alienjoker Tracker

Re: Norton LifeLock installed on destination pc

alienjoker — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 11:18:18 GMT

Hi sabegg

Synchronising bookmarks/favourites from personal to corporate devices is indeed possible if the Corporate instance of the browser does not prohibit it. For example a user can login to Google Chrome at home and save bookmarks only to then login to Chrome in the corporate environment to see their personal bookmarks again.

If other browsers in the corporate environment are also configured to import/sync bookmarks between them, then they too will show the users "personal" bookmarks.

Manage who can sync browser settings - Google Chrome Enterprise Help

With regards to Norton LifeLock, are you 100% sure the user is using the Corporate browser and not confusing their home browser with one thats accessible inside the OFFICE environment? Having said that, it is entirely possible that if you have configured Browser redirection, it will render the website on the client device but appear in the remote desktop (VDI instance), thus using her outbound network protection as opposed to the corporate proxy for example.

Hope that helps

Andrew

Re: UAG admin password

alienjoker — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 08:30:48 GMT

Hi Lars,

Have you had a look to see if the firstboot.properties file exists in your deployment under the path specified above, it was deprecated from newer versions of the UAG.

If it does, can you take a look inside to see what values are currently set for adminPassword - I'm assuming its in clear text?

less /opt/vmware/gateway/conf/firstboot.properties

Thanks

Andrew

Re: UAG admin password

alienjoker — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 22:51:07 GMT

Hi Lars,

Try the following:

echo ‘adminPassword=<Password>’ > /opt/vmware/gateway/conf/firstboot.properties

chown gateway /opt/vmware/gateway/conf/firstboot.properties

supervisorctl restart admin

Many thanks

Andrew

Re: Unable to Domain Join ESXI Hosts 6.5

alienjoker — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 21:00:21 GMT

Have you double and triple checked the necessary ports are open from the host to AD?

VMware Knowledge Base

To eliminate the host firewall itself, you could temporarily disable it from the CLI

esxcli network firewall set –e false

esxcli network firewall get (to check the status)

then attempt the domain join again.

Then re-enable the host firewall

esxcli network firewall set –e true

Thanks

Andrew

Re: H.264 Check?

alienjoker — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 20:25:51 GMT

Hi YorickStap - yes that's correct. The administrative setting will determine the configuration at all times, regardless of the configuration of the client. If you make the change at the GPO level against the computer object and perform a gpupdate /force, the session will immediately flip to "adaptive" from "h264".

If you have the Vmware Horizon Performance Tracker application installed on the VDI, you can see this under the "At a Glance" tab and "Encoder" as follows (the following was from my lab):-

Hope that helps.

Thanks

Andrew

Re: Chrome OS "can't open this page" for Horizon Client

alienjoker — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 12:38:32 GMT

Ok, without knowing what the portal is I'm afraid its difficult to know what the trigger or the application launch is calling and how it interfaces with the client. As you say, with or without the Horizon client installed, the problem remains the same, therefore it is suggesting that perhaps an extension of the portal needs to be registered on the client device for it to know to pass the previously authenticated session via SAML to the Horizon broker and into the Horizon client on the device.

If you can find out who owns the portal and what it is, that might be the best next line of enquiry.

Sorry I can't be of much more help.

Thanks

Andrew

Re: Blast Lag / High GPU usage

alienjoker — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 12:34:14 GMT

Can I ask what content is being rendered in the active Chrome windows consuming 6GB of RAM? If they're streaming a full screen video at the resolutions of the monitors you've said are attached, it's unsurprising that the GPU is being heavily taxed.

Thanks

Andrew

Re: H.264 Check?

alienjoker — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 12:30:34 GMT

Hi,

You can configure H264 preferences for the virtual desktops using the ADMX GPO as per the following article:-

VMware Blast Extreme Optimization Guide | VMware

Or you could use DEM (if you have it in your environment) to target specific users/machines for those that do/don't need it.

The article above also shows you how to identify the protocols and codecs in use by those connected.

Thanks

Andrew

Re: VMWare Horizon on Chromebook gives white screen

alienjoker — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 12:24:39 GMT

Hi,

Have you tried an earlier/newer version of the client? I've had this issue on a mac with the newest client version, but rolling back resolved the problem.

Thanks

Re: Windows 10 User Profile Service and App Volumes Profile Writable Volume

alienjoker — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 15:19:09 GMT

Apologies, this was the reference I should have included:-

Features of Writable Volumes

"You can understand how Writable Volumes can be used with VMware Dynamic Environment Manager, behavior of Writable Volumes in a non-persistent virtual desktop, how Writable Volumes are used in a shared datastore, and how to exclude specific locations of Writable Volumes from being overwritten."

There is no mention of persistent machines as they are indeed unsupported.

Re: Chrome OS "can't open this page" for Horizon Client

alienjoker — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 13:20:25 GMT

Thanks for confirming your setup.

Does your portal look similar to the below? If so, this is Workspace One.

Have you tried uninstalling the installed Horizon Client from Chrome OS and then re-authenticate to the portal to see if it triggers a subsequent installation of the Horizon client? I'm wondering if the association with the browser is simply broken and a forced install from within the portal (if it prompts you) will rectify the problem. The only other solution I can think of is to try and use a different browser on the Chrome device and see if that works (firefox for example) - which would eliminate the problem at the remote end and highlight the issue is with the Chrome Browser itself on the device.

If this doesn't solve things and it is indeed a Workspace One portal as per the image above, I would suggest moving this post over to the Workspace One forum as it is less of a Horizon issue, more of a portal integration problem.

