The paper describes provides the architecture and design of a virtual desktop infrastructure that can grow from 500 users to 1000 users. The infrastructure is 100% virtualized on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 with third- generation Cisco UCS B-Series B200 M3 Blade Servers iSCSI booting from an EMC VNXe3300 storage array. The virtual desktops are powered using Citrix Provisioning Server 7 and Citrix XenDesktop 7, with a mix of hosted shared desktops (70%) and pooled desktops (30%) to support the user population. Where applicable, the document provides best practice recommendations and sizing guidelines for customer deployments of XenDesktop 7 on the Cisco Unified Computing System.
VMware last week released a new version of the Horizon View clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. Customers using a View client on their device are able to access their Windows desktop hosted on a VMware Horizon backend infrastructure.
The following functionality was added in version 2.3:
Microsoft has updated the capacity planner for Hyper-V Replica tool first relased in May 2013. The updated version offers the following:
Support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 in a single tool
Support for Extended Replication
Support for virtual disks placed on NTFS, CSVFS, and SMB shares
Monitoring of multiple standalone hosts simultaneously
Improved performance and scale – up to 100 VMs in parallel
Replica site input is optional – for those still in the planning stage of a DR strategy
Report improvements – e.g.: reporting the peak utilization of resources also
Improved guidance in documentation
Improved workflow and user experience
In addition, the documentation has a section on how the tool can be used for capacity planning of Hyper-V Recovery Manager based on the ‘cloud’ construct of System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
These posters provide a visual reference for understanding key private cloud storage and virtualization technologies in Windows Server 2012 R2. They focus on understanding storage architecture, virtual hard disks, cluster shared volumes, scale-out file servers, storage spaces, data deduplication, Hyper-V, Failover Clustering, and virtual hard disk sharing.
Hyper-V and Failover Clustering Mini Poster.pdf
Scale-Out and SMB Mini Poster.pdf
Storage Spaces and Deduplication Mini Poster.pdf
Understanding Storage Architecture Mini Poster.pdf
Virtual Hard Disk and Cluster Shared Volumes Mini Poster.pdf
Virtual Hard Disk Sharing Mini Poster.pdf
Windows Server 2012 R2 Private Cloud Virtualization and Storage.pdf
We are excited to announce the General Availability of Hyper-V Recovery Manager or HRM for short. HRM is an Azure hosted service which orchestrates the protection and recovery of virtual machines in your datacenter. Hyper-V Replica replicates your virtual machines from your primary datacenter to your secondary datacenter. To re-emphasize, your VMs are not replicated to Windows Azure. HRM is a service hosted in Azure which acts as the “control plane”.
In summary, the root account of the vCenter Server Appliance version 5.5 becomes locked out 90 days after deployment or root account password change. This behavior is by design which follows a security best practice of password rotation. In this case, the required password rotation interval is 90 days after which the account will be forcefully locked out if not changed.
The KB article describes processes to prevent a forced lockout as well as unlocking a locked out root account.
Approximately 90 days have elapsed since the release of vSphere 5.5 and I imagine this issue will quickly begin surfacing in large numbers where the vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 has been deployed using system defaults.
Upgrading the vSphere Web Client to vSphere 5.5 fails with an error
Attempts to upgrade the vSphere Web Client to vSphere 5.5 fails when they are installed in a custom, non-default location. An error message similar to the following is displayed:Error 29107. The service or solution user already registered...This issue is resolved in this release.
vCenter Server, vSphere Client, and vSphere Web Client
vCenter Server 5.5 displays a warning message in the yellow configuration issues box on the Summary tab of the hosts
When you connect to VMware vCenter Server 5.5 using the vSphere Client or the vSphere Web Client, the Summary tab of the ESXi 5.5 host displays a warning message similar to the following in the yellow configuration issues box:Quick stats on <hostname> is not up-to-dateThis issue is resolved in this release.
Attempts to export log bundle using the Log Browser fails
When you attempt to export a log bundle using the Log Browser interface, the browser window displays a Secure Connection Failed error page with the following message:Your certificate contains the same serial number as another certificate issued by the certificate authority. Please get a new certificate containing a unique serial number.This issue is resolved in this release.
Note: If you are upgrading from the vCenter Server 5.5 version, see the workaroundprovided in the known issues section.
Attempts to log in to vSphere Web Client result in an error message
Attempts to log in to the vSphere Web Client result in an error message if the Local OS identity source is not configured in the SSO configuration page. An error message similar to the following is displayed:Failed to authenticate to inventory service <server IP>:10443This issue is resolved in this release.
vCenter Single Sign-On
After installation of vCenter Single Sign-On 5.5 attempts to connect to the vCenter Single Sign-On server might fail
After you install the vCenter Single Sign-On 5.5 on a Windows system that is not domain joined and has multiple network interfaces, attempts to connect to the SSO server from other components might fail. You might see a message similar to the following:Could not connect vCenter Single Sign On....make sure the IP address is specified in the URL.This issue is resolved in this release.
When upgrading from vCenter Server Appliance 5.0.x to 5.5, vCenter Server fails to start if you select an external vCenter Single Sign-On
If you select an external vCenter Single Sign-On instance while upgrading the vCenter Server Appliance from 5.0.x to 5.5, vCenter Server fails to start after the upgrade. In the appliance management interface, vCenter Single Sign-On is listed as Not configured.This issue is resolved in this release.
