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.

Then I came across a similar issue with relating to the hostname missing the domain name.

For example running hostname on the appliance console:

"lnapp123

instead of

"lnapp123.domain.com"

However in my case the hostname did correctly have the FQDN correctly, but I noticed one difference. My hostname was in capitals.

"LNAPP123.domain.com"

Surely this was not the cause of my hours of woe? Well folks yes it was, I found deleting the workspace appliance and re-deploying it with the hostname with the domain name all in lowercase fixed the problem.

"lnapp123.domain.com"

This appears to be a bug in the Workspace appliance code. If CAPITALS are not allowed it should be stated in the documentation and there should be some sanity checking on the hostname.

To confirm my suspicions I deployed the appliance yet again with CAPITALS and got the exact same error!

While this is an easy fix, VMware do not have a KB on this and to be honest I can't be bothered dealing with their support any more. The last bug I raised (View 6 Agent via Blast / Lync Client) is still on going after a few months and is killing me time wise while trying to do other projects. So they can either read this and fix it without bothering me or hopefully it has helped someone else that got in the same situation as me.