VM /ETC

Over the past several weeks I have attended VMware’s latest VMLive web seminar about VDI as well as a local partner training session. Both the web seminar and the training session provided some great information about the new Virtual Desktop Manager product or VDM 2. The following post is a summary of my notes and some of the slides from the web session. Click on the slides to view a larger version.

VDI & VDM Architecture

With VDM 2 the VDI architecture is scalable and flexible. Multiple installations of VDM allow for larger numbers of users and desktops. Securing virtual desktop access from the Internet is also possible.

When you install VDM 2 you have three choices for the Desktop Manager installation type:

• Standard (first Connecton Server),
• Replica (copies of first server) servers
• Security Server – ssl tunneling, 2 factor authentication – can be installed in DMZ

VDM installs

windows services on 2003 SP2 or Server 2003 R2

VDM can only be installed on 32 bit OS

VDM installs Microsoft ADAM in order to provide non intrusive AD modifications locally. ADAM only reads the existing AD schema for users and groups and does not modify.

Currently there is no built in load balancing to provide a single broker address for users. Different VDM server addresses can be used for different users, or a third party load balancer like F5 can be used to provide a virtual ip address.

When using multiple VDM servers, configurations replicate between servers

Features

USB Redirection

• allows access to local usb ports on the client hardware (thin-clients, desktops).
• Active Sync with local ports.
• Globally enabled only, can not turn on/off usb redirection for individual users
• requires installation of VDM Agent and client
• for Windows VMs only

Tunneling - SSL through the communication path all the way back to the ESX server

You can provision individual desktops or desktop pools,

• Pools can consist of either persistent, or non-persistent desktops.
  • persistent – files saved to VM and changes made are kept. Once a user is assigned to a virtual desktop the user is always connected to same VM
  • non-persistent – files and changes are not kept. VDM can restart the VM after user logs out to reset the VM for the ext user
• The Pools can be based on desktop needs – accounting, order entry, support – all cloned from the same template

Web Management interface for VDM servers

• enable/disble VDM servers
• manage inventory of desktops
• policies
• event viewer
• provsioning thresholds
• session timeouts
• enable/disable tunneling
• enable/disable usb redirection

VDM Agent

• installed on XP Pro 32 bit, Vista Ultimate virtual desktops,

• must be installed for USB redirection driver

VDM client

• required on local PC or thin-client for remote access to virtual desktop
• You need a local installation of RDP
• windows OS supported only.
• Must have to use USB redirection

VDM Web Client

• Provides access to virtual desktop via a web browser
• Method of access to virtual desktop from Linux PC
  • SUSE, Redhat, Ubuntu (requires RDP, Java, Firefox)
• USB redirection not available via web client

Thin-client support – supports Xpe and Linux based thin-clients

Future feature- use a template and linked clones to reduce disk space consumed (like in Lab Manager)

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