Virtual Desktop Monitoring
Virtual Desktop Monitoring
For my work I'm busy with designing, implementing and troubleshooting VDI environments.... I see VDI in this matter as a concept including SBC and all other central desktop solutions.
So I downloaded Virtual Desktop Monitoring (Accelratio) to get started...
I setup a small environment in a client server kind of way for I recon that VDI has not much to do with monitoring itself.... the basic stuff you can also test without a VDI environment. I like to keep the variables as less as possible so I choose this setup. In the near future I'll set it up in our Virtuall environment but for now this is sufficient.
Components
The product has two main components;
- a management server with a database;
- a client component with a service that does the monitoring.
Setup
Setting up the product is a breeze, first you install the management server side. It's of course recommended to have your server and desktops in a Active directory before proceeding to setup. I tried to setup the client while the server and client were running in a workgroup but the authentication failed everytime.
1st step : Create an AD user and make sure this user is added to the local administrator group for each desktop or server you're about the manage. This can be done manually or by a GPO, the choice is yours. For my testing I added the user manaully.
2nd step: Assign the user account "logon as a Service" rights, again through GPO - Computer Configuration/Policies/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Local Policies/User rights assignments/Logon as a Service.
3rd step: Running the server setup, you have to choose if you will use Windows integrated authentication or SQL server authentication. Choose Windows authentication is possible.
Note: The service user running the configuration wizard needs "Administrator" and "DBcreator" privileges on the SQL server to create the database. In case you use SQL authenticatie you need to create a SQL login..
4th step: Install the management console and the client service. The management console is setup running SETUPVDI.MSI on the server, running it asks the default questions like destination folder and so on.
After the installation is finished the Configuration Wizard is started to setup the stuff. This Configuration Wizard can be run over and over again for the console or the startmenu.
The option to create a new or use an existing database... I setup a database already so I choose use existing.
Browse for the database server and type in the database name, the name can't be resolved. I use Windows authentication to connect to the database. A simple "Test connection" will verify your SQL connectivity.
Next step is the user account you created in the 1st tstep. Again a simple "Validate account" helps to establish the correct working of the account.
...and then we wait... just a few minutes at max.
The installation is ready, the application can be started... it's so simple...
....and if you like me have a trial license, you click try.
The console opens, of course there's nothing to see there yet. We haven't installed any desktops yet so no data is pouring in.
Desktop installation
So let's install a desktop service.
There are two ways to install the software on a client, we'll actually there are more, but there are two main routes to take...
1. create a Transform file and setup the client with a preconfigured file
2. run setup and follow the configuration wizard.
Of course in a production environment you will do the first option, I choose the second.
When you create transform file the following properties are important (to be found under "Property");
- Servicesstartupmode (automatic)
- ServiceAccountType (Service user or LocalSystem for SQL authentication)
- ServiceUsername (servicename of the service user we created in step 1)
- ServicePassword (The password of the service user)
- ConnectionString (Server=SQLServer\SQLInstance;Database=VirtualDesktop;Trusted_Connection=Yes;Asynchronous Processing=true;
As said before I just ran SetuopVDI.MSI on the client side and installed the client, the Configuration wizard start after completion to connect to the server. The Configuration wizard needs the same
Configuration
As soon as your client is installed the computer is shown in the console as shown in the picture below.
You can see simple thing like if it's being monitored or not and whether it's online or not. Also you can connect to the desktop via a normal RDP connection.
Reports
There are a number of basic reports available, some of them are;
- User and application Daily activity, monthly activity;
- User application timeline;
- Session count, daily and monthly;
- Gantt charts;
- Detailed user/ application activity;
- Application instances totals per day/hour and details;
- Sessions logs;
- User count summary reports;
- Activity by state (logged on, idle etc);
- Concurrent user per day, hour;
- Concurrent application usage per day and hour;
- Used application licenses;
- Application License compliancy and details+ suite license compliancy and details;
- Client license compliancy and details;
Activity is grouped by user... It's just a quick report mainly for the environment wasn't running long enough to have enough data.
To send out daily or weekly reports you need to setup Email configuration
After doing so you can add reports to be mailed daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
The format of these reports can vary between several formats... you can use the report to post on your Intranet.
and last but not least the reports is setup, you get a nice overview of which reports are scheduled for daily sending and so on.
That's that for now... a quick look at Virtual Desktop monitoring.
EdgeSight for XenDesktop
Not being a true Edgesight guru I'm faced with more and more implementations where Edgesight is used to monitor both XenApp and Xendesktop. So again I had to implement EdgeSight for XenDesktop at a customer site, I thought let's put it on paper and share it with you all.
Site information:
- Edgesight is version 5.4
- XenDesktop is version 5.5
- XenApp is version 6.5
- Provisioning server 6.5
- Citrix DataStore is SQL Server 2008 R2
- Operating systems for all servers are Windows 2008 R2
- Operating system for VDI desktops is Windows 7 x64
The Edgesight installation for XenDesktop begins with a basic Edgesight installation. after this installation you can add a XenApp servers etc to be monitored. This can't an issue for anyone. Its pretty straight forward.