Attempts to upgrade vCenter Single Sign-On to 5.5 fails if the SSL certificates being in PKCS12 format
When you upgrade from vCenter Single Sign-On 5.1 to 5.5, the installer fails and rolls back, before you select an SSO deployment method, with the following error message:vCenter Single Sign-On Setup Wizard ended prematurely because of an errorAn error message similar to the following is logged in the vim-sso-msi.log file:
This issue is resolved in this release by displaying the following warning message:
Setup has detected a problem with your current configuration which will cause upgrade to fail. Your certificate key store format might be unsupported. See VMware KB 2061404.
Upgrade to vCenter Single Sign-On 5.5 fails before you select the deployment type
Attempts to upgrade to vCenter Single Sign-On 5.5 fail before you can select the deployment type. Error messages similar to the following are logged in the vminst.logfile:VMware Single Sign-On-build-1302472: 09/26/13 15:18:19 VmSetupMsiIsVC50Installed exit: Error = 1605 VMware Single Sign-On-build-1302472: 09/26/13 15:18:19 VmSetupGetMachineInfo exit: Error code = 1605This issue is resolved in this release.
Active Directory is not added automatically as identity resource in vCenter Single Sign-On
When you initially install the vCenter Single Sign-On in a Windows system that is part of an Active Directory, the Active Directory is not automatically added as the default identity resource in the vCenter Single Sign-On server.This issue is resolved in this release.
Unable to edit a vSphere 5.5 Identity Source in the vSphere Web Client
You cannot edit a vSphere 5.5 Identity Source in the vSphere Web Client as the Edit icon is disabled for the Active Directory Identity Source. You see a warning message similar to the following:Edit Identity Source (Not available)This issue is resolved in this release.
Unable to modify password or remove users from system-domain after you upgrade from vCenter Server 5.1 to 5.5
After you upgrade from vCenter Server 5.1 to vCenter Server 5.5, you are unable to remove the users from system-domain or modify the password for these users.This issue is resolved in this release.
vCenter Single Sign-On Identity Management service repeatedly logs the message: Enumerate trusts failed Failed to enumerate domain trusts for domain_name (dwError – 5)
When you configure the Active Directory (Integrated Windows Authentication) Identity Source in vCenter Single Sign-On, the vmware-sts-idmd.log file, located atC:\ProgramData\VMware\CIS\logs\vmware-sso, repeatedly logs the following message:INFO [ActiveDirectoryProvider] Enumerate trusts failed Failed to enumerate domain trusts for domain_name(dwError - 5)This issue is resolved in this release.
Virtual Machine Management
Attempts to clone, create, or storage vMotion a virtual machine fails when the destination data store is a Storage DRS POD
In vCenter Server, operations that consume storage space such as virtual machine creation, cloning, or storage vMotion might fail if the destination data store is a Storage DRS POD and the storage device has the de-duplication feature turned on. The following error is displayed:Insufficient disk space on datastore xxxxxThis issue is resolved in this release.
On Friday 22nd November, VMware released version 5.3 of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) product Horizon View. With this release, VMware also updated the View clients to version 2.2.
Version 5.3 provides the following new features and support as detailed in the release notes:
Windows Server 2008 R2 Desktop Operating System Support, interesting for companies who want to provide DaaS under the SPLA licensing terms from Microsoft.
Windows 8.1 Desktop Operating System Support
Use VMware Horizon Mirage to manage View desktops
Virtual SAN Datastore Support
Memory Recommendation messages
Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration (vDGA) support
Linked-Clone Desktop Pool Storage Overcommit Feature Enhancements
View Persona Management Supportability Improvements
Ability to add the Administrators group to redirected folders
View Agent Direct-Connection Plug-in
View Composer Array Integration Support
Support for up to 350 connections in the Blast Secure Gateway
Last week I ran into another discussion about the hypervisor under a XenApp deployment it had to be free or very cheap. So the customer was thinking about loading Hyper-V below it. Ok can be a viable option but the admins hoped it would be VMware ESX because they know that hypervisor and it has never let them down in the past six years. So I got the question what is possible, can we use the Free vSphere Hypervisor? I than remembered from VMworld San Francisco 2013 the limitations of the Free vSphere Hypervisor have been lifted.
So now you can use the vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 with:
Unlimited number of cores per physical CPU
Unlimited number of physical CPUs per host
Maximum eight vCPUs per virtual machine
But most important the limitation of 32GB RAM per server/host has been removed from the free Hypervisor.
So now you can use it below a XenApp deployment or in a stack where you do not need DRS, HA and vMotion. If you do need a central management solution you can use the Essentials Kit and if you need DRS, HA, vMotion etc. you can use the vSphere 5.5 essentials kit it is for max. 3 servers with 2 physical CPUs per Server.
In Europe the Essentials Kit will cost 690 Euro for 3 years and the Essentials Plus Kit will cost 5.554 euro for 3 years. If you want to have support on your VMware vSphere Hypervisor you can now purchase Per Incident Support for it.
The VS Blog 