VMWare View or Sun Virtual Desktop Access Kit?

Hello Everybody,
I'm in the process of deciding which way to go with the back-end of a new Sun Ray deployment and would appreciate any input. I already have a VMWare VI3 farm in place for servers so I'm familiar with this sort of technology.
I have looked into the functionality of VMWare View and it's VM recycling looks really good.
I've also seen that Sun have the Virtual Desktop Access Kit which appears, on the surface, to do much the same but without a few of the twiddly bits.
Is there any reason why I should/shouldn't use one over the other (other than cost!)? - particularly since I can't find any reference to the Sun VDA Kit anywhere on the UK site (is it still used or is it now included in the VDI 3 software?).
Many thanks.
Chris

Angus,
To be clear on your second question. Sun Ray Technology is a thin client (Appliance) access option for Sun VDI. It is not used as a desktop provider, but as a method to display and interact with a VDI hosted desktop on a Sun Ray Appliance. One big benefit of the Sun Ray Server as a access tier is it can use client code on the server for different connection options (I call these plugins for different services based upon a user's profile) such as VDI Desktops (Virtual Machines Instances on VBox, VMware, Hyper-V), Traditonal Solaris and Linux Multi-user Server Based Computing, Citrix Services, Mainframe emulation, a browser as Kiosk applications for locked down displays, and much more.
In the Sun Ray world there are many desktop provider options available beyond just VDI hosted desktop.
Jeff

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Re: USB with Sun Virtual Desktop Access / xVM VirtualBox RDP

Hi Volker,
USB redirection will work with both VRDP and WinRDP on VDI 3.1 EA release which will be available this week.
It requires SunRay USB driver for windows which will be the part of SRWC EA release and so will be of VDI also.
The steps to do this will be available in the docs,I will post the link here after the EA release and Doc completion.
Thanks
--Chirag

Hi Volker,
USB redirection will work with both VRDP and WinRDP on VDI 3.1 EA release which will be available this week.
It requires SunRay USB driver for windows which will be the part of SRWC EA release and so will be of VDI also.
The steps to do this will be available in the docs,I will post the link here after the EA release and Doc completion.
Thanks
--Chirag

Licensing for Windows Virtual Desktops (VDI) - do I need Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) licenses?

Hello. I am trying to figure out what type of licenses I need to achieve the following:
- Windows Server 2008 R2 running Hyper-V
- 25 virtual desktop on Hyper-V running Windows 7 Professional
Do I need a "full" license of Windows 7 Professional for each virtual machine, AND another license (let's say maybe Windows 7 Starter) running on the actual PC's that the users will be using?
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are using are older Pentium 4's so I wanted to keep the load on them minimal.
Thanks!

Hi,
Please check the following links.
Microsoft’s new VDI licensing: VDI Suites
http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2009/07/13/microsoft_1920_s-new-vdi-licensing_3a00_-vdi-suites.aspx
Virtual desktop infrastructure delivers the flexibility you need
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/solutions/virtualization/improve-flexibility.aspx
Licensing Windows for VDI Environments
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/0/5/5059CBF7-F736-4D1E-BF90-C28DADA181C5/Microsoft%20VDI%20and%20Windows%20VDA%20FAQ%20v2%200.pdf
Best Regards,
Vincent Hu
Does this article still applicable for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 VDI deployment ?
/* Server Support Specialist */

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Accessing Pooled Virtual Desktops via RDP Client vs RDWeb

Hello,
We have a Windows 2012 R2 Pooled Virtual Desktop PoC set up and can be accessed via RDWeb. We need to be able to access the pooled desktops via the RDP client. How can you specify the name of your Pooled Desktop Collection in the RDP client
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Hi,
To connect to the virtual desktop collection:
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3. Click Continue to this website (not recommended).
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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831663.aspx
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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831618.aspx
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Jeremy Wu
TechNet Community Support