With XenDesktop a component is added to the architecture of Edgesight, a Agent Database Broker. the database broker saves data the VDI agent is sending. but before the agent is allowed to write data it has to contact the Edgesight server. First contact is the Edgesight server, it knows which server is the agent database broker and will redirect the agent to the broker server.
The flowchart below is from Edoc at Citrix and shows what I just described.
The next component that is required is a share is used to save data like log files are INI files that are not saved on the Edgesight or database broker server itself. The share should be located on the Edgesight server or even better the Agent Database Broker.
Create a share where Authenticated users have the following right on set on "This folder only"
- List Folder / Read Data
- Read Attributes
- Read Extended Attributes
- Create Folders / Append Data
- Delete
- Read Permissions
The VDI agent on the XenDesktop VDI desktop stores the same log files on the VDI desktop in a folder at C:\ProgramData\Citrix\SystemMonitoring\Data
If you experience issue with communication between the agent and the Edgesight backend check the SYS_EVENT_TXT.TXT file.
Errors like the one below states that something is wrong, and the error says a lot but not exactly what you want to know.
Current service state is 'START_PENDING'
2012-03-06 15:20:30 Core Collector Starting...
2012-03-06 15:20:30 Core Collector Database connection is brokered.
2012-03-06 15:20:30 Core Collector Connecting to database broker http://SR-12436.vitens.lan:80/edgesight/app/Services/DbBroker.asmx
2012-03-06 15:20:52 Core Collector Error obtaining database connection. Failed to contact database broker at http://SR-12436.vitens.lan:80/edgesight/app/Services/DbBroker.asmx for pool 'Windows 7 - VDI'. Error=0x80072EE2 SoapClientError=SEND_ERROR
If you look in the Edgesight console you'll see the Device count is 0, this is of course because of the error above.
I checked EDocs over and over but never saw that one line about the Agent Database Broker. From what I thought it was, was that you just add a Agent Database Broker server to the infrastructure so that you have two server running; 1 EdgeSight and 1 Agent Database Broker server.
I was so wrong about that, after reading EDocs again one line stood out that I missed or mis-interpreted before. the picture below is a small part of EDocs about the broker.
It says that if you have multiple EdgeSight installations (whatever they mena by that) you select one to act as the broker. That made me think, I had only done one broker server installation, there was not a lot to choose. So My guess was that if I installed the broker software on the Edgesight server and pointed it to the broker that might work.
That turned out to be excactly what it had to be. The minute I hit finish at the installation GUI was the minute the VDI agent could talk to the broker. I changed the broker address in the VDI agent to the EdgeSight server (who is responsible for direction clients like shown in the flowchart in the beginning).
As you can see the Broker server address, ( the address is hidden or course) has to be filled in. This is I think not so clear as it might give you the idea that you can point to the actuall broker server whilst you have to point to the EdgeSight server instead.
If you install the agent or the broker take care you have the pool name correct, without that you'll never get it to work.
After the installation of the broker is done, you'll see a logging like this in the console.
After a while you see pining checks appear to check the existence of the broker.
Perhaps I'm missing something and parts are not correct, please point it out to me. This setup worked for me.
Hope this small blog wil help you get more understanding of EdgeSight and XenDesktop.
Like DFGallon mentioned on twitter it's surely possible and perhaps even wise to add a persistent disk that is maintained during reboots. on that disk you could save the data that is now going to the broker.
The reason we don't have that setup here is because of storage costs, but it truly is an option.
One other thing I didn't mention is that the agent won't start when the provisioned desktop is in private mode. This can be over ruled with changing a registry key value.
On the Desktop edit the registry key HKLM\Softw
Relink ThinApp 4.5 packages for use with View 5 + PCoIP+Smartcard options
Relink ThinApp 4.5 packages for use with View 5 + PCoIP+Smartcard options
If you happen to run into a customer with some 4.5 or older ThinApp packages, you will have some issues when you installed the VMware view agent 5 with smartcard PCoIP options enabled.
The application package just won't start, no error no nothing just a dead application. The way to solve this is to repackage the application with ReLink .
Start a command prompt (cmd) and browse to C:\program files\vmware\vmware thinapp
- Type the following command: "relink.exe c:\applicatiename.exe" and hit <enter>.
In this example WinRar was used to test if our idea was correct.
The picture above shows the screen you see after ReLink is ready with injecting the new instructions in to the application. The size of the application package will have grown a bit with this action.
As you can see the old package was 6.280KB and the new pacakge is 6.336KB, a small increase in size. The new executable is ready for use.
If you have more than one application you need to repackage, you can use another command to do this automatically for all application packages in a folder. Use the command below to preform this.
