Around 1am this morning I awoke from a dream where I was repeatedly refreshing my email in the hope I would get my VCDX defense results. Before returning to sleep I decided to check my phone, and there it was. My result was in. Blurry eyed I open the attached PDF to see the magical words:

Your VCDX number is 105

I've passed! It's over! After working towards this goal for the last 4 years, I have finally made it. Time to relax. 

My VCDX Experience 

Overall, despite the many many hours I spent working on my design to make sure it was as solid as possible, I enjoyed the process. I learnt the most from just being extremely careful on EVERY design decision I made. I knew, if I made a mistake on anything I would be picked up on it, so I spent many days going through everything to make sure it was accurate and I could back up the reasons for making those design decisions. This has undoubtedly helped me as a consultant.

As for the defense itself, for some reason I wasn't actually nervous, no dry mouth, no shaky hands. I think this was because I knew my design was good, I was confident in what I had designed.

Filled with confidence and a clear mind, I tired to answer and explain everything that was asked and if there was something I really didn't know, I was honest and held my hands up. You can't trick these guys, so don't bother trying. The whole experience was over in a flash. The wait for the results was the opposite.

My VCDX Tips

Defense – Spend time making sure everything you have chosen in your design is accurate and you fully understand the reason you chose it and the reasons why you didn't chose the other options.

Design – Read the scenario thoroughly. Understand it. If something isn't clear, ask the panel. Talk them through everything you are thinking with regards to how your design might look. If you don't talk, they don't know that you aren't just making something up.

Troubleshoot – Don't worry too much about finding the issue. Make sure you troubleshoot methodically. If you need the "customer" to do/test something, tell them why you are asking them to do it, so they understand your train of thought. And DON'T PANIC if at first you don't know what the issue might be.

Hello people, I've just noticed that I have neglected my "Recommended Blogs" section for far to long.

So if you have a Virtualization focused Blog, you are not already on my list and would like appear on my recommended blogs section please use my Contact page to email me your url and I will review you blog. If I feel it is appropriate, I will add it to my list. Could you also include your RSS feed URL so I can add you to my personal RSS Feed Reader and keep up with all of your great articles.

Thanks guys

Further to my VMware View: Microsoft Lync 2013 Support = Yes Sir! article earlier this week which talks about VMware View support with Microsoft Lync 2012, I also wanted to draw your attention to the latest change made to Microsoft's Client Virtualization in Microsoft Lync 2010 document. I have copy/pasted the changes below for your viewing pleasure.   Read the rest of this entry »

I've posted this up for those of you who may have missed this announcement yesterday.

In many of my VMware View projects customers have asked for Microsoft Lync support. Up until View has been unable to support Lync and for a lot of customers this has caused pain. However, yesterday VMware announced that VMware is working closely with Microsoft to bring support for Microsoft Lync 2013 to VMware View desktops!!

You can read the full announcement here: http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2012/07/microsoft-lync-2013-support-with-vmware-view-desktops.html

From a VMware EUC perspective, this is a big win. As I said before, customers want to use VMware View, but have often been restricted by this limitation…..Not for much longer!

Problem
I've seen this issue a lot with customers. The customers wants to Recompose an entire pool to a new snapshot, so they set off a "Recompose at LogOff" task to make the recompose happen as users log-off of their desktops. However, quite often none of the desktops in the pool get recomposed. Every time I've seen this issue, the customers have their desktop pools to "Refresh On Logoff"

Cause
The Refresh on logoff task supersedes a scheduled Recompose task. When you log off, the recompose task for that virtual machine is discarded.

Fix
Change the pool "Refresh On Logoff" setting to Never before scheduling a "Recompose At Logoff" task. (Remember to re-enable "Refresh On Logoff" after the pools has been successfully recomposed.)

Do you have old PC's that still function fine but have been replaced by the "3 year" hardware refresh? If you do, why not repurpose then and use them as VMware View Clients.

There is now a free linux based solution available which can be configured online via web interface. Take a look at this webbased View Client ISO creator – TinyCore Builder for VMware View (http://repurpose.vmwarecloud.at)

• Create ISO
• Burn ISO
• Boot from ISO
• Boot it via PXE

If you want to boot from USB, try success using UNetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/), to convert ISO images to USB.

Now that yesterdays VMware EUC announcement hysteria has subsided, I thought this would be a good time to make my own VMware EUC announcement. (For those of you who were under a rock yesterday, here is my favorite post talking about What's new in View 5.1 (Beyond Marketing).

After nearly two years of delivering customer projects with VMware Profesional Services (PSO), I have been given the opportunity to join VMware's EUC Global Center of Excellence (CoE). This is a move I am really excited about.

So what will I be doing?

From my understanding, I will be working closely with VMware's EUC products, both old and new. Testing out our new products, creating IP and enabling the field. So there should be plenty of lab time, which is never a bad thing. I will also have the opportunity to provide feedback about our products directly to the engineering teams. Another large part of the role is to present at VMWorld, PEX and other conferences and seminars.

If you are not aware of VMware's EUC product suite/vision, take a look at the following video.

Pretty cool stuff hey?!?

I am hoping that this move will also give me more time to blog, to help get more material out there for you guys. And it will also mean less travel, Happy Days!

I have a couple of months left to finish off my currently View project, then I will be moving over on July the 1st.

Cannot wait!!

Something I've noticed a lot work creating designs for customers is the customer focusing on vSphere Configuration Maximums and the aim to reach those maximums. This concerns me a lot when I hear this and also the regularity that I hear this.

This is the second part of the PCoIP Troubleshooting set of post that I will be working on over the coming months. In this part I am looking at how to use the new PCoIP Log Viewer to view Real-Time/WMI PCoIP Stats.  I'll take you step-by-step through the PCoIP stats, explaining what each counter means.

To read on please use the following link: PCoIP Troubleshooting – Part 2. For those of you who many not be familiar with the Teradici PCoIP display protocol, you can find some good links here: http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/pcoip/

The other parts to this series are:

• PCoIP – Troubleshooting – Part 1
• PCoIP – Bandwidth Requirements
• PCoIP – Best Practice
• PCoIP – Optimization

Keep an eye out for these pages which hopefully will be coming very soon.

Persona Management, previously called RTO Virtual Profiles. A sleeping giant in my eyes. It's soo simple to install and configure but can offer you riches beyond your wildest dreams. OK, maybe a little over the top, but it is a really cool product and very underrated.

With VMware ViewTM 5, VMware introduces View Persona ManagementTM. View Persona Management preserves user profiles and dynamically synchronizes them with a remote profile repository. View Persona Management does not require the configuration of Windows roaming profiles, and you can bypass Windows Active Directory in the management of View user profiles. If you already use roaming profiles, Persona Management enhances their functionality.

Persona Management downloads only the files that Windows requires at login, such as user registry files. When the user or application opens other files from the desktop profile folder, these files are copied from the stored user persona to the View desktop. This algorithm provides performance beyond that achieved with Windows roaming profiles. 

As it's still pretty new, detailed information on the InterWeb is limited so I thought I'd put together a post displaying how Persona Management functions. Installation/Configuration information can be found in the View 5.0 Administration Guide or in the VMware View Persona Management Deployment Guide.

Persona Management Logic Flow

Persona Management is based around Logic Flows which runs through a set of checks. Each step has to be completed before the next to ensure the process completes successfully. I will try and explain at a high-level what happens in each of the following Logic Flows:

• When a user logs in
• Whilst the user is logged in
• When a user logs out

Read the rest of this entry »