Sun Desktop Access Client - Language Settings Windows Logon Screen

Dear All,
i have a little problem with the language setting of my Sun Desktop Acces Client if i try to connect to Windws 2003 Server.
First some configuration details:
PC:
Win XP (german version)
keyboard layout: german
Sun Desktop Access Client 1.0
Server:
Win 2003 Server (german version)
The Problem is that if connect the server via the SDAC the laguage setting of the logon screen has changed to EN
instead of DE. Using a german keyboard layout causes some trouble.
If i connect to the server via a sun ray dtu (kiosk mode) it works properly.
Has anybody a clue to get rid of this??
Thanks in advance.
Best regards
Ha-Pe

Okay, after a bit of investigation...
You can't have the locale used change automatically according to the local used on the client, the best you can do is assign a default locale for most users and create alternative kiosk sessions with different locales (as a uttsc option) which you can assign to DTUs or SDACs (or to smartcard token ids but SDAC doesn't currently support smartcards).
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Sun Ray Software 5 & Sun Desktop Access Client 1.0 Early Access 2 is live!

Links:
o Sun Ray Software 5 and Sun Desktop Access Client 1.0 Early Access 2 (EA2) download link -
https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=SRS-5-EA2-SP-LX-G-B@CDS-CDS_SMI
o Supporting documentation is available on the Sun Ray Software Information Center at [http://wikis.sun.com/display/SRS/Home] providing installation, configuration and administration in a topic-based, wiki format.
o Technical support is available on Sun Ray Online Forum at http://forums.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=875
o [Feedback survey|http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=edIU7UCv9CbC_2bFiyD8POow_3d_3d|Feedback]
-Sunil

Tnx!!
Small, but important changes: now working with Cisco ASA 5500 VPN (no more downgrade to 4.0 f/w version), working great with a static IP (no VPN phase 2 hang). For now new firmware connecting throw VPN to corporate SRSS 4.1 without any problem.
Keep testing with OSol 2009.06 (2010.02 /dev). Next step - check new (and VERY VERY important) USB redirection features! Next step - testing within (officially supported) Solaris 10 5/09 - any way, its not so interesting. If it is interesting to somebody and not prohibited by EA Program rules - i'll keep blogging about all-around-new-sunray-software :)
Again, thank you!

Licensing help needed for datacenter server with vm running windows server 2012 essentials and ten virtual desktops for remote access

NPO wants to get windows server 2012 r2 datacenter as the main operating system and then windows server 2012 r2 essentials plus 10 windows 8.1 as virtual desktops. Each desktop for one remote user running office 2013. Is there a better configuration?
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Bob

Hi,
For license related questions we recommend you contact Microsoft licensing specialist.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141850/en-us
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I have to login twice to access a Virtual Desktop in a pooled environment

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If I load the connection again (click the shortcut, and insert my username and password), I connect fine. But if I wait awhile the same thing happens again.
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Hi Jacob,
Thank you for posting in Windows Server Forum.
Have you set any session time limit setting? It might happens that if you have set any session time limit, then you there might be disconnection due to time limit. You can check below GPO setting for session time limit.
Configure Timeout and Reconnection Settings for Remote Desktop Services Sessions
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Dharmesh Solanki

USB Printer queue gets stuck - SRSS 4.2, SRWC 2.2, SRVC 1.1, VMware View 4

Hi,
My environment is VMware vSphere 4 with a few ESX 4 servers. On that, I have a vCenter, a View 4 server and SRSS. Then I have a number of Windows XP desktops.
When the user logs into his/her desktop via the Sun Ray, everything works including the local USB printer (an HP laserjet). But...you can only print once...then the print queue stays at "Printing" and won't go away. Any further print jobs just get queued up. It also won't let you delete the print job from the queue. The first print job actually does come out on the printer, but doesn't disappear from the XP's print queue.
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I can duplicate the "white screen of death" with Early Access to vmware view, with Rays running from Solaris/x86. This is in fact not vmware-specific, as I can hang uttsc to an ordinary XP system. To duplicate fairly reliably, I run a Flash example and then "start -> logoff". uttsc doesn't terminate, and truss shows repeated
/1: pollsys(0x08046690, 2, 0x08046728, 0x00000000) = 0
/1: ioctl(10, AUDIO_GETINFO, 0x08046620) =0
This doesn't happen if the IE window is terminated before logout. The behavior appears to be independent of "-F off" in uttsc (but I'm using the Ray audio driver).
Is there a workaround (other than downgrading) in the vmware view scenario?
Edited by: grommit on Aug 5, 2009 7:37 AM