Relink.exe –recursive C:\mypackages
Mypackages is the location of all the ThinApp packages.
The screenprint above shows the folder with the old pacakges and executables. The screenprint below is the result after ReLink has been run.
It's a simple solution but very effective, if you run into this issue it might make you wonder for a while. Now you know how to solve it fast and easy.
Thanks to Chris for doing all the testing.
Sharing applications with Citrix XenClient
So here we are again, today I had some spare time that I filled with working on the CSDV smackdown...
I decided to setup my demo DELL laptop and share some applications between virtual machine, because who doesn't want to do that in their spare time.....
The documentation about sharing applications is minimal, from page 35 on you have a short chapter about how to share applications and somewhere in the guide there is a quick guide of how to receive them....
So what do you need to set this up?
- A laptop capable of running Xenclient --> Check.
- Two virtual machine running e.g. Windows 7 x64 SP1 --> Check.
- a non-standard Windows application to publish --> Check.
Publisher
So First you setup the publishing virtual machine, the one that will provide you with the applications.
Assuming you setup your Windows 7 virtual machine already we can proceed to setup the Xenclient tools. The XenClient tool CD is attached to the virtual machine so opening it and starting Setup will install the XenClient tools
I won't go over the marks you have to set for licensing extra, that's all basic stuff we all see to much. The installation is a next-next-finish installation so have a go.
Half way the next-next-finish you have to choose which components you will install, if you clicked to fast you only installed the Xenclient tools. That's no problem you can add the publisher later on also.
So after starting the setup you get the following options:
on the publishing virtual machine you select Publisher (what else) and you move on with your quest to reach Finish. A reboot is necessary to complete the installation.
Subscriber
Before we decide which applications you will publish and how, we first make sure the subscriber is ready for them.
On the subscriber the steps are the same except for the choice you make..
Choose "Subscribe to Applications" on this virtual machine to be able to receive the applications from the publisher.
A reboot is necessary to complete the installation.
Publishing applications
By default Xenclient will publish every application that is installed in the publisher virtual machine that is not Windows native. Without any additional software installed this means you just get to see Internet explorer.
In the XML file you see that the User startmenu en the Common startmenu is browsed for new applications. These settings are set under "DiscoveryPath". Publishing of applications is further controlled with a whitelist and blacklist, Internet Explorer is by default on the whitelist and several default Windows applications are blacklisted.
Receiving applications
On the receiver side you get an extra option in the startmenu, not like it says in the documentation "Dazzle apps" but a "Get more Apps" menu items is provided.
After selecting this, Receiver is started and you can select the application provided.
As you can see the reciever shows my second virtual machine already (XCWindows-PC).
Clicking on that one will show the applications provided by it.
I installed Firefox as a new application and it is shown instantly in the receiving desktop. If I click on "ADD" the application is added to my "Application" menu and appears in my startmenu.
I can open FireFox by clicking on the icon, mind you you have to be logged on to the other virtual machine to make this possible. If your publisher virtual machine is locked you'll get the password unlock screen presented instead of the application.. there is no intelligence built-in that has some sort of a tunnel into the other virtual machine...
In the receiver you can search for applications, this is handy when you have multiple applications. I searched for FireFox and Voila there it was.
Only when you add it to your collection will it appear in your startmenu.
Now I need to test a thing or two, while doing an initial test my second virtual machine was locked. Starting my publsihed application showed some weird behavior.
Test : publishing virtual machine is unlocked.
When I start FireFox, something weird happens... I get a locked desktop at which I first have to logon.
After logging on, Firefox starts.
I tried to save the picture shown above after pasting it in Paint. I couldn't use my keyboard and had to save it as untiteld. For some reason my keyboard is locked for a while. I could typ in the second virtual machine screen however...
FireFox started and I can typ in that screen. After a while my keyboard is functional again in my first virtual machine. The fact that my receiving laptop keyboard is locked is strange.
One thing I noticed on my other laptop was a spike in processor usage from the plugin providing the application functionality. on this laptop, a DELL, I don't notice this behavior.
Test 2: the second virtual machine, the publisher is now locked.
- The desktop screen is shown, locked like above.
- I can't use my keyboard anymore in the first virtual machine, the keyboard is only usable for the published application untill I logon to the desktop and Firefox is gestart.
A day or two down the line, I went further with looking at this application publishing. On the receiver side you can look into Connection center to see which applications you opened from the other VM. Of course you can also see that from the green lining, but if you're like me you will not notice that after a while anymore.
As you can see the connection center and all it's features are the same as they were with a normal SBC deployment.
Two days ago I published one application, actually I just installed it in the publishing virtual machine and let XenClient do the rest... anyway
Today I wanted to test how long it takes before Xenclient displays a newly added application to the publishing virtual machine. So I added VLC, but it could have been any application for all that matters.
