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Azure Virtual Desktop – PowerShell – Create a Host Pool, Application Group and Workspace for Desktop

13 Dec

In the previous blog post, we learnt how to create the Host Pools for Remote Apps Azure Virtual Desktop – PowerShell – Create a Host Pool, Application Group and Workspace for RemoteApp aka Published Applications | AskAresh and today we are going to create the host pool for Desktops. It’s an identical post to the RemoteApps only difference here will be specific input parameters will change to deliver the Desktop experience. We will deploy the following features within Azure Virtual Desktop using PowerShell:

  • Create Host Pool with Type – Desktop
  • Create the Application Group (AG)
  • Create an Workspaces
  • Assign the Azure Active Directory Group to the (AG)

I will break down the code block into smaller chunks first to explain the critical bits, and in the end, I will post the entire code block that can be run all at once. In this way, explaining block by block becomes easier than pasting one single block.

Desktop

Desktop – This is a way to provide end-users with a full Desktop experience along with the applications installed in the base image. Note this method is used for delivering non-persistent desktops as we are using pooled. If you want to provide persistence on top of these desktops you will have to leverage FSLogix.

Pre-requisites

Following are the pre-requisites before you begin

  • PowerShell 5.1 and above
  • Azure Subscription
  • Permissions within the Azure Subscription for the creation of AVD – Host Pools
  • Assumption
    • You have an existing Resource Group (RG)
  • Azure PowerShell Modules – Az.DesktopVirtualization

Sign to Azure

To start working with Azure PowerShell, sign in with your Azure credentials.

Connect-AzAccount

Variable Region

Delcare all the variable within this section. Lets take a look at what we are declaring within the script:

  • Existing Resource Group within the Azure Subscription (AZ104-RG)
  • A location where you are deploying this Host Pool (Australia East)
  • Name of the Host Pool (D-HP01)
  • Host Pool Type (Pooled) as it will be shared with multiple end-users
  • Load balancing method for the Host Pool (DepthFirst)
  • Maximum users per session host VM (10)
  • The type of Application Group (Desktop). As we are providing full desktop experience.
  • Application Group Name ($HPName-DAG)
  • Workspace grouping name ($HPName-WRK01)
  • Azure AD group that will be assigned to the application group (XXXX4b896-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-33768d8XXXXX)
# Get existing context
$currentAzContext = Get-AzContext

# Your subscription. This command gets your current subscription
$subscriptionID = $currentAzContext.Subscription.Id

# Existing Resource Group to deploy the Host Pool
$rgName = "AZ104-RG"

# Geo Location to deploy the Host Pool
$location = "australiaeast"

# Host Pool name
$HPName = "D-HP01"

# Host Pool Type Pooled|Personal
$HPType = "Pooled"

# Host Pool Load Balancing BreadthFirst|DepthFirst|Persistent
$HPLBType = "DepthFirst"

# Max number or users per session host
$Maxusers = "10"

# Preffered App group type Desktop|RailApplications
$AppGrpType = "Desktop"

# ApplicationGroup Name
$AppGrpName = "$HPName-DAG"

# Workspace Name
$Wrkspace = "$HPName-WRK01"

# AAD Group used to assign the Application Group
# Copy the Object ID GUID from AAD Groups Blade
$AADGroupObjId = "XXXXXX-2f2d-XXXX-XXXX-33768d8XXXXX"

Execution block

Execution code block within this section. Lets take a look at what we are we executing within the script:

  • Create the host pool with all the mentioned variables, tags and whether the validation enivornment yes/no.
  • Create the application group and tie it to the host pool
  • Finally, we create the workspace and tie it to the application group and hostpool
  • Last step, we assign the AAD group object ID to the Application Group for all entitlement purposes.
# Create the Host Pool with Desktop Configurations
try
{
    write-host "Create the Host Pool with Pooled Desktop Configurations"
    $DeployHPWDesk = New-AzWvdHostPool -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
        -SubscriptionId $subscriptionID `
        -Name $HPName `
        -Location $location `
        -ValidationEnvironment:$true `
        -HostPoolType $HPType `
        -LoadBalancerType $HPLBType `
        -MaxSessionLimit $Maxusers `
        -PreferredAppGroupType $AppGrpType `
        -Tag:@{"Billing" = "IT"; "Department" = "IT"; "Location" = "AUS-East" } `
        -ErrorAction STOP
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