How to use Sunray without VDI or VMware View Manager

There is no VDI or VMware View Manager in my test environment. Only srss 4.2 and srwc 2.2 has been installed.
Now i have 5 sunray client and 5 Windows XP VM. How can I let every user use their Windows XP VM in this environment and can enable USB redirection?
In page http://wikis.sun.com/display/SRWC2dot2/Managing+USB+Device+Redirection+%28All+Topics%29
Supported Configurations
Configuration
SRS 5 (SRSS 4.2, SRWC 2.2) and Sun Ray Connector Kiosk Session
Description
Supports connection to Windows desktop using the Kiosk session.
My question is How to let mutipl-user use it in this config
The following is my settings and all users now can use their own Windows XP but USB redirection cannot work
Select Common Desktop Environment (Obsolete) in Kiosk mode add an application:
cam_script.windows_connector,
#!/bin/ksh
# Script to map smartcard token to individual VM using either
# the "User Name" or "Other Info" field of the output from
# utuser -p <token>
# Look at output from utuser -p ${SUN_SUNRAY_TOKEN} and grab hostname
# % utuser -p user.1140788210-7053
# Current Properties:
# User Name = tester5
# Other Info = host
# Server Name = localhost
# Server Port = 7007
# Logical Token = user.1140788210-7053
# User Created = 02/24/2006 13:36:50
# Token Enabled?
# Payflex.500af8ad00130100 Yes
# Currently Logged In:
# Current Desktop = 0003bad7566e
# Desktop Location =
# Logged In Since = 02/24/2006 13:36:58
# Use "User Name" field as hostname of VM to connect to
#VMHOST=`/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utuser -p ${SUN_SUNRAY_TOKEN} | /usr/bin/grep "User Name" | awk '{ print $4 }'`
# Use "Other Info" field as hostname of VM to connect to
#VMHOST=`/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utuser -p ${SUN_SUNRAY_TOKEN} | /usr/bin/grep "Other Info" | awk '{ print $4 }'`
WinHOST=`/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utuser -p ${SUN_SUNRAY_TOKEN} | /usr/bin/grep "Other Info" | awk '{ print $4 }'`
# Could probably do a ping test here and pop up dialogue
# about getting support to check the availability of the
# machine (might event be able to use VC API to power up VM?)
# if it doesn't respond to ping. Could use something like
# dterror.ds, could also pop up different dialogue
# if VMHOST is not set
COLOUR_DEPTH=16
# If using 24bit need registry change under Windows XP
#COLOUR_DEPTH=24
# Fix F11 and F12
#/usr/openwin/bin/xmodmap -e 'keycode 75 = F11'
#/usr/openwin/bin/xmodmap -e 'keycode 76 = F12'
# Fix alt & print screen
#/usr/openwin/bin/xmodmap -e 'keycode 77 = 0xff62'
# Turn on numlock
/usr/openwin/bin/xset led 1
if [ "${WinHOST}" = "" ]; then
     #dterror.ds "Your Windows Machine can not be determined.\n\nPlease contact support and ask for smartcard \n\n${SUN_SUNRAY_TOKEN}\n\nto be associated to a Windows Machine" "Smartcard not configured" "ERROR"
     WinHOST="Windows_default"
fi
# Run Windows Connector in full screen mode at appropriate colour depth with sound redirection
# Disable the windows pulldown header in full-screen mode
# RDP Window Attributes options to disable are:
# -D wallpaper
# -D fullwindowdrag
# -D menuanimations
# -D theming
# -D cursorshadow
# -D cursorsettings
/opt/SUNWuttsc/bin/uttsc -mb -A ${COLOUR_DEPTH} -r sound:high -u "" ${WinHOST}
#if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
#     dterror.ds "Logging Out..." "Log Out" "OK"
#else
#     dterror.ds "Your Windows Machine ${VMHOST} is not visible on the network.\n\nIf you have just restarted it please wait a minute and try again\nIf you still have problems get help" "Windows VM is not available" "OK"
#fi
# End of CAM script
Then add IP address in other information of Token.