Installed it, started it, closed it, waited.... switched to my Receiver virtual machine, refreshed reciever, refreshed again....waited....waited and yes there it was
It takes a decent amount of time to see the application in the Reciever virtual machine. I refreshed everything except XenClient. Also didn't I restart the virtual machine. the application shows up eventually and truth is that you won't be facing this in normal day live. a publishing vm will be pre-installed ready and waiting for you perhaps even autostarted.
VLC performance and opening files
just one small minor thing....Look at the video performance of the demo video. The receiver virtual machine has 3D enabled, the publisher not...as required.
further on, I suddenly wondered, why is his video on this virtual machine for I didn't install VLC here (not realizing these are Microsoft demo video's). I opened explorer from the application and from my receivering virtual machine. It appears that VLC is reading the C disk of the publishing virtual machine and can't read my receiver virtual machine... that weird. That wouldn't make any sense, I want to access my own files... perhaps I'm overlooking something but for now I'm in the dark.
Below is a picture of both the explorer screens, the bottom one is from the receiver, the top one is opened from VLC and shows the publishing virtual machine.
Dualscreen
Altered by a Citrix forum post I went out to test Application sharing with dual screen.
first I attached a second screen to my laptop, extended the monitor so I had a wide screen to work on.
It's in Dutch but you all know these settings...
Starting an application, FireFox goes like planned...it starts and all looks well.
The green lining around the screen shows that the application is started from another virtual machine.
I can move FireFox from my primary screen to the second screen with no problem..
However when I try to set FireFox Fullscreen, it doesn't work as expected. the application jumps back to my primary screen. I haven't found the reason for this yet.
Conclusion
the feature works and is pretty easy to implement, it has some rough edges I can't get my hands on yet... we'll keep on looking and testing. For now I know enough.
I can see a use case for this with application compatibility and work versus private virtual machines. Still I'm not sure how to place Xenclient in the usecase itself....
Nice topic for up coming discussions...
Passthrough, Adaptive Display & Citrix receiver v13
For a customer we are doing a project like a lot of you are doing, Citrix XenApp and Xendesktop to enable a centralized virtual environment.
The customer asked us to make sure users can logon automatically so that they don't have to enter their password more than once.
This seems to be a daunting task when you work with Citrix Reciever v13 as we noticed.
Setup:
- Citrix Receiver Enterprise 13.1.0.89
- Citrix XenDesktop 5.5
- Citrix XenApp 6.5
- Citrix Web interface 5.4
- Microsoft Windows 7
The products used are straight forward, no suprises so far.
The environment is setup and two desktop are published, one XenDesktop desktop and one XenApp desktop.
First we installed the Citrix receiver simple and easy through starting the MSI and following the GUI untill the installation was finished.
the screenshot below shows the version that was used for this test. it was downloaded the 17th of January 2012. We tested also with a other version that was available that was available in 2011, this was the 13.0.0.89 version.
After the installation is finished you get the success confirmation.
When browsing to the website to get access to your desktop, you have to enter your credentials before you can get to your desktop. With XenDesktop the screen turns black for a moment and disconnects. With XenApp you just have to enter your credentials.
Workaround/Solution
Then my wonderfull colleague Erik & Matthijs, who spent hours debugging this, found an interesting thing about the receiver.
When you install the receiver command line with all options specified, it's behavior is different. Go Figure!!!
So when installing Receiver with the following command line, it suddenly operates like it should do.
citrixreceiverenterprise.exe /silent /ADDLOCAL="ICA_Client,PN_Agent,SSON,Flash,USB,DesktopViewer" ENABLE_SSON=yes
When you logon after this passthrough is working and you only enter your credentials once.
Of course you still need to active "Local user name and password > Enable pass-through authentication" in the icaclient.adm policy but that not part of the issue.
There is more....Adaptive display
If you thought this was it, you're wrong.... With the receiver installation their is one more odd feature that depends on the way you install it.
Some of you mst have noticed this when looking at HDX monitor in a XenDesktop environment, it always says "Adaptive Display" is disable or wrongly configured. The message is always, you misconfigured the policies, but no matter what you change it'll never work.
For a while I thought it was my fault and I really misconfigured something in the policies. Then again when Erik & Matthijs were working on the passthrough issues he noticed something else.
After installing the receiver by Command line this message dissapears without any other changes. To test it, I installed one desktop with the non-functional receiver and one with a fully functional.
First I logged on to the non-functional desktop and I got the result show above, then I roamed my desktop to the fully functional desktop and instantly Adaptive display works.
It think it's good to understand the how and why... I just hope Citrix will fix this...
XenClient 2.1 a usability review
Whilest working on the PQR smackdown I will write a small update about XenClient 2.1.
I've installed XenClient 2.0 about a month before going to Citrix Synergy in Barcelona, the reason for this was to gain knowledge about the product. I was expecting a lot of sessions and discussions about XenClient and didn't want to be the guy would just listened, I like to participate in discussion, but participation calls for knowledge.