Re: Windows 10 User Profile Service and App Volumes Profile Writable Volume

alienjoker — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 13:10:32 GMT

No problem.

I imagine the Profile UIA template does not issue a "clean" dismount or registry release of NTUser.dat thus freeing up the OS for a successful logon for subsequent uses without a reboot hence the error messages you are seeing. I would imagine this could be fixed by VMware as other competitor products such as FSLogix and Liquidware ProfileDisk are able to handle these scenarios without issue.

Thanks

Andrew

Re: How to hear audio of an Win 10 RDP session from a VMware VDI session

alienjoker — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 09:21:03 GMT

Have you considered installing the Horizon agent directly onto the physical PC and brokering the connection directly to that rather than using VDI as a proxy/bastion host to reach the desktop? This would make for a much better experience.

Using Horizon 7 to Access Physical Windows Machines | VMware

Re: Windows 10 User Profile Service and App Volumes Profile Writable Volume

alienjoker — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 09:12:49 GMT

Hi,

Writeable Volumes are supported with persistent VMs but using the UIA template only. It would appear you are trying to use UIA + Profile as per your first post. This and the Profile Only templates are NOT supported with persistent virtual machines.

The following table is from:-

VMware Knowledge Base

The table below shows the possible individual use cases for VMware App Volumes.

Assignment Type	Volume Type	Instant Clone	Linked clone		FullClone	RDSH
			Floating	Dedicated	FullClone	Application	Desktop
			with Delete or refresh machine on logoff	with Refresh OS disk after logoff	with Delete machine on logoff	Application	Desktop
User	AppStack	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
User	Writable	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Computer	AppStack	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Computer	Writable	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Legend = Yes - Supported Scenario.

Persistent Disk with AppStacks and Writable Volumes (UIA Only template) is supported.

Hope that helps.

Thanks

Andrew

Re: Chrome OS "can't open this page" for Horizon Client

alienjoker — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 09:00:38 GMT

When you say portal page, are you referring to identity manager or workspace one? Is this an enterprise owned device or a personal device? If its enterprise owned, is it enrolled for management?

Thanks

Re: Chrome OS "can't open this page" for Horizon Client

alienjoker — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 16:17:13 GMT

To clarify, if you access the portal from a Windows/MAC/Android device, the desktop launches successfully post authentication with the installed Horizon client?

If yes to the above, it may be that you need to reinstall the Horizon client for Chrome OS on your device to re-register the association that makes a call to the app post authentication.

Re: Horizon Client 2006 asks for domain credentials even with GPO configured

alienjoker — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 15:38:07 GMT

Hey serverhack,

Check you dont have policies in place that conflict with the following required settings:-

1. Administrative templates -->windows components -->remote desktop services -->remote desktop connection client -->prompt for credentials on the client computer -->disabled.

2. Remote desktop services in same tree-->remote desktop session host-->security-->always prompt for password upon connections-->disabled.

Re: User Profile Management - Recommendation

alienjoker — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 18:30:32 GMT

Im with @srietberg on this... the throw away Outlook/Search data stays in FS Logix (which can easily be replaced in the event of business continuity or DR). The DEM data can be customised and replicated between file servers for consistency of user experience between primary/secondary sites with the smallest footprint/overhead.

Good luck!

Re: Memory Reservation - Official VMware Guide

alienjoker — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 10:18:31 GMT

Hi John,

For the most part I typically enable memory reservations when running any flavour of VDI regardless of vendor. If the host and cluster is "right sized" to handle the maximum number of possible active VMs, then reserving the memory will only compliment and ensure that a host is never at risk of being overloaded with more VMs than designed, thus avoiding memory ballooning and performance becoming an issue due to the use of vSWAP which will perform slower than accessing the RAM.

When you reserve all the guest memory, you are also removing the creation of a VSWAP file for every VM which from a storage perspective (assuming SSD and shared) will typically cost more than the associated memory reservation. So it's ultimately a trade off in cost vs capacity and performance.

For example if you have 1000VMs, here are two possible scenarios (all or nothing, a compromise could be found by not necessarily reserving ALL memory i.e. 50%) - assumptions are of course being made that the cluster is dedicated to VDI workloads etc.

- 6GB of RAM per VM, all reserved, this equates to 6TB of RAM (+hypervisor overheads) needed across the allocated hosts. If the cluster is right sized for the 1000VMs for the correct level of concurrency for those that are "active", then the memory wouldn't be being used for any other purpose anyway.

- 6GB of RAM per VM, none reserved, this equates to 6TB of VSWAP storage. The use of the VSWAP will impact VM performance if triggered but similarly, if not triggered will result in the waste of 6TB of capacity.

Hope that helps.

Thanks

Andrew

Re: ALT+TAB (win key) if publish RDP on Horizon

alienjoker — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 09:46:07 GMT

Hi all,

There is an easy solution to this but requires a bit of user re-education.

1) Make sure that under the RDP "Options" prior to connecting, that Apply Windows Key combinations" is set to "On this computer".

2) Once you have connected to the RDP Window, you must use the following key combinations:-

Windows shortcut	Remote Desktop shortcut	Description
ALT+TAB	ALT+PAGE UP	Switches between programs from left to right.
ALT+SHIFT+TAB	ALT+PAGE DOWN	Switches between programs from right to left.
	ALT+INSERT	Cycles through the programs in the order they were started.

Let me know if that works and if so, mark this as this Answer.

Hope that helps!

Thanks

Andrew