Automatically log on to VDI desktop as different user?

[twoton]

Hello-

I am trying to set up a small group of VM's that are presented to users as desktop pools, but they are isolated from the primary network where AD runs and they are not joined to a domain.  As such, I have disabled SSO so that users can user their domain credentials to authenticate to the View server, but then they are presented for additional Windows logon credentials at the standard Windows logon screen.  We have a mix of thin clients and software clients as well as HTML access, but most users connect from the Horizon thick client installed on a Windows OS. 

This works, but it would be nice to enable automatic sign on to these VM's since every person connecting will be logging in as the same user.  I've searched around for various options but haven't found anything that sounds like it will work.  Anyone have any ideas?

[NathanosBlightc]

Hi

Try this app : View Auto-Connection Utility | VMware Flings

[twoton]

Thanks Amin.  That app looks like it will take a username/password string to pass to a connection, but not quite what I was looking for as I wanted several users to be able to bring up the View client and connect to any one of several desktop pools without having to type in the username and password every time.  I see that it generates a command string, so maybe I can use it to make some scripts that the users can run, but an ideal solution would be something that would run on the agent side so that a user connecting from a View thick client or an HTML client would both have the same experience.

[NathanosBlightc]

However, you need to create some scripts to run in the background without user interaction and to do that you will require a background authentication anyway because connection server needs to validate you before grant you access to the desktop pools

[nburton935]

Interesting use case! Have you tried enabling automatic Windows logon to see if that works?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/324737/how-to-turn-on-automatic-logon-in-windows

[twoton]

The problem with the automatic logon (I think, haven't tested actually) is that the Horizon server will see a locally connected session and won't let a user connect to the pool as the desktop will be "busy"