So now were about 3 months ahead since my first encounter with XenClient, since then I've cursed the product on a weekly bases but still remained working with it. I'm not the kind of guy that abandons a product that fast, I was hoping for releases that would fix the bugs I encountered.
First I'll introduce you with my laptop.
Today, 1st of January, I upgraded my installation to XenClient 2.1. I should have done that a while ago already but never made it to that point. I had no backup for my efforts to make a backup all failed due to several reasons not interesting enough to all of you.
Upgrading is a breeze.
1. Download the upgrade
2. Put it on a CD
3. Boot your laptop with the Xenclient 2.1 CD
4. Choose Advanced
5. Upgrade
After the upgrade is done, you need to upgrade your XenClient tools. The available virtual machines all get an Exclamation mark next to them to remind you the XenClient tools require an upgrade.
I went of started my Virtual machine and browsed to the CD, all went well. Running the installation I got the message "Upgrade is not possible, you first have to remove the previous version".
!!Update!! I'm also running a Windows 2008 virtual machine for demo purposes, when trying to upgrade the tools running there, no message was shown about not being able to upgrade. The upgrade proces didn't go well but that was expected. The fact that the message wasn't shown is strange, as it did in my Windows 7 vm.
My co-worker @JrLangedijk will update tomorrow so that will be the proof of the pudding, I'm waiting to see if my upgrade meesage was a glitch of a feature.
I've included the picture of the XenClient tools software below to show you it really states it's "Updating" the software. Mind you it is not updating the software becasue I removed the software before it would go forward. So the upgrade appeared to be a clean installation, no problems with it, just thought Citrix would be able to do the remove/re-install quietly without me noticing. The re-installation of the XenClient tools software took at least 20 minutes.
After that a reboot is required. So within 50 minutes or so, I was up and running again.
After logging in I noticed a sluggish behaviour... Lucky @KBaggerman reminded me of a new feature, with the upgrade Citrix XenClient reverts your vCPU configuration back to 1. This can only be changed by a powershell command.
So CTRL-0 and open the command screen.
with the command Xen-vm -n <virtual machine name> set vcpus <number> you can change the number of vCPU's you assign to a VM. I changed mine back to 2 quickly.
The option to set you vCPU is no longer available in the GUI, also it's been removed in the new VM wizard. with XenClient 2.1 all your VM by default get 1 vCPU... not my choice I would say.
Screen crashes
Perhaps too soon but since yesterday I haven't had any screen crashes. Of course it might just be luck but it at least one thing I think is a big plus from 2.0.
Just tested the youtube movie Big Buck Bunny in 1080p format full screen with nog glitch whatsoever.
Battery life
From another blog I read about the battery life and the incorrect display within XenClient guest OS. I checked this with my laptop but my results are not as drastic as written in the other blog. perhaps when the battery life remaining is low the differences are greater than when around 90%.
The picture above is like it's shown inside the guest vm. the picture below is how the battery status is shown in XenClient.
It's not that a big difference, just 1% off. Still it's not clear why the diffrence is there. I'm gonna monitor if the changes go up when the battery goes empty. The battery is now at 31%, it's going pretty fast, but still they're almost in sync.
Built-in HSPA+ broadband modem
My laptop is equiped with the possibility to add a mobile broadband SIM into the rear of the laptop. XenClient sometimes recognizes this SIM and gives me the option to fill in all the details. It however will never allow me to connect to the Internet with it.
When I look at device management inside my guest vm, the drivers seems to be oke. This is still under investigation.
I was looking at seamless application yesterday and noticed that my CPU was spiked constantly. I've attached a screenshot to clarify it.
only the subscribe is installed... no other vm is running so no communication is happening.
Tommorow the quest goes on... if I find new stuff that is interesting to write about, this will be the place you find it. Stay tuned.
It's Friday the 13th, no better day to test some more on this day....
Finally my demo laptop received, it's a Dell laptop, a Latitude i7. Can't find any model reference so it's a Dell.
I decided to do some basic checks on the Dell to see if the behaviors are different than my own HP 8560P. First of all I tried the dreadfull 1080P FullScreen demo test.
If I did this test with my HP 8560p my screen would crash for sure, not always but most of the time and to much for me to dare testing it over and over.
First I tried a 720p movie with an awfull lot of birds flying around...
I opened this move at the highest resolution, 720p, at fullscreen. no issues what so ever.
Next movie is beautiful nature scenry at 1080p full screen...
Citrix XenClient – usability test
Citrix XenClient
This blog is a experience of working with Xenclient in real life.
I decided, after having the possibility, to switch to Xenclient a month before Synergy to experience it and get some valuable info to share.
Since today, 09-09-2011 I've switched from old school bare metal windows deployment on my work related laptop to Xenclient.is
This is not a PQR smackdown style blog or investigation, it merely will show what you encounter when you switch to XenClient as an ordinary user. One of the reasons for that is that I haven't got the time to do this kind of investigation in this short period, neither do I have the means to do sufficient testing with external devices or do I possess the knowledge of Linux to do in-depth tests. Read it as a blog about the experience that I encountered since the 22nd of August until now.