Meta Kiosk would certainly do what you need and the USB pass through works.
http://blogs.sun.com/danielc/entry/meta_kiosk_how_to_run
I think the problem you are running into is that you are using uttsc inside a Solaris environment as an app, looks like CDE, which isn't being supported to my knowledge to avoid conflicts between the two desktops. It is designed to work out of the box with SRWC kiosk mode.
The undocumented way to turn it on is to turn usb on by adding -r USB:on as an argument.

UCCX Advanced Quality Management with VMware View

Hi,
I have a customer who uses UCCX 8.5 with VMware View clients running CAD and 7940 IP phones.
They are looking at recording options and have expressed an interest in the Advanced Quality Management product.
There are a few issues that I would need to consider specific to their environment.
The first is that Desktop based recording would not work in this environment as CAD is running on a virtual desktop rather than a PC daisy chained to the IP phone. The second is that network based recording is not supported as the 7940 phones do not have a Built in Bridge.
This leaves server based recording which uses SPAN port mirroring. The issue with this is that the agents phones are distributed across multiple Catalyst switches so I guess I would need to configure RSPAN - has anyone got any experience of using Cisco QM with RSPAN? - if yes how well did it work? - the customer would probably be willing to upgrade the IP phones used by the agents if that would be a better option.
The final query relates to the Screen Recording Client - the install guide details how to install this on a Citrix server but makes n mention of VMware view. Does anyone know if support for this is on the roadmap?
Thanks!

Hi James
I've done an RSPAN deployment with UCCX recording which I presume will have similar gotchas...
The only issue I had was that I ham fisted an RSPAN config in that SPANned the VVLAN on all the edge switches. My mistake was that I didn't exclude the uplink ports, and these switches were stacked, so there was a lot of packet duplication initially (sounds like 90s dance music time stretching).
If you ensure you SPAN ingress only on all the endpoints (i.e. phones, and gateways) and then exclude any ports where traffic might be seen a second time (e.g. switch uplinks), and then filter for the voice VLAN you should be OK.
This deployment was a routed LAN with different subnets on each edge stack but this worked OK with everything running through a single RSPAN session back to the server.
I've not had the good fortune to have to do this more than a couple of times, and I've not done it for AQM - but assuming that SPAN/RSPAN are supported along with the video recording part running on the endpoints I don't see it being too different as they seem to be written by the same people.
Can't help re: VMware view either I'm afraid...
Aaron

VMware View Planner multi-remote PCoIP test with linked clones

So I was able to run the VMware view Planner local mode test no problem, however, I am having some troubles trying to do it with linked clones here. I think part of my problem is that the instructions I am following in the user guide here are a bit unclear. The part that is confusing to me is on page 56 of that document it says to use "View to Provision a Pool of Desktop Linked Clones. Follow the View documentation to provision as many clones of the desktop template virtual machine as you wish to test. These should be created as an automated linked clone pool with floating assignment. You must also use identical values for the pool_id and poolname parameters. "
This is fine, however, right underneath that it says to "Use vCenter to Provision Client Linked Clones" and then goes on to explain the steps needed. So do I need to create a view clone pool and create Client Linked clones in vCenter? That seems unnecessary. However, in the instructions for actually running the test headed "Create a Multi-VM VDI Run Profile," step d says:
In the Desktop / RDSH Name Prefix: field, enter the VM name prefix you provided in “Use View to Provision a Pool of Desktop Linked Clones” on page 56.
and step j says:
In the Client Name Prefix: field, enter the VM name prefix you provided in “Use vCenter to Provision Client Linked Clones” on page 56.
I tried just creating a clone pool using view, I based it off the snapshot that is created once the view planner client installer completes, I named the pool_id and poolname the same, as well as the prefix of all the VMs. However, when I try to run the test, it doesn't work. Any clarification here would be greatly appreciated. I'm using a brand new installation of vsphere 5.5 U2, view 6, and view planner 3.5.

