Automatically Power ON the Session host Virtual Machines
Monitoring Azure Virtual Desktop
Mindmap for Managing Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD)
I have managed to document all the high-level steps involved in managing the AVD on an ongoing basis. The idea here is that the mindmap acts as an excellent visual representation of what to do during ongoing maintenance activities. You can figure out in advance the requirements/steps and pre-requisites.
Managing Azure Virtual Desktop
Disclaimer – This guide is a get you started guide, and the production management may vary. Please make sure you always reference Microsoft documentation. Here is the PDF version if you would like to download and zoom in (Don’t stress your eyes!) –
I hope you will find this helpful information on your Managing Azure Virtual Desktop journey. Please let me know if I have missed any steps in the mindmap, and I will be happy to update the post.
It was an honour to come and speak at the podcast with host Eric L Nielsen and co-host Matt Langguth. A treat to watch and speak live, and catch-up on the signature Eric’s introduction of “Across the nation or around the world” and the “color of the bay”. The entire overall experience on the podcast was outstanding and I hope to come back again soon. Following is the Audio/Video version on Youtube the podcast is available on leading platform such as Apple, Google, Spotify etc.
I hope you find our conversation useful and feel free to revert if you have further questions.
Often within the VMware App Volumes Manager (AVM), Writable Volumes will show up as Status – Orphaned. Let’s take a look at the following topics:
What is Orphaned Writable Volumes?
Script to delete them from the App Volumes Managers
What is Orphaned Writable Volumes?
App Volumes Manager is integrated with Microsoft Active Directory (AD), and it’s in continuous synchronization. Whenever an end-user account gets disabled into the AD during the next sync activity of App Volumes Manager, it will mark the writable volumes with Writable Status = Orphaned.
Now in the ideal world, these accounts have been disabled and should be okay to delete? Maybe, if you don’t have the obligation of data retention, then you are ready to delete them. If you need to retain them, keep them as-is for compliance purposes.
Script to delete them for App Volumes Manager
Before we talk about the script, the deletion is very straightforward within the App Volumes Manager. Select the volumes with Status = Orphaned and select the Delete button. However, when you have to do the same against multiple POD, which becomes challenging, and as always, if it’s not automated, there is the scope of human error.
Pre-requisites
You need the App Volumes Manager URL
You need the username and password of the App Volumes Manager
You need to enter y/Y to proceed further with the deletion
The script was tested on PowerShell V5.x with App Volumes Manager version 2.18.10 (The logic will be the same however, the API call for App Volumes 4.x will be different)
###########################################################################
# Get List of Wrtiable Volumes from AppVolumes Manager for Status=Orphaned
# Delete the Orphaned Wrtiable Volumes
# You need username and password for the App Volumes Manager
# Author - Aresh Sarkari (Twitter - @askaresh)
# Version - V5.0
###########################################################################
#App Volumes Manager Name or IP Address
$AVManager = "https://avm001.askaresh.local"
# Run at the start of each script to import the credentials
$RESTAPIUser = "domain\username"
$RESTAPIPassword = "enteryourpassword"
#Ignore cert errors
add-type @"
using System.Net;
using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;
public class TrustAllCertsPolicy : ICertificatePolicy {
public bool CheckValidationResult(
ServicePoint srvPoint, X509Certificate certificate,
WebRequest request, int certificateProblem) {
return true;
}
}
"@
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::CertificatePolicy = New-Object TrustAllCertsPolicy
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]'Ssl3,Tls,Tls11,Tls12'
#Login AV Manager Body
$body = @{
username = “$RESTAPIUser"
password = “$RESTAPIPassword”
}
#Login API call to the AV Manager
Invoke-RestMethod -SessionVariable DaLogin -Method Post -Uri "$AVManager/cv_api/sessions” -Body $body
#Get the list of Writbale Volumes from the AV Manager
$output = Invoke-RestMethod -WebSession $DaLogin -Method Get -Uri "$AVManager/cv_api/writables" -ContentType "application/json"
#Selecting the WV with status Orphaned into a variable
$WVouput = $output.datastores.writable_volumes | Select-Object id, owner_name, owner_upn, title, status | Where-Object {[string]$_.status -match "Orphaned"}
#Output on the console (Validate carefully before proceeding ahead)
$WVouput | Format-Table | Out-String | % {Write-Host $_}
#Confirmation logic to proceed with the deletion
$confirmation = Read-Host -Prompt "Are you Sure You Want To Proceed with the deletion:"
if ($confirmation -match "[yY]" ) {
# proceed
# The WV Deletion API call only looks for IDs. We are filtering the ids only
$WVOutputIDs = $WVouput.id
#Looping to delete each Writable Volumes via its ID
foreach ($WVOutputIDss in $WVOutputIDs) {
# Writable Volumes deletion Parameters body
$jsonbody = @{
bg = "0"
volumes = "$WVOutputIDss"
} | ConvertTo-Json
#API call to delete the Wrtiable Volumes
#We are using Invoke-webrequest for getting the Content of the deletion (Success) in oneline
$WVdeletecall = Invoke-WebRequest -WebSession $DaLogin -Method Post -Uri "$AVManager/cv_api/volumes/delete_writable" -Body $jsonbody -ContentType "application/json"
}
#Dig into the exception to get the Response details.