Version
The version I used is 2.0 as shown in the picture below.
Display
First impression, after one evening, were not so well for the display "crashed" repeatedly for no apparent reason. I switched off 3D graphics and de-installed Jing for screen captures. After these steps my screen hasn't crashed so far. I have to say I felt a bit disappointed in the screen behavior for I expected more. further on in the document you'll read more about the display and how it's somehow fixed. Given you don't do wild thing like scrolling through MS Powerpoint.
Power and display
Regularly I have to do a bit of walking with my laptop, from one meeting room to another or from the attic where my "home office" is to downstairs when my kids gets home from school. Every time after plugging in the power adapter I noticed that my virtual Windows 7 desktop was dimmed. Of course that's an expected behavior when the laptop is running on batteries.
When I plug the power back in the laptop stays dimmed and never returns back to normality. Manually I can alter the display of course and get it back to life... like you see in the picture below. I think these are small things that can and should be resolved quickly.
USB
Second thing I noticed is that XenClient is kinda selective with USB, my laptop (a 8560p from HP) has 5 USB ports three USB2 and two USB3. XenClient can only work with the USB2 ports, I didn't do a check on my laptop and therefore it took me a few hours before I realized what was the case. I think that no product these days should have these limitations and a certainly not a type1 Hypervisor product like XenClient.
Update!!!
I have to update this, last week I was pretty busy troubleshooting a XenApp 6.5 and XenDesktop 5.5 environment. without thinking about it I plugged in my mobile phone into the right side USB ports (my mobile is a Samsung so it's empty after a few hours if you dare to call with it), Suddenly my virtual machine reported it was installing a driver for the phone. So the case has changed a bit, still my USB disks don't connect to these ports. I would need to do some more investigation on the how and why but really lack time to do so.
ISO
One thing I do miss in XenClient is the ability to easily add ISO files. Adding ISO files is possible when you have SSH enabled and started, you then can connect with SCP or WinSCP to Dom0 and upload ISO files. these files are then available for your virtual machines. After you install a virtual machine it would be damn easy if you could connect the CD drive to a ISO in that virtual machine. that way the ISO doesn't need to be copied over and over and taking up space twice.
This is all fine and well but my SSH service didn't work as planned, it was there, it was started but not really started. Xenclient was not sure what the state was. My Linux knowledge is about 8 years old and not that accurate anymore, I asked a coworker ,@Burgh, to help me out and he fixed my SSH connection.
It of course would be so easy if the XenClient interface had a simple ISO upload option. That way guys like me with little Linux knowledge would also be able to add ISO files to the system. Or at least there should be an option to reset/enable the SSH service for the UI instead of the shell.
Security
These days you can't be secure enough, therefore it's important to also secure you hypervisor instead of only securing your virtual machine.
With XenClient you can simply do that and more you can set a timeout so that when you go for a coffee your virtual machine as well as you hypervisor will lock.
It's pretty simple to setup and works fine, never had any issue with this so far. First picture is the setup where you can edit what the timeout period is.
Second picture, just below this line, is the lock/logon screen. In one occasion I encountered that I wasn't able to log back in and XenClient was unresponsive. After waiting for several minutes it worked fine, this has been a once in a life time. The security has worked fine ever since.
Multiple monitors
Today, 12-09-2011, I decided to work from home. my home office is equipped so that I have a extra monitor and a good desk to sit at. I plugged in the monitor like I've done with some many other laptops and operating systems experiencing a rather disappointing moment. Citrix XenClient can only mirror my display to the next monitor and not extend it.
Update!!
I had my virtual desktop configured without 3D enabled and therefor was missing some advanced features.
To go on with the story, without 3D enabled you only have a mirror option when working with multiple monitors.
of course a picture says more than words...
First to proof to you, I can't change anything in the settings.... Citrix XenClient sees only one monitor. If you look at the Xen side of it, there's no way you can do anything about display except enable or disable 3D graphics which will crash your display. As you can see not so clearly because of the mobile picture quality both my displays are filled with the same evernote note I was writing at that time.
With enabling 3D graphics in the Virtual machine the virtual machine has access to the real graphics card features and therefore also can enable more features. One of those features is expanding you desktop to another monitor, so that you don't have to see things twice like in the picture shown before.
Again proof of the pudding...
I enabled 3D Graphics for this Virtual machine, my primary desktop running Windows 7 x64.
Running like this also makes working a bit more living on the edge... the 3D graphics option together with a 8560P HP laptop (haven't tested any others) isn't great.
As soon as you do something a bit to graphical like changing the second screen from right to left like I just did a bunch of lines will appear over you screen that only go away after a reboot. the picture below was taken just after switching my display option so that my left monitor was also left in Windows.
