VMware

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.

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!

When trying to upload a sdconf.rec file to Horizon View 5.2, you receive the following error:

[text]
Invalid file size of 2,770 bytes. The RSA Configuration file size must be between 512 and 2,048 bytes.
[/text]

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.

In a new installation of vCenter 5.1, when trying to access the vSphere Web Client for the first time, you will encounter the following message:

[text]
In order for this direct link to work, you must first log in to the
vSphere Web Client at least once from https://{webclient
-host}:{webclient-https-port}.
[/text]

You can resolve this error and fix the issue using the following steps:

I’ll admit – I’ve done this once or twice. Each time causes me some grief while trying to get things set up correctly.

Here’s how to fix this issue as long as you have access to the Direct Console UI or ESXi Shell.

I received the following message today on one of my production VM’s.

You can use these steps to resolve this issue.

I once had a person tell me that the most successful individuals in IT are lazy.  Years after hearing that, the notion has stuck with me and translates into much of how I attach problems.

If you’re like me, you use putty to connect to servers via SSH frequently. Now, I know that you can use key based authentication using puttygen, but in the scenario that you don’t want to go that route, you can use the method below to create windows shortcuts to automatically log into a host using putty.