We have been waiting for a long time but now it’s here: VMware View 4.5 was announced today and it’s coming with loads of new stuff. I can’t write in detail about all new features in one article so I’ve decided to give you an overview of the enhancements and the new UI first  and then publish several articles on the specific topics. I’ll go in details as soon as the product is availabe.

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For high availability of the View Manager environment it’s possible to add a maximum of 4 additional connection servers, called Replica servers to one View connection server group. In total you’ll have 5 servers dealing with the connecting users. During the installation of a replica server it is manually added to the server group by the administrator and it’s configuration data is written to the View LDAP database afterwards. The new server itself does create a copy of the existing View LDAP instance and replicate all data. During operations all changes on the View servers including the Global Settings, the users and the desktops are propagated between all servers in the View connection server group. If one of the replica servers is removed from the group by disconnection or installation which is permanent it is recommend to delete this servers from the View LDAP.

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Printing in a VMware View environment does almost look like printing on a physical desktop for the user. For example the user works with some office application and wants to print the document on his local connected Canon iP5300 printer. This is an ink jet printer and it does have some special features integrated with the original Canon printer driver. The user does press the print button and wants to set some properties for printing the document.

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Back in the days of View 3.0 the USB redirection was done over a virtual channel in the RDP protocol. This changed with View 3.1 as of this release there were a second way of USB data transportation added. You can still use the RDP virtual channels and it is used as a fallback if the preferred option, a TCP connection is not available. The TCP connection is listening on port 32111 in the guest. The configuration can be seen in the virtual desktops Windows Registry at HKLM\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\Agent\Configuration\Listener. The parameter FRAMEWORKCHANNEL defines the port number which is 32111 as default. Both connections, the virtual channels and also the TCP connection can be tunnelled via the VMware View Security Server. With the USB Redirection you can use USB device filters on a class, hardware ID a specific device basis. The Registry keys for those are:

HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\ClassFilters

HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\ HardwareIDFilters

HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM \USB\AllowHardwareIDs

The format of each entry in HEX is: Vid_xxxx&Pid_xxxx  -> xxxx. If a device is excluded by the class, you can specifically include it again by the hardware ID. The ClassGUID’s and hardware ID’s ca be found in the machine log file on each client.

To learn more about HID devices with VMware View please check one of my older articles. This article also gives you a quick overview of the USB log file entries.

Brian Madden and Gabe Knuth had a Geek-week where they’ve tested different desktop virtualization solutions including Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View. Please check the summary at www.brianmadden.com to see what they think about View 4! (Link)

At VMworld 2009 VMware announced an OEM agreement with RTO Software, to integrate their Virtual Profiles technology into VMware View. This was an important step for VMware due to the gap of a Windows profile management solution. Today VMware announced the acquisition of RTO Software and their product portfolio. With RTO VMware View will have a great persona management in the View solution.

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A few month ago I wrote an article about using VMware View 3 with Novell eDirectory. At this time I was testing the installation with View 3, a Novell Netware eDirectory (not Open Enterprise Server) and a Active Directory Server which users and passwords were in sync through DirXML. As you see this environment has two gaps: It needs two directories and it uses a legacy Netware server which will not longer be supported in the future by Novell. Lots of Novell customers have already migrated their environment to OES (Open Enterprise Server) or will do so soon. With OES Novell introduced a service called DSfW (Domain Services for Windows) which emulates an Active Directory using a modified version of Samba and other components. For a Windows workstation the DSfW looks like a proper Active Directory and offers some interesting benefits like Clientless Login (without Novell Client), Cross-forest trust between eDirectory and Active Directory and Authentication to Active-Directory-style applications. In this article I’ll describe how to use VMware View with Novell OES and DSfW but please hold in mind that this is a non-supported configuration from VMware at this time. I’ve done the testing on VMware View 3 with RDP and Novell Open Enterprise Server 2.

First of all you’ll need a successful installation of Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 and additionally configured Domain Services for Windows. As the DSfW emulate an Actice Directory there shouldn’t be an issue to use them with View and the Virtual Center Server, but there is one. Please consider the Novell Knowledge Base TID 7004290 for further information. In a short form it says that VMware Virtual Center Server fails to authenticate with DSfW and also that happens with VMware View even this is not documented in the article. The reason here is that VMware requests a valid ticket for the service principal name (SPN). If the correct SPN isn’t returned the vCenter Server attempts the authentication using NTLM/SSP. By default DSfW does not create a SPN with “ldap/<ip address of the DSfW DC>. However if you configure the SPN it works. To create the SPN edit the Domain Controller object using iManager or ConsoleOne. The DC object is the name of the DSfW server and is present in “ou=domain controllers,<dc=…>”. Change to the other tab and edit the servicePrincipalName attribute. Please add the ldap/<ipaddress> attribute value on the servicePrincipalName attribute. After that you’ll need to restart the DSfW services using the command “xadcntrl reload”.

The DSfW is not correctly configured and you can now add the Windows Server 2003 to the DSfW domain and start the installation of the View Connection Server afterwards. You shouldn’t see any issue through the installation. To get more information on how to configure DSfW for using login scripts, network shares and so on please check the Novell DSfW documentation. If you still want to use the Novell Client please check my other article for the correct setup with the View Agent.

As you see it’s quite easy to setup VMware View with DSfW but I need to say it again that this is a not supported configuration.

Usually the persistent desktop design offers a chance to assign a virtual desktop to a user on first connect/use. The administrator entitles the user or a user group which inherits the users account to a persistent desktop pool but the virtual desktop assignment would be done on first use. However sometimes it may require a pre assignment which can be done the following way.

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VMGuru.nl published a new article on sizing a VMware View infrastructure. He talks about CPU, memory, storage and also network recommendations.

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View 4 with PCoIP does support 4 screens with a maximum resolution of 1920×1200 per monitor. Mostly I see customers with the requirement for two screens and very often they are asking for the Pivot function where you can flip the screen from T-scale to L-shape like shown in the photo.

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