We ask users to create desktop VM using View, while client or the launcher VMs can be created using vSphere provisioning. Why do you want to create the client VMs also as View pool? You can create them using vSphere provisioning provided on View Planner provisioning tab?

VoiP with Virtual Desktops

My company is switching over to VoiP with HUD and we are also looking into using the Virtual Desktops with existing PCs. Will the phone system work with VDI?

Hi
VDI is base in RDP or X11 protocol.
With Windows 2003R2, the RDP sound is on way only. The RDP is not bidirectional yet.
Microsoft plan to put is in Windows 2008R2 Server but is only roadmap.
Best Regard's
Marcelo Moreira Martins
[email protected]
Technical Consultant - Tarantella Systems Engineer
SE- Systems Engineer - M3 System Integrator.
Sun Microsystems do Brasil - Authorized Reseller
VMware VIP Partner
+55-51-3333-2644 - Porto Alegre Office
+55 11-4063-6584 - SP
+55-51-8167-9382 - Mobile Phone
Visit the EduSoft web site: http://www.sun.com/edu/edusoft/

Scaling Virtual Desktop Connectors

When planning a VDI deployment, how many RDP connections to XP/Vista desktops can be concurrently proxied by a single VDC Service, before I need to scale out to a second machine? Is there any automatic clustering or load balancing or failover, or is this done by 3rd party load balancer?
Thinking of a client who would want to deploy 10,000 virtual desktops, and need a ballpark idea of how many VDCs they'll need. Doesn't need to be exact, but any scaling information would be helpful.
Thanks.

Your question does not have a good answer, because it is very difficult to answer the question :
How many users are concurrently using the system ?
If you need 10.000 Virtual desktops , how many are used concurrently ?
VMWare says in their sizing guides that one should not run more than 8
virtual machines per processor-core. Also Vmware does not support more than
256 virtual machines or more than 128 GB Ram per server.
so if you populate the datacenter with X64 servers with 32 cores and 128 GB, you can
theoretically run 256 VM's per server , giving each VM in the region of 400 MB Ram.
if we estimate that 50% ( 5.000 ) users are logged in concurrently you will need
20 X4600 servers for the virtual machines . and probably another 10 X4600 servers
to run the Sun-Ray servers frontend and uttsc kiosks.
You will also need SAN storage at about 20GB per user. To hold the virtual Machine.
10.000 x 20 GB = 200 TeraBYTE
So a 10.000 user system is serious bussiness
Pleas bear in mind that the above is pure theroretical extrapolation .
it needs to be adjusted for the CPU and memmory consumption of the customers
virtual machines.
The SUN-VDI connector can use the Sun-ray datastore to store the configuration .
The sun-ray-server loadbalancing will load balance sun-rays over the SRSS FOG as
usual.
If I remember correctly , less than 100 MB ram was needed to run a uttsc kiosk.
So on a 128 GB system you could possible run a 1000 sessions.
You should have separate gigabit connections to the sunrays and from the SRS server
to the Virtual machines.
Not really sure how much CPU power is needed. A 32 core X4600 server would probably be able
to run 500 sessions of pure Uttsc Kiosks
also not sure as to how many concurrent connections the VDI connector will handle.
I do know that you will need a seroius machine to run the the Vmware Virtual Center
application. VmWare literature talks about 1500 virtual machines controlled from
one Virtual center server. and you want to run 8 times as many.
Maybe the whole thing needs to be split up in sections to be buildable.
check with Vmware expertise.
Usually when one dreams something like this togehter things are underestimated.
But for 5000 concurrently active users you would at least need:
20 X4600 32 core 128 GB ram servers for virtual machines.
10 X4600 32 core 64 GB ram servers for Sun-rays server.
a few other servers for Virtual Center and SUN-Ray FOG primaries.
200 Terabyte storage . ( for 10.000 users )
Please dont write this in an offer to a customer , you need to research the solution a lot more .
Reagards //Lars
Edited by: ltuarn on Nov 16, 2008 4:17 PM
Edited by: ltuarn on Nov 16, 2008 4:19 PM

VMWare View or Sun Virtual Desktop Access Kit?

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