In this post I’ll show in detail how to configure Horizon Workspace to use an external database during the install process. This post is part of a series showing how to configure VMware Horizon Workspace in a production environment. You’ll need an external database to have multiple service virtual appliances, so this should be a requirement for your environment. This process was suprisingly not trivial for me, however it could have something to do with the fact that I haven’t used postgres sql in the past.
In June I added a post on how to migrate exchange 2010 mailboxes to an Exchange 2010 DAG in a controlled fashion. Since then I’ve completely restructured the script and made it an all-in-one solution.
So yesterday, VMware released Horizon Workspace 1.5. HUGE improvement over the GA release… Holey smokes. Any further tutorials will reference this version.
Anyways, more to the point. In this post I will demonstrate how to do a base configuration of Horizon Workspace using an internal Microsoft Certificate Authority with Nginx as a frontend. This setup is only acceptable for setting up workspace in a lab environment, since in a production environment you’ll need a trusted third party cert. Doing this in a lab environment is important because it will allow you to set up and test every feature you’ll be using in a production environment.
Requirements:
Microsoft Active Directory Certificate Services
Linux Machine running Nginx
Horizon Workspace 1.5 Downloaded and installed with no configuration.
We’ll be using the workspace FQDN of hzn.test.in (This obviously assumes the domain of test.in)
I’ve never met a VMware Admin who will use the console to access a VM if they have a choice. There are plenty of tutorials out there that will show you how to do this, but since I’m starting a series, I guess I’ll throw the same info on the internet, but put my own spin on it.
I’ve been working with Horizon Workspace since it went GA in March. At this point in time, I’m happy to say that I’ve got Workspace set up in a production environment.
In this series, I will be covering how I configured each part of this suite. I would expect that this process will become exponentially easier as time goes on. One thing to note is that I will write these posts assuming that you are at least moderately familiar with linux and Workspace. I will not go into details on how to install packages, deploy the VA, use the web interface. Use Google if you’re looking for that boring stuff 🙂 Here we go!
Does anyone actually find NetApp OnCommand System Commander to be fast enough for normal operation? I’ll admit, I still create a good amount of Volumes and LUNs using it, but it leaves a lot to be desired in the performance category. If you follow my blog at all, you know that I’m in the middle of a migration from a non-ha exchange environment to a DAG. Being the sensible admin that I am, I have multiple copies of my Exchange databases on different storage arrays, controlled by different NetApp filers. Using System Manager to monitor the space usage of the Volumes hosting my mailbox databases is way to slow for my comfort.
Update: I created a new version of this script here I recently completed a project that involved migrating Exchange 2010 Mailbox role from a standalone server to a Database Availability Group, or DAG. This was a large project that took a lot of time and planning, and had the potential to be very tedious. Fortunately, with a little knowhow, you can automate many of the tedious tasks.
I wanted to be in full control of mailbox migration, so my requirements were fairly strict:
I have been writing a script that will gather a bunch of information from servers, and returns an object with the information. Part of what I’m gathering is the servers that are set to auto start, and have their corresponding service stopped.
While you can get a list of services that meet part of this criteria like this:
I was lucky enough to spend the previous week in New Orleans, LA at Microsoft TechEd. I had a great time checking out the latest and greatest that our Redmond buddies are about to throw our way or has already tossed.
I spent the majority of my time focusing on Sharepoint 2013 and Exchange 2013, but I was able to spend some time focusing on the client side of things as well. One thing in particular that stood out to me in this area is how Microsoft is putting a lot of time and development into making their clients “Cloud Friendly”. Office 2013 is the first version that fully supports cloud storage providers.
Microsoft has graciously strategically provided us with built in compatibility with Skydrive. While this makes things easy to get things up and running, it makes any IT Admin experience a combination of nausea, anger, and anxiety. If you’re fortunate enough to have a sponsored, approved, supported cloud storage solution, you’ll undoubtedly want to use it.
I’ll show you how to accomplish just that in this post.