# Create the Application Group for the Desktop Host Pool
try
{
    write-host "Create the Application Group for the Desktop Host Pool"
    $CreateAppGroupDesk = New-AzWvdApplicationGroup -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
        -Name $AppGrpName `
        -Location $location `
        -HostPoolArmPath $DeployHPWDesk.Id `
        -ApplicationGroupType $AppGrpType `
        -ErrorAction STOP
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message -ForegroundColor Yellow
}
    

# Create the Workspace for the Desktop Host Pool
try
{
    write-host "Create the Workspace for the Desktop Host Pool"
    $CreateWorkspaceDesk = New-AzWvdWorkspace -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
        -Name $Wrkspace `
        -Location $location `
        -ApplicationGroupReference $CreateAppGroupDesk.Id `
        -ErrorAction STOP
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

# Assign the AAD group (Object ID)  to the Application Group
try
{
    write-host "Assigning the AAD Group to the Application Group"
    $AssignAADGrpAG = New-AzRoleAssignment -ObjectId $AADGroupObjId `
        -RoleDefinitionName "Desktop Virtualization User" `
        -ResourceName $CreateAppGroupDesk.Name `
        -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
        -ResourceType 'Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization/applicationGroups' `
        -ErrorAction STOP
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

Final Script

Here I will paste the entire script block for seamless execution in a single run. Following is the link to my GitHub for this script – avdwin365mem/createhp-ag-wk-DSK at main · askaresh/avdwin365mem (github.com)


# Connect to the Azure Subcription
Connect-AzAccount

# Get existing context
$currentAzContext = Get-AzContext

# Your subscription. This command gets your current subscription
$subscriptionID = $currentAzContext.Subscription.Id

# Existing Resource Group to deploy the Host Pool
$rgName = "AZ104-RG"

# Geo Location to deploy the Host Pool
$location = "australiaeast"

# Host Pool name
$HPName = "D-HP01"

# Host Pool Type Pooled|Personal
$HPType = "Pooled"

# Host Pool Load Balancing BreadthFirst|DepthFirst|Persistent
$HPLBType = "DepthFirst"

# Max number or users per session host
$Maxusers = "10"

# Preffered App group type Desktop|RailApplications
$AppGrpType = "Desktop"

# ApplicationGroup Name
$AppGrpName = "$HPName-DAG"

# Workspace Name
$Wrkspace = "$HPName-WRK01"

# AAD Group used to assign the Application Group
# Copy the Object ID GUID from AAD Groups Blade
$AADGroupObjId = "dccXXXXX-2f2d-XXXX-XXXX-33768d8bXXXX"

# Create the Host Pool with Desktop Configurations
try
{
    write-host "Create the Host Pool with Pooled Desktop Configurations"
    $DeployHPWDesk = New-AzWvdHostPool -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
        -SubscriptionId $subscriptionID `
        -Name $HPName `
        -Location $location `
        -ValidationEnvironment:$true `
        -HostPoolType $HPType `
        -LoadBalancerType $HPLBType `
        -MaxSessionLimit $Maxusers `
        -PreferredAppGroupType $AppGrpType `
        -Tag:@{"Billing" = "IT"; "Department" = "IT"; "Location" = "AUS-East" } `
        -ErrorAction STOP
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

# Create the Application Group for the Desktop Host Pool
try
{
    write-host "Create the Application Group for the Desktop Host Pool"
    $CreateAppGroupDesk = New-AzWvdApplicationGroup -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
        -Name $AppGrpName `
        -Location $location `
        -HostPoolArmPath $DeployHPWDesk.Id `
        -ApplicationGroupType $AppGrpType `
        -ErrorAction STOP
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message -ForegroundColor Yellow
}
    

# Create the Workspace for the Desktop Host Pool
try
{
    write-host "Create the Workspace for the Desktop Host Pool"
    $CreateWorkspaceDesk = New-AzWvdWorkspace -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
        -Name $Wrkspace `
        -Location $location `
        -ApplicationGroupReference $CreateAppGroupDesk.Id `
        -ErrorAction STOP
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

# Assign the AAD group (Object ID)  to the Application Group
try
{
    