Cortado has published an interesting news article about ThinPrint, integrated in View 5.2.

Cortado´s ThinPrint technology is integrated with the recently announced VMware® Horizon View™ 5.2. New important printing features include: VMware Horizon View 5.2 has the ability to support printer finishing options, such as hole punching, stapling, and binding on Windows 8, with the use of the ThinPrint Output Gateway virtual printer driver. Other features include driver-free printing, print data compression, and optimized printing for PCoIP.

Please visit the Cortado website for more information.

Link: http://www.thinprint.com/News/News/ArticleDetails/tabid/392/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/217/Default.aspx

Coming soon! The VMware Windows 7 Migration Twitter Chat! Join VMware invites everyone to the #vEUCchat on March 26th at 6am and 9am PST. 

Who’s chatting with you?

The VMware EUC Team (@VMwareMirage) and Forrester Analyst Dave Johnson (@david_kjohnson)

To download the calendar invite click on the time: 6am | 9am

It’s recommended to use Twitterchat. The Hashtag for the event is #vECUchat

Here’s what VMware says:

Windows XP support ends in April 2014, at which time any remaining XP deployments can leave organizations at risk for compliance violations, security vulnerabilities and undesired support costs associated with user satisfaction and productivity.  This Twitter Chat is designed to help address important questions and challenges IT is currently mitigating, while offering industry insight and solutions to move toward successful implementations.

Link: http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2013/03/windows-7-migration-twitter-chat-march-26th-at-6am-and-9am-pst-join-us.html

A new article on HorizonFlux should get everyones attention who’s involved in Windows Migration projects. Tim Arenz again has published a great read on VMware ThinApp. Here’s a quick quote of his article but please visit his blog an learn how ThinApp can help you within a Windows 7 migration.

However other issues aren’t fixable at all. If an application relies on 16-bit components or is a 16-bit application itself and you want to migrate to a 64-bit version of Windows you are out of luck. The application simply will not work. You could however use VMware Workstation orView to deploy 32-bit virtual Windows machines for your legacy 16-bit applications. Another example for an application which will probably not work if it depends on APIs which are deprecated or undocumented and therefore not available or working different in Windows 7.

Other reasons why an application might fail to work on Windows 7 like deprecated .dll files, hard-coded locations and dependencies to specific versions of Internet Explorer are a perfect fit for ThinApp!

Link: http://www.horizonflux.com/thinapp-os-migrations-and-application-compatibility/

The French blog (english language) www.vladan.fr has published a cool three article series about VMware Mirage. Learn how to install and setup Mirage and in the last article see how to migrate a Windows XP desktop to Windows 7.

Image source: http://www.vladan.fr/wp-content/uploads/images/mirage-windows7-migration.jpg

Links:

1. http://www.vladan.fr/vmware-mirage-installation/
2. http://www.vladan.fr/vmware-mirage-setup/
3. http://www.vladan.fr/vmware-mirage/

I really like the idea! Win a dream home lab for Christmas! It includes everything you need for your private datacenter. Thin about running your View desktops on those SDD’s.

Millions of wishes are sent to Santa every year. This year, Veeam will be your Santa! We’ve listened to your wishes and prepared a great gift! In December you may become the happy winner of the ULTIMATE NEW YEAR’s RESOLUTIONwhich includes a VEEAM DREAM LAB, Microsoft Surface and more! Enter for a free chance to win – and WIN BIG: REGISTER TO WIN *The winner will be selected on January 14. *Register just once and you’ll automatically be entered in every monthly drawing!

Interesting video on how to capture SAP GUI with VMware ThinApp. As mentioned in an old article on my blog there is a SAP support note ID which declares support for this solution.

WinTPC (Windows Thin PC) is a small footprint version of Windows 7 which should help customers to repurpose old computer hardware as a thin client. With WinTCP there is no need for a VDA (Virtual Desktop Access) license for accessing VDI desktops as the Microsoft connect website states. (See screenshot below)

At the moment Windows TPC is available for everyone through the beta program but this will stops latest when WinTPC will be released. As of an article at silicon.de the WinTPC software will only be available for Software Assurance customers. But anyway it should be possible to run the VMware View Client for Windows on WinTPC to access your VMware View environment. This might help to lower the investment costs for a VDI project. In the first step customers can repurpose their old PC hardware and then start a step by step soft migration to proper Zero client hardware like the EVGA or Wyse P20.

There are several ways of installing the VMware View Client for Windows on a Windows based device. You can install the client software manually by first downloading it from the VMware View Server web interface and then starting the installation from your desktop, you can install the client silently with MSI command line parameters or you can deploy the client with your software deployment solution. As described in the VMware View Installation Guide 4.6 chapter 09 on page 103 you can use parameters to modify the MSI settings for the installation package which is still an EXE file. You may wonder if that works with your deployment software.

If not, you could try to directly deploy the MSI file. The next steps show you how to access the content of the VMware View Client EXE installer file.First of all download the latest version of the client from your View Connection Server by accessing the web interface. Then start the installation on a Windows desktop. In the background the installer will extract the MSI file and some CAB archives into the temporary directory on your Windows box. When the installation wizard comes up and is ready to begin please open the temporary folder in the Windows Explorer. The easiest way of doing that is using the Run dialog/search field in the startmenu. Just type %temp% here, press enter and it will take you on the right folder.

In there look for a folder whose name is starting with a bracket like seen in the last screenshot. There should be three folders created by the View Client Installer so please take a look at all of them to find the right one. If so you’ll find a VMware View Client.MSI file and some *.cab files. Here we you!

*Kudos go to some colleagues having this conversation on a mailing-list.

Yesterday a customer asked me how to use Windows roaming profiles just on the virtual desktops and not on the local desktops from which the user is connecting. Those local desktops are also a member of the Active Directory and the connecting user has a profile path configured in his user setting within the Active Directory.

Read the rest of this entry »

The users in a View environment access the virtual desktop via the RDP protocol. For that to work the user needs to have special access rights. As a standard only the administrator has direct RDP access to the remote system. To configure access for the user you could do that on a per desktop basis manually what would be time consuming or you can use the Group Policy Objects within the Active Directory which is the recommended way. First of all you’ll need to figure out who should get remote access and create one or more user groups in the Active Directory. In this example the groups is called vditestusers and it’s a member of the domain TEST. Diese This group will be a member of the local group Remote Desktop Users on the virtual desktop which has the needed remote access rights. For that reason you’ll need to configure the group in the GPO’s as a Restricted Group.

After that add configure the group as a member of the local group Remote Desktop users and the users will have remote access.

In the last step you need to allow the users to connect remotly using the Terminal Services. There is an option within the administrative templates to do that. Just go to: Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components and then Terminal Services. This option will enable the Remote Access on the desktop operating system.

More information:

VMware XP Deployment Guide (Seite 4): http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/XP_guide_vdi.pdf

Restricted Groups: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc785631.aspx

Centrally enable Remote Desktop using Group Policy: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776790.aspx