra parameter:

-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true

That will tell the JVM not to use direct draw for the 2d rendering required by the Forms client.

A few folks have run into issues with View 4 where PCoIP doesn’t work exactly as they expect. This manifests itself in a couple of different ways:

- Inability to resize the screen at all
- Resizing that only works down instead of up.
- Resizing that responds very slowly or that crashes after several resize attempts.
- Inability to switch between full-screen and windowed.

There are also known issues with the .NET framework, where applications based on this code will not render correctly if it was installed before the View Agent.

The following is a set of steps which will ensure that a pool that you create will have all of the correct PCoIP functionality:

1. Install View4 on a supported platform. (vSphere U1 or VC/ESX 2.5/3.5 U3-U4)
2. Create your VM (Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7)
3. Make sure the VMtools was installed first, then the View Agent and then .NET framework.
   (If any of this was done in the wrong order, or if you don’t know for sure, uninstall all 3, and install from scratch in that order)
4. In View Manager, set this desktop up as an “individual desktop” and entitle it.
5. Make sure you have the PCoIP settings for monitor and max resolution set the way you want them in the pool.
6. Log in once and make sure the basics work.
7. If PCoIP/Screen resizing isn’t already working (VI3.5), logout of the desktop, and use the “reset” option from inside of View Manager.
   (If you rebooted by clicking shutdown>restart in the VM, re-read the previous line.)
8. Log in again and make sure screen resizing works.
9. Shutdown the VM
10. Take a Snapshot
11. Remove the individual VM assignment from View Manager
    (If you don’t do the previous step, it won’t show up as an available parent in the pool creation process.)
12. Create your pool normally and it should work as expected.

PCoIP is very dependent upon the appropriate amount of video memory being allocated to the VM.  Since this is a virtual hardware setting (that needs to be in place before the VM starts up), it is applied as a change in the VMX file.   If the VM has already been started, it’s essential that this VM be restarted so that the VMX file is re-read and the changes are used.   Simply using “Shutdown>Restart” inside the VM will not force the VMX to be re-read, as this doesn’t cold boot the machine (from the VC perspective) to refresh the virtual hardware.

Using the Shutdown/Reset from either VC or View Manager (which issues the command via VC) is the best way to make sure this file gets read properly.

Once the appropriate video memory settings are in place for your parent VM, you can create a pool based on this VM and machines in that pool will properly inherit these VMX settings on first boot.

(Kudos to my colleague Todd Dayton who wrote all this down!)

// Joel

Richard Garstagen just released a new version of his vAudit tool which can be used in VMware View 3.0.1 and 3.1 environments to monitor login, logoff operations and also unsuccessful login attempts. The new version includes the option to export the data to a comma separated file.

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VMware View 3.1.2 download

Release notes

What’s New in View Manager 3.1.2

VMware View Manager 3.1.2 is a maintenance release that resolves some known issues in the previous releases. Refer the Resolved Issues section for more details.

This release also includes one new feature.
Virtual Printing Multi Session Support

In this release, the virtual printing (ThinPrint) feature is updated to provide support to the users connected to multiple virtual desktops. With this update, the ThinPrint client enables users to map the printers on each virtual desktop that you are connected to.

Resolved Issues

The resolved issues are grouped as follows:

* Install and Upgrade
* View Administrator
* View Client
* View Composer
* Miscellaneous

Install and Upgrade

* When creating and preparing the guest system, you must install View Agent, after all other third-party applications are installed. If you uninstall View Agent after installing additional third-party applications, certain registry entries for the third-party applications might be lost. After installing View Agent, if you want to install additional third-party applications on the guest, you must first uninstall the View Agent. Applications known to be affected by the installation order include Microsoft AppV, vmSight ConnectorID, and Citrix XenApp.
This issue is resolved in this release.
* Effect of stopping VMwareVDMDS service on View 3.1 upgrade (KB 1012990)
* Upgrading View 3.1 to 3.1.1 clears View Connection Server settings from LDAP (KB 1013300)

View Administrator

* On rare occasions, View Administrator might display IllegalStateException errors (KB 1011392)
* View displays incorrect backup-time of View server (KB 1011390).

View Client

Desktop connections become slow when a View Client is running in a Citrix ICA session
When you connect virtual desktops using a View Client that is running in a Citrix ICA session, the virtual desktop connections are very slow compared to the connections using native RDP (mstsc.exe). This issue occurs because when the View Client runs in full-screen mode, it does not use the native full-screen mode of RDP ActiveX controls, and non full-screen mode does not function properly with Citrix ICA session.
This issue is resolved in this release.
View Composer

* View fails to automatically delete virtual machines in a multi-broker environment

In a multi-broker environment, when the Power off and delete virtual machine after first use option is enabled for non persistent pool, and many users log out of the virtual machines at the same time, View Manager sometimes fails to delete the virtual machines due to a race condition.
The issue is resolved in this release.
* View takes more time to delete virtual machines from a non-persistent pool if you enable Power off and delete virtual machine after first use (KB 1013760)
Miscellaneous

* If the Power off and delete virtual machine after first use option is enabled, virtual machines in non-persistent pools are disabled when accessed through direct Windows RDP/VI Client
When an administrator accesses a virtual machine through a direct Windows RDP client or VI Client console and then logs out, View Agent disables the virtual machine. Due to this issue, the virtual machine becomes inaccessible, and the number of unusable virtual machines in the desktop pool increases. When a desktop user tries to log in to that pool using View Client or Web Access, the following message might appear on the Connection Server even if some of the virtual machines in that desktop pool is in a Ready state:
All connections are busy, please try again
This issue occurs when you use RDP to access a virtual machine on which the Power off and delete virtual machine after first use option is enabled.
The issue is resolved in this release.
* In full-screen mode Windows special key combinations are not redirected to virtual desktops
In full-screen mode, View Client does not redirect Windows special key combinations (Windows+<Key>) to the remote desktop. This issue is inconsistent with the direct RDP.
The issue is resolved in this release.
* The vdmadmin.exe -L option does not remove existing pool assignments (KB 1008838)
* Each time a user logs in to a virtual machine that is deployed from a template on which the View 3.1 Agent is installed, a Windows Explorer window opens in the host machine.
This issue is resolved in this release.
* Network vulnerability scan shows View Manager accepting weak cipher
A network vulnerability scan shows that a pair of weak cipher-suites are being accepted by View Connection Servers. The two weak cipher-suites are now excluded from the list of enabled cipher-suites.