It has taken a long time but finally my buddies Sascha and Matthias (Photo) have released their VMware View Book. The book is only in available in German language, so sorry for my English readers. But anyway for me it’s a great event as this is the first German language View book which was published commercially. As you may remember as a long time reader I’ve written a German language View book for version 4.6 and I’ve published it for free.

It was a coincident that I was in a meeting with Matthias today when he received the first copy of the book! German readers: Please feel free to buy this great book.

Link: http://3url.de/czt

Mike Laverick has published a cool article on his blog www.mikelaverick.com about load balancing a VMware View environment with vCNS Edge Gateway. Again a great publishing! Check it if you want to learn from a pro.

Link: http://www.mikelaverick.com/2013/02/part-57-my-vcloud-journey-edge-gateway-load-balancing-vmware-view/

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsrNNlRRgUw&feature=youtube_gdata

Great article on configuring location based printing for VMware View desktops on the VMFOCUS blog. Check Craig’s article if you want to learn more about ThinPrint, Printer Drivers and how to setup the printing in VMware View.

Link: http://vmfocus.com/2013/01/23/vmware-view-objective-2-9-configure-remote-andor-location-based-printing-for-view-desktops/

VMware has introduced the Preview of a View Client for Windows Store. The client will run in the tiles view of Windows RT and Windows 8. It comes with features like Touch Pointer, Zoom and Snap (Check the VMware Blog for the details) but the preview has also a few limitation: Only RDP connections in the preview and no PCoIP yet, no smart card authentication support.

Source: http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/files/2013/01/Screenshot-151-1024×575.png

Source: http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/files/2013/01/4-zoomed-1024×575.png

The current VMware View Client in version 5.2 does run in Windows 8 desktop mode. VMware recommends that if you’re using a full Windows 8 client, not Windows RT, you should use the existing View client for maximum functionality.

Link: http://3url.de/cwl

Next to the VMware View 5.1.2 release, they’ve also updated their VMware View Client to version 1.7. There are new clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and also Windows Store as already mentioned in my article from last Friday.

What’s new with the clients?

The View Client for Windows (5.2) which was already released in October 2012 brought support for Windows 8 and Uniform Resource Identifiers.

For the Mac users VMware has a special! As the first vendor VMware now supports USB redirection from a MacOS system to the Windows virtual desktop.

The Linux client now uses FreeRDP when connecting via RDP to a desktop, there’ve been also improvements with USB redirection.

Android 4.2 users on Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and Kindle Fire HD 8.9 are also supported now. There is a new fullscreen touchpad functionality available and the screen resolution is up to 2560×1600.

If you want to download any View Client please go to the VMware View Client website: https://www.vmware.com/go/viewclients

Back in August at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco, Teradici has announced a new product bringing the power of PCoIP to Microsofts Terminal Server. In fact it is a competitive solution to Citrix XenApp, brokered by VMware View.

Teradici has recorded a webinar about their new RDSH solution which is now available on their website.

Watch this webinar to learn how you can unify your mixed VDI and published desktop environments using PCoIP, simplifying network configuration and standardizing end point devices to meet expectations for lower TCO and improved end user experience.

The new product offers:

• Unifies mixed deployments under one protocol to simplify network configuration
• Opens up the PCoIP ecosystem of zero client endpoints
• Allows users to access their RDSH desktop over the WAN

At VMworld Europe in Barcelona I had the chance to get a Live Demo of Teradici’s new solution and I was really impressed about it. If you didn’t read my article, here’s the link: http://www.thatsmyview.net/2012/10/13/back-from-vmworld-europe-2012-my-thoughts/

The following link will take you to the Teradici website where you can register for the webinar.

On the Teradici website it still says that the RDSH solution is coming in Q4/2012 so stay tuned. If you want to learn more about it please feel free to visit this link.

Link: http://www.teradici.com/news-and-events/webinars/webinar-2012-10-25.php

A few month ago we’ve published an article on a free repurposing PC solution for VMware View. Tinycore Builder is a website which helps you to generate a minimal size, bootable ISO image with a built-in VMware View client. (Link)

The solution is now available via a new web address. Please visit the following link.

Link: http://repurpose.vmwarecloud.at/

Great news from the VMware View Client team. They’ve just released a new version of their clients and of course the new Windows Client is compatible with Windows 8 for Desktops and Laptops and has an improved support for Intel based Windows 8 tablets.

Here’s an overview of all enhancements through the different clients:

Today I’d like to share an interesting read with you which was written by my colleague Andreas Wilke, who’s a Technical Account Manager at VMware. Please note that the configuration mentioned in the article is currently not officially supported by VMware.

One major benefit of desktop virtualization is the central image management for all desktop clients that can be deployed in many different pools as a View master image for floating or dedicated pools. Inside a floating pool deployment our current recommendation is to use a ThinApp repository for your applications which are streamed over a low latency connection from a network share to the View clients. With that solution you will avoid installing applications to the master image and can use the same master image inside many pools with different set of applications in each pool.

The challenge in that scenario begins with the installation of applications inside the master image itself for applications that can’t be used with ThinApp or are hard to be packaged with it. Usually you don’t want to have the local installed applications inside each pool for each user or it can’t be installed with other applications due to incompatibility reasons.

When you start to install applications inside different master images of your View environment you will start to lose control of the central image management. You will need to install patches inside each master image individually. Inside a growing View environment it will be hard to manage all the additional master images. You have to start using a central image and application management tool for your master images (ex. SCCM).

With VMware Mirage there is one simple way to get back the control of all your master images inside your View environment. The only thing you have to do is to install the Mirage Client inside your master images and add them as CVD (Centralized Virtual Desktop) to an existing or new Mirage environment. Inside your Mirage environment you can create a new Base Image that will be used as a Reference CVD for all your master images. This can easily be done inside the Mirage management console. With this solution you can easily update only one reference machine with patches/installed applications and synchronize the changes to your View master images. The updated View master images can be used to recompose your existing floating pools.

There are two things you need to consider when you want to use this:

1. You have to disable the Mirage Client deamon each time before you create a new snapshot of the master image so it will not run inside the deployed floating pools.
2. If you are not using VMware View Persona Management our recommendation is to disable the Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider. This service is necessary for Wanova Mirage, so please active it if you update your master image and disable it before you deploy or recompose the new floating pools

That’s it. A easy integration of VMware Mirage with VMware View and floating pools. If you are already using an application management system for your application you can use it as well to manage your installed applications inside your View Master images and reference machine in combination with VMware Mirage.

A picture tells more than 1000 words…. So here you can see the combination of all products:

What do you think about this configuration? Please feel free to leave your comment.

Would you like to hear more about this solution?