Recently I was in the process of deploying and configuring VMware Horizon Workspace 2.1, which is now a single virtual appliance and came across and strange and unfathomable error.

The error itself was "Error Incorrect issuer in SAML AuthnRequest" and was displayed right after I had ran through the initial configuration wizard such as setting the passwords and database.

After finding very little information about this error on the internet and nothing useful in the appliance log files as to why this was happening I started to feel a little lost.

After deleting snapshots on a VM either by deleting an individual snapshot or selecting "Delete All" snapshots, you may see the following warning for the VM, stating that disk consolidation is needed.

"Virtual machine disks consolidation is needed"

 

 This can occur when a snapshot has been deleted and removed from snapshot manager, but the consolidation of the VMDKs on disk have failed.

 

In a VDI environment users may experience delays, hangs, freezes and pauses when using the Microsoft Office suite of applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint.

I've also heard this described as "lumpy" performance!

This can be seen in Office versions 2007, 2010 and the latest 2013 (including Office 365 click to run) with all updates applied for both Office and Windows.

 

While this can be caused by a number of factors, such as insufficient vCPU/vRAM in the guest OS or resource contention at the host level, it could also be due to a setting within Office to disable hardware acceleration.

 

esxcli storage vflash device list
Name                    Size  Is Local  Is Used in vflash  Eligibility
--------------------  ------  --------  -----------------  ---------------------------------
naa.500a07510d7fe78  457862      true               true  It has been configured for vflash


esxcli storage vflash module stats get
 Num Active VMDKs: 14

I recently noticed an error within the Horizon View events database I had not seen before. This error was in a new environment I was configuring and testing at the time.

The specific error was:

"Failed to perform space reclamation on machine VDI-WIN81-137 in Pool WIN81-POOL1"

 

The error was occurring ever hour and failing to reclaim disk space from the linked clone virtual desktops. If you have a blackout period configured for specific days and times then the space reclamation process will not run during these times.

It is often standard practice to install the server operating system on C: and then applications and data on additional drives such as E:, F: and so on.

However vSphere Web Client since its 5.0 release though 5.1 and including the latest version at time of writing 5.5 U2, if you install vSphere Web Client to any directory other than the default installation directory you will get the following error when browsing to the vSphere Web Client page.

 

"HTTP Status 404

The requested requested resource is not available"

Here is a simple but handy PowerCLI one liner which can output the VM name and it's IP address.

 

Connect-VIServer localhost
Get-VM | Select Name, @{N="IP Address";E={@($_.guest.IPAddress[0])}}

 

VMware Horizon View provides different methods of provisioning and assigning users to virtual desktops. It is important to fully understand what benefits and limitations each method provides so that a solution can correctly be designed. The correct solution may encompass several desktop pools with a mixture of provisioning methods and user assignment.

If you are looking for a less technical explanation of Persistent vs Non Persistent desktops, please read the following article:

Persistent vs Non Persistent Virtual Desktops (Non Technical Explanation)

 

There are 2 desktop pool types available, ignoring the terminal services pool, which are; Automated pool and Manual pool.

  • With an Automated pool, vCenter Server is used to create the virtual machines automatically from a master image. An automated pool will almost always be used in every deployment. View will then use vCenter to manage the VMs, such as power them on, delete them re-create them and so on as required.
  • With a Manual pool, the desktop(s) already exist and could be a virtual machine both managed and unmanaged by vCenter or even a physical desktop. This pool type would not normally be used unless for a very specific reason as it would require another method to provision the desktops.

If you are looking for a more technical explanation of persistent vs non persistent desktops and how this applies to VMware Horizon View, please read the following article: Persistent vs Non Persistent Virtual Desktops (Horizon View Technical Explanation)

 

What is a non-persistent virtual desktop?

Pros: Storage utilisation/costs, desktop update/management, increased security

Cons: User installed applications not possible

A non-persistent virtual desktop does not retain any data on the desktop itself after a logoff or reboot. This includes any data such as user settings, application settings, internet bookmarks and so on. Instead this data is retained using another method such as folder redirection to store user settings in a central location and applied to any desktop they logon to.

 

Following on from creating an RDS Farm within Horizon View Administrator and an Application Pool based on applications hosted an RDS session host, we are going to create an RDS desktop pool.

 

That's right, you can now have a desktop which is a shared/hosted desktop on an RDS session host (much like Citrix XenApp).

In some use cases a group of staff may not require a full virtual desktop to perform their job. In which case giving them access to a desktop hosted on a shared RDS host would be a more economical solution.

But the access to this shared desktop could be published via the same method access their virtual desktops and using the same PCoIP protocol, which is quite exciting for me and another design option available for those solutions where a group of users just use IE, email, file and print and have a low resource utilisation. 

 

One of the most prominent new features of VMware Horizon View 6, is the ability to utilise Windows Server RDS Hosts to provide server based applications and desktops to users.

This is quite possibly the most desirable feature of recent releases. As a consultant covering both VMware and Citrix solutions, this levels the playing field somewhat in terms of publishing applications (but not entirely) between the two vendors. If anything this will make it more interesting in the next couple of releases as VMware advance this functionality.

So what is all the fuss about? After all you could have created an RDS host with RemoteApp previously and given View users access to these.

The VMware EUC development team has developed a way in which PCoIP can be used as a protocol on RDS hosts, much like Citrix use the ICA protocol. This has required VMware to work very closely with Microsoft to achieve this.

The result is that it's now possible to present applications on an RDS host (or a Collection of RDS Hosts) via VMware Horizon View Administrator. Managing entitlements in the same place and offering these RDS based applications (and desktops) via the same Horizon View Client. All the while using these applications via the same PCoIP protocol as View virtual desktops which should improve the users experience compared to using the standard RDP (RemoteFX protocol).

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All advice, installation/configuration how to guides, troubleshooting and other information on this website are provided as-is with no warranty or guarantee. Whilst the information provided is correct to the best of my knowledge, I am not reponsible for any issues that may arise using this information, and you do so at your own risk. As always before performing anything; check, double check, test and always ensure you have a backup.

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