Only resolution (funny word when talking about monitors...) is to reboot, but hey my job is not about rebooting I need to work. So Citrix Fix this!
The thing gets creepier, after working fine for some hours now I noticed something I didn't see before. I opened a picture send by a coworker and noticed the lines. I thought damn there we go again but after closing the preview my general screen wasn't affected. This was a first for me.
I got some suggestions on twitter on how to solve this and will edit this post as the day goes on, ......
The suggestion I got on Twitter by @JonSpallone and @JarianGibson (Remember those names) is to disable all advanced features except VM switching and drop the assigned memory to 3GB instead of 4. I changed it and I have to say the number of crashes have gone down, they're not gone completely but it's doable.
My coworker @jLangedijk, is running 1.99b and can't do this fixes for they don't help him in his crashes. So we need to install the synchronizer which we just took offline a month ago when we needed a Hyper-v host to do some troubleshooting. the troubleshooting is done, bring back the synchronizer.
1 week after installation....29th of August
A week after installing Xenclient I've been more used to it and it's "missing" features. The idea of a client hypervisor is a great concept although XenClient 2.0 is not that ready that I would recommend it to use in real life.
Last week I installed 2 more virtual machines for testing purposes, both unsupported but running.
The first one is a Microsoft Windows 2008 x64 server that I use for testing RES Software Automation manager building blocks with AD, Exchange and SQL server. I chose Microsoft Windows 7 x64 as the virtual machine guest when installing and received no error what so ever.
The second one is a Microsoft windows 8 x64 desktop that I use just for taking a quick look at Windows 8. The installation went a bit different for you have to choose the Ubuntu option to get it installed, I chose Windows 7 at first receiving 0xc errors.
Switching between virtual machines is easy and works much better than with VMware Workstation. For IT professionals or developers this is a want-to-be situation.
In the picture below the Windows 8 machine is gone, and replaced by a W2k8R2 server with XenApp 6.5.
switching works with CTRL + 1,2,3 and goes so easy that every time I now have to work with VMware Workstation or vSphere client I curse those tools leaving my coworkers wondering why. Connecting between virtual machines is also something that is really easy, I have the USB connectors exclusively connected to my primary desktop for I need them for my daily work. When working from the other virtual machines I simply connect over UNC to the disks in the primary virtual machine without any issues so far.
The only issue I face right now is the limitation of my laptop I ran out of memory and cpu cores to run more virtual machines at once.... but that a luxury issue I shouldn't complain about. I see possibilities for client hypervisors and perhaps Xenclient (if they fix some current issues) for developers and testing environments.
Screen Capture
one issue I also posted on twitter was the issue with 3D graphics and screen captures programs. I'm used to using Jing which is a great tool easy to capture anything on your screen. When using Jing the screen crashes and it looks like a stone is thrown at my display. The only resolution is to reboot the virtual machine.
After several crashes, I first decided to disable 3D graphics but that didn't stop the crashes completely. the final resolution was to stop using screen capture tools at all.
Of course this won't do for I need them for my work from time to time.....
Time will tell what I will do....
2nd week after installation... 8th of September
We're now two weeks from taking a drastic decision in life, working with XenClient in real life. Every week I add a chapter about my experiences in the last week. In between I add thing about specific events I find worth sharing.
The Windows 8 virtual machine is gone, installed it, worked with it for a few days but didn't see the value of it with the tile way of working....
I have a few exams coming and therefore need a few servers to learn and test stuff.
Last week already I installed a Windows 2008 R1 server, promoted it to Domain controller and installed SQL server and Exchange on it. the servers runs fine, really really like the way I can switch between my primary desktop and the server. the performance is outstanding, love it.
Now I installed a second server with Windows 2008 R2 to run XenApp 6.5 on it, my exam is the beta exam for XenApp 6.5.
I've added the Windows 2008 R2 server to the domain and I can test and train myself. This is not a standard feature of Xenclient, the server operating systems are no default option, but choosing Windows 7 you can install them without any problem.
The Xenclient tools are also installed without any problem, just needed to add the DotNet feature first and not let the Xenclient tool install it. Been fighting with ISO files and SSH connection, thanks to @Burgh for helping me out. XenClient wasn't sure if SSH was running, he fixed it. I written everything already about ISO files and the missing UI, really really would like to see a solution for that in the next release.
Also as you have read, multiple monitors are working now and the crashes of the display are down as long as you follow some basic rules.
One of those rules is that you don't scroll through PowerPoint like a madman, XenClient doesn't like that... XenClient must be a woman for my wife doesn't like me zapping on TV through 30 channels in 1 minutes either.
When you scroll that fast the screen turns black and returns "scratched" leaving you with no option than to reboot.
...But after two week I'm more certain that if they fix some small issues and the screen crash the product has potential for IT guys and/or guys wanting to give demo's at customer sites. never ran multiple operating systems side by side before in my life.