Write-Host $WVdeletecall.StatusCode
Write-Host $WVdeletecall.StatusDescription
Write-Host $WVdeletecall.Content
}
When you run the script, it will identify all the end-users with Status = Orphaned. If you like, you can copy and paste the output in an editior (Notepad++) to verify the output.
Once you press y/Y it will go ahead and delete the Orphaned writable volumes.
I hope you will find this script useful to bulk delete orphaned Writable Volumes in App Volumes Manager. A small request if you further enhance the script or make it more creative, I hope you can share it back with me?
Mind map for Azure Virtual Desktop – Getting started
Getting started with Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD)
Deployment – Pre-requisites for AVD
Master Images – (Windows 10 Multi-Session, Windows 10 1909 Enterprise or Windows Server 2019 DC)
Template and Shared Image Gallery
Host Pools
Application Groups
Workspaces
Windows Desktop Client
Quick Start Links
Mindmap for Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) – Getting started
Managed to put together a mindmap on the AVD getting started from zero to a working desktop or application. The idea here is the mindmap acts as an excellent visual representation of what to do during pre-requisites, deployment and you can figure out in advance the requirements/steps and pre-requisites.
Azure Virtual Desktop
Disclaimer – This guide is a get you started guide, and the production settings and configuration might be different. Please make sure you change the settings appropriate for production workloads. Here is the PDF version if you would like to download and zoom in (Don’t stress your eyes!) –
I hope you will find this helpful information on your Azure Virtual Desktop journey. Please let me know if I have missed any steps in the mindmap, or reference links, and I will be happy to update the post.
Horizon Reach is a potent tool, and Andrew Morgan has put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears to develope it. What suprises me is why isnt this fling included into the Horizon product? We haven’t gathered here to talk about the product management and roadmap aspects 😉
Horizon Reach fling aggregates all the various Horizon POD information into its database. Typically, running Horizon API calls or Horizon Powershell modules might have to run them against individual pods to fetch information about that POD. The beauty with Horizon Reach is it aggregates all the information, we can write scripts/API calls to request information from there instead of writing Horizon POD specific scripts.
Let’s take a look at the following information from the Horizon Reach fling:
What API’s are available with Horizon Reach?
What all options are available to interact with Horizon Reach API?
Script – Get a consolidated list of Horizon Farm details (Display the Name, Base Image details, Snapshot Version, Health and If provisioning is enabled)
Note the above can also be fetched using the old Horizon Powershell modules but trust me it’s pretty tricky to run a foreach loop for every object on the SOAP method.
Script – Get a consolidated list of Horizon Desktop Pools details (Display the Name, Base Image details, Snapshot Version, Health and If provisioning is enabled)
What API’s are avilable with Horizon Reach?
After you have installed the Horizon Reach fling, go to the following URL to check out all the avilable API’s. Its the UI Swagger interface to simplify and understand each calls.
Scripts to get consolidated Horizon Farms/Desktops information
Pre-requsites:
You need the Horizon Reach Server URL
You need the password of the Horizon Reach Server
The script provides you with the details of all Horizon PODs in your setup.
The script was tested on PowerShell V5.x
#Horizon Reach Server Name or IP Address
$HZReachServer = "https://horizonreach.domain:9443"
#Ignore the self signed cert errors
add-type @"
using System.Net;
using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;
public class TrustAllCertsPolicy : ICertificatePolicy {
public bool CheckValidationResult(
ServicePoint srvPoint, X509Certificate certificate,
WebRequest request, int certificateProblem) {
return true;
}
}
"@
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::CertificatePolicy = New-Object TrustAllCertsPolicy
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]'Ssl3,Tls,Tls11,Tls12'
#API Call to make the intial connection to the Horizon Reach Server##
$HZReachLogonAPIcall = "$HZReachServer`/api/Logon"
#The body payload that comprises of the login API request
$body = @{
username = "administrator"
password = "enteryourpassword"
} | ConvertTo-Json
$HZReachlogin = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -uri $HZReachLogonAPIcall -Body $body -ContentType "application/json"
#Header along with the JWT token is now saved for future API calls
#You need to call this header in all subsequent calls as it has the token
$Headers = @{ Authorization = "Bearer $($HZReachlogin.jwt)" }
#API Call to fetch the consolidated (as many pods you have) Horizon Farm information##
$HZReachFarms = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$HZReachServer/api/Farms" -Headers $Headers -ContentType "application/json" -UseBasicParsing | Format-Table -Property displayname, baseimage, snapshot, enabled, health, isProvisioningEnabled
Write-Output $HZReachFarms
#API Call to fetch the consolidated (as many pods you have) Horizon desktop pool information##
$HZReachPools = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$HZReachServer/api/pools" -Headers $Headers -ContentType "application/json" -UseBasicParsing | Format-Table -Property displayname, baseimage, snapshot, enabled, healthDetail, isProvisioningEnabled
Write-Output $HZReachPools
The following information (Display Name, Snapshot, Base Image, Health, Provisioning Mode) is pulled using the above scripts. I was much interested to see the snapshot versions of each Farms/Pools along with Health and provisioning status. Feel free to extract whatever details you are looking for there are plenty of other properties.
I hope you will find this script useful to fetch helpful information from Horizon Reach. A small request if you further enhance the script or make it more creative, I hope you can share it back with me?
It was patch Tuesday time, and we were implementing the Windows 10 1909 Oct October 12, 2021—KB5006667 (OS Build 18363.1854) patch to our base images which are used for VMware Horizon VDI. During our validations, we started noticing the strange behaviour of Explorer.exe crashing and desktop becoming completely unusable.
The Windows explorer.exe keeps crashing within the virtual desktop of Windows 10 1909. The virtual desktop is entirely unusable. The only way to see the Event Viewer or anything is by using Horizon Client – Options – Send Ctrl + Alt + Del command within the virtual desktop and then opening up the Task Manager.
Cause
Provided by Microsoft – The explorer is trying to update feeds content, and there is a NULL value due to this bug that is causing explorer to crash.
Resolution
We tried performing various steps of un-install and re-installing the patch etc.. However, nothing worked, and we ended up working with Microsoft and seemed like it was a known issue, and they provided us with the following fix:
I have been trying out the Azure VMware Solution (AVS) on the VMware HOL and going through the techzone documentation. In this post, we shall take a look into these topics:
Mindmap – Steps for AVS Deployment and Networking
Quick Start Links
Optional – Deploy AVS via Azure Resource Manager Templates
Mindmap for AVS Deployment/Networking
Managed to put together a mindmap on the AVS deployment and networking steps of the service. The idea here is the mindmap acts like an excellent visual representation of what to do during deployment and you can figure out in advance the requirements/steps and pre-requisites.
Azure VMware Solution
Here is the PDF version if you would like to download and zoom-in
Optional – Deploying AVS using Azure Resource Manager
We can also deploy the AVS solution via PowerShell and using the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template. The advantage here is you have slightly more advanced options that are not available via the GUI. (E.g. You can set the desired password for vCenter and NSX)
I hope you will find this helpful information on your AVS journey. Please let me know if I have missed any steps in the mindmap or reference links and I will be happy to update the post.
Many blogs discuss and show in detail how to integrate the Azure Active Directory (AAD) with VMware Workspace ONE Access (WoA) as a 3rd party IDP, and the following are my top post on that topic:
However, in this blog post, I would like to shed more light on the SAML Authentication Flow between the Azure Active Directory (Identity Provider) and VMware Workspace ONE Access (Service Provider). When designing the WoA and AAD integration, the below flow helped me understand what is happening behind the scenes, and I thought of sharing my knowledge with you all.
SAML Authentication Flow
AuthnRequest
Issuer
NameIDPolicy
RequestAuthnContext
SAML Response that AAD sends to WoA
#ProTip – I use a Chrome/Edge extension called SAML-tracer to inspect the SAML responses back and forth within the browser.
SAML Authentication Flow
The diagram below describes the single sign-on sequence. The VMware Workspace ONE Access (the service provider) uses an HTTP Redirect binding to pass an AuthnRequest (authentication request) element to Azure AD (the 3rd party identity provider in case of WoA). Azure AD then uses an HTTP post binding to post a Response element to the cloud service.
SAML Authentication Flow – AAD and WoA
S. No.
DescriptionFlow
1.
End-user tries to access the VMware Workspace ONE Access portal
2.
VMware Workspace ONE Access finds the identity provider to authenticate the user
3.
VMware Workspace ONE Access generates a SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest and redirects the user’s browser to the Azure AD SAML single sign-on URL
4.
If the end-user is not signed in, Azure AD authenticates the user using multi-factor authentication & generates a SAML token
5.
Azure AD posts the SAML response to the WoA application via the user’s browser
6.
VMware Workspace ONE Access verifies the SAML Response
7.
VMware Workspace ONE Access completes the end-user sign-in and presents the desktop/app entitlements
Note – I have randomly created the GUID within the XML response just for demonstration purposes.
AuthnRequest
To request a end-user authentication, from WoA portal send an AuthnRequest element to Azure AD. Following is the SAML SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest from WoA portal:
The Issuer element in an AuthnRequest must exactly match one of the ServicePrincipalNames in the cloud service in Azure AD. Typically, this is set to the App ID URI that is specified during application registration. (When the Enterprise Application is created under AAD portal)
This element requests a particular name ID format in the response and is optional in AuthnRequest elements sent to Azure AD. A NameIdPolicy element looks like the following from WoA portal:
The RequestedAuthnContext element specifies the desired authentication methods. It is optional in AuthnRequest elements sent to Azure AD. Azure AD supports AuthnContextClassRef values snippet from WoA portal:
I hope you will find the above information helpful in your journey with AAD/WoA. A small request if you see any scope of improvisation or refinements. I hope you can share it back with me?
It was that time of the year to perform a VMware End-User Computing (EUC) stack upgrade on the environment, and I thought of sharing the overall thought process and decisions made along the way. It will be interesting to share with others who might be in a similar situation or process of developing their upgrade/migration strategies. In this post, we shall take a look into these topics:
Current versions of the VMware EUC Stack
What version numbers did we upgrade/migrated to?
Why did we migrate to these versions?
Wishlist (Someone Listening?)
Valuable links to reference during upgrade/migration
Current versions of the VMware EUC Stack
VMware Horizon 7.11 (Connection Server/Agents)
VMware Horizon Client 5.5
VMware App Volumes 2.18.1.x Manager/VMware App Volumes 2.18.5 Agent version
VMware Workspace ONE Access 20.01/Connector 1903 (Not in scope for the upgrade)
VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 9.10
VMware Unified Access Gateway 3.10
What versions numbers did we upgrade/migrated to?
VMware Horizon 7.13.1 (Connection Server/Agents)
VMware Horizon Client 5.5.2
VMware App Volumes 2.18.10.10 (Manager/Agents)
VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 2103
VMware Unified Access Gateway 2103.1
Why did we migrate to these versions?
The obvious question everyone might ask is the latest versions are Horizon 8.x and App Volumes 4.x why are you picking older versions for the upgrade? The short answer is the limitations and trade-off, and the following matrix tries to uncover in more detail.
Note – Not all customers might fall under the limitation category, or the limiting feature/functionality could be different in your case. By no means this should be your defacto reasons. Make sure to evaluate your situation and create a matrix to make a data-driven decision. If the project is greenfield/no-limitations applied, it’s a no-brainer to opt for the latest product releases.
++ We had all the boxes ticked from a feature/functionality standpoint to be able to upgrade/migrate to Horizon 8.x version. (Instant Clones, Printing, UAG etc.). Infact everything worked well in the development environment ++ The latest vROPS Horizon Adapter 1.2/Horizon 8.x version doesn’t include the built-in Horizon reports. We use the reporting feature for all sorts of custom reporting on Horizon PODs. The older version of vROPS Horizon Adapter 6.7.1/Horizon 7.x has all the existing metrics and reporting available but doesn’t include support for Horizon 8.x on the support matrix ++ The no reporting on the Horizon Adapter 1.2 + limited metrics on RDSH limited our ability to move to the latest version of Horizon 8.x. Once the built-in reports\metrics and guidance is made available, we shall jump onto the latest version (n-1)
++ Lack of Writable Volumes (UIA+Profile and UIA) migrations from 2.18.x to 4.x. Need official guidance or tool/script/guidance to upgrade all the wrtiable of the 2.18.x environment to 4.x. I am sure alot of enterprise customers will have plenty of Writable Volumes to migrate and don’t have the flexibility to start from scratch on a new version ++ VMware AppStack Migration fling is the perfect migration utility to migrate AppStacks 2.18.x to 4.x need something similar for Writable Volumes
++ The appliance has no interoperability issues with Horizon 7.13.1 or upgrade complexity. The obvious choice was to upgrade to the latest (n-1)
UAG 2103.1
Upgrade Decision Matrix
The above stack provides us with the required General Availability support until Q2 FY2022 and beyond.
Wishlist
I am looking forward to vROPS Horizon Adapter XX to include the built-in Horizon Reports/Additional Metrics for RDSH in the new version or provide detailed guidance on creating meaningful reports in future releases. Additionally, the App Volumes team releases tools and advice on migrating 4000’s+ Writable Volumes from 2.18.x to 4.x. Once the above is released, I plan to upgrade to the branch of Horizon 8.x and App Volumes 4.x releases version numbers.
Valuable links to reference during upgrades
Here is the cheat sheet for all the useful links to review and formulate an upgrade plan:
I hope you will find the above information useful in your enterprise upgrade/migrate strategy for VMware EUC Stack. I would love to hear your strategy and similar situations limiting your ability to migrate to the latest and greatest versions.
While upgrading from VMware App Volumes 2.18.1 to 2.18.10.10 version, the upgrade installer completes successfully. However, when you load the App Volumes Manager portal, you get the following error message – Startup Failure – Unable to start App Volumes Manager – Migrations are pending. To resolve this issue, run bin/rails db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production
Startup Failure
Cause
Upon quickly checking the App Volumes computer account (<Domain>\<MachineName>$ within SQL Server was missing the db_onwer permissions. Obviously, that caused the above error post-migration.
Note – This is a very corner case and not expected to see along on most of the App Volumes Migration/Upgrade scenarios. If you did come across one now you know how to remediate.
Resolution
Step 1 – Adding the missing db_owner permission back to the App Volumes Manager computer security account within SQL Server Management Studio
Step 2 – As the db:migration didn’t complete during the upgrade, we need to re-run the following command on the App Volumes Manager server. Open the CMD and change directory to the following path – C:\Program Files (x86)\CloudVolumes\Manager\ruby\bin and run the following command:
bundle exec rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production
You should see the following output:
Command Output
Step 3 – Restart the App Volumes Manager service, and now you will see the login page of the App Volumes Manager.
The mystery remains how did that permission go missing as the additional App Volumes Manager account had retained the db_owner role. But none the less the above steps came in handy with help from VMware support – Suman Rout luckily, has seen a similar issue before.
Lesson Learnt
Create a pre-upgrade task item on checking to making sure all the App Volumes Manager computer accounts within the SQL Server have the db_owner permissions.
I hope you will find these steps helpful to resolve missing SQL permissions causing upgrade issues during the App Volumes migration from 2.18.x to 2.18.10.10.
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