Adding a second factor to your authentication is always a good idea. Typically the second factor is a One-Time Password (OTP) or a push notification. But what if you want to allow the login into your Horizon View environment only from specific devices? This implies that you need some kind of second factore that also identifies the device. At this point the arch enemy of many of us comes into play: Certificates!
Using physical clients as Horizon View agents is pretty common for me. My office pc, as well as my Lenovo X250 are often used by using the Horizon View Client and the Blast protocol. But as good as the performance is, there were a couple of things that bugged me.
On my office pc, I encountered pretty often a black screen, either on first connect, or on reconnect. The typical issue caused by misconfigured firewall policies, but this was completly out of scope in this case, because my collegues never had issues with black screens.
We have to deal with COVID19 for a year now and from the IT perspective, 2020 was a pretty strange year. Many project were not cancelled, but were placed on-hold. But two kinds of projects went through the roof:
Microsoft 365, and Horizon View As you might noticed I blogged a lot about Exchange, Exchange Online and Horizon this year. The reason for this is pretty simple: That was driving my business this year.
The View Agent Direct-Connection (VADC) Plug-In was designed as an extension to the Horizon Agent, which allows a Horizon Client to directly connect to a VM or physical machine withtout using a Horizon Connection Server.
The VADC is nothing new, it is part of the Horizon View eco system for a couple of years now. Meanwhile, the VADC supports the Blast Exteme protocol, which makes it pretty interesting for remote access to lab environment or home office equipment.
This issue was a bit annoying. I faced this issue not in a customer environment, rather then on my second Lenovo laptop, an X250 with Windows 10 20H2. My intention was to use it headless in a docking station. So how should I access it? RDP? TeamViewer? Why not use the Horizon Direct Connection Plug-in?
The Horizon Direct Connection Plug-in is not a new feature and you can think of it as a View Agent without a Connection Server.
THIS IS FIXED in ESXi 6.5 U3 and 6.7 U3.
See KB67426 (Performance issues with Windows 10 version 1809 VMs running on snapshots) for more information.
TL;DR: This bug is still up to date and has not been fixed yet! Some user in the VMTN thread mentioned a hotpatch from VMware, which seems to be pulled. A fix for this issue will be available with ESXi 6.5 U3 and 6.7 U3.
Last month, I wrote about a very annoying issue, that I discovered during a Windows 10 VDI deployment: Roaming of the AppData\Local folder breaks the Start Menu of Windows 10 Enterprise (Roaming of AppData\Local breaks Windows 10 Start Menu). During research, I stumbled over dozens of threads about this issue.
Today, after hours and hours of testing, troubleshooting and reading, I might have found a solution.
The environment Currently I don’t know if this is a workaround, a weird hack, or no solution at all.
Disclaimer: The information from this blog post is provided on an “AS IS” basis, without warranties, both express and implied.
Last week, I had an interesting discussion with a customer. Some months back, the customer has decided to kick-off a PoC for a VMware Horizon View based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). He is currently using fat-clients with Windows 8.1, and the new environment should run on Windows 10 Enterprise. Last week, we discussed the idea of using Windows Server 2012 R2 as desktop OS.
One of my customers has started a project to create a Windows 10 Enterprise (LTSB 2016) master for their VMware Horizon View environment. Beside the fact (okay, it is more a personal feeling), that Windows 10 is a real PITA for VDI, I noticed an interesting issue during tests.
The issue For convenience, I adopted some settings of the current Persona Management GPO for Windows 7 for the new Windows 10 environment.
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
Certificates are always fun… or should I say PITA? Whatever… During a small Horizon View PoC, I noticed an error message for the View Connection Server.
That’s right, Mr. Connection Server. The certificate subject name does not match the servers external URL, as this screenshot clearly shows.
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
But both settings are unused, because a VMware Access Point appliance is in place.