4rd week after installation... 26th of September
Has it been 3 weeks already, time is flying when you're having fun.....Am I having fun? I don't really know. One thing I know is that I'm riding on a two track feeling last three weeks.
One side of me sees the potential of this product and really loves the nativity of working with a desktop and a server next to each other without even realizing it. I can switch between virtual machines as easy as typing in word. that's a 1000% improvement over working with e.g. VMware workstation.
On the other side all the crashes, lost a lot of work last Monday because of a crash, just proves to me it should not be a 2.0 version. The potential is there, the product itself is not as ready as it should be.
I've been testing the HP hs2340 hspa+ mobile modem with Windows 7, it's seen but for some reason I can't get it to work. doesn't seem to be XenClient related but just noticed it. This week has been filled with at least one crash a day...crashes occur for the most stupid reasons. first, I don't run any freaky software on this Windows 7 virtual machine, I'm a consultant and Word and Visio are my friends. Crashes occur when browsing to a local folder or when saving a Word document.
to prove I don't run anything freaky, here's a screenshot of my installed program (for otherwise people will always doubt). To be honest Windows Live and WinSCP are also installed but the resolution of my screen didn't allow more to be displayed.
I know for a fact that this is less than I ever see at customers when deploying virtual environments.
Conclusion
I started out on a journey to test the usability of Xenclient for ordinary users. I can't think of any more subjects to write about and my agenda leaves little room to do more extended testing. Therefor it's time to write a conclusion and make up my mind.
Pros: of course we have to start with the pro's, my goals was not to burn down the product just to test the usability.
The pros of Xenclient are;
- The easiness in which you can run multiple operating systems next to each other without losing performance and usability.
- Easiness of the installation;
- Fast startup time;
- Dom0 management screen although some features might be added to ease it more.
Cons: each product has con's, so has XenClient.
Cons or Xenclient are;
- Immature working of 3D graphics;
- No full support of USB ports
- No support for SD cards;
- Stability
I hope that version 2.1 or 3.0 will be live soon...it would be a welcome suprise and hopefully bring more stability to the product.
Sweden and the distance to Stockholm
Sweden and the distance to Stockholm.
Departing from Malmo to Stockholm we took off on the E4.
The E4, this is important for the story, has evolved from a backdoor road to a nearly complete modern highway that stretches across Sweden from East to West.
A little history on how my experience with Sweden and the E4 has come about. Years ago I met my wife, who's from Finland, on the ferry to Stockholm. Since then I've been travelling to Finland from The Netherlands on several occasions.
Back to the story, the road from Malmo to Stockholm and the distance between both of them.
After leaving I noticed on several occasions that the distance of my Navigation system was out of sync with the measurements on the signs next to the road. This year I paid more attention to this....
Leaving in Malmo we had about 595km to go, not so bad. The difference on the signs was only +5 to my navi. This is of course plausible because my destination was not the center of Stockholm. Stockholm is a metro pole and therefore stretches several kilometers. 5km difference isn't strange. It will become stranger....
Driving several hours we reached a the point where we had around 400km to Stockholm to drive the difference suddenly changed. Did the center of Stockholm move, did my destination move? That would be plausible for it was a boat, but the address I entered wasn't.
The difference varied between +5 and +11 until we reached the distance of 200km.
At that point the center had visited my destination and the difference was 0km. Further down to Stockholm it changed the other way, so the center closed in on us. This was kinda spooky, the center is moving...
It's funny when you mind the signs and do a reflection on your navi, you wonder if they don't know/care about the distances.
My guess is, like mentioned before, that the E4 has evolved to a modern highway but the sign are still the same from the old backdoor road.
..just my 2cents on a travel to Stockholm...
Manually Remove a VMware View pool
Manually remove VMware pool
VMWare - KB 1031841, 1008658, 1028622 have some information about how to remove virtual machines and clones but not about removal of pools.
I encountered this and decided to write a small blog about it.
Connect to the Connection server and start Adam-AdsiEdit.
Open the connection with the following parameters…
Right click on the “My Connection” and open a new Query.
Create a search to find the pool you want to remove.
Search : (&(ObjectClass=pae-pae-ServerPool)(name=poolname))
After you find the pool, you see that perhaps a number of desktops is still registered with this pool. These laptops need to be removed from first. Create a search on the Server OU to find these desktops. Replace the VM name with the desktop names you’re searching for, wildcards are permitted.
Search: (&(objectClass=pae-VM)(pae-displayname=VDI-TEST*))
After you found the desktops and deleted them (make sure you got the right ones).
Now you can remove the pool you found in the first search.
After this you only need to follow one more step, You need to compare the Applications OU with the Server group OU and remove the differences. Only compare the pae-Desktop Application entries with the pae-ServerPool entries.
After the entries from the Server Group and the Applications have been removed, you can restart the web browser and you’re good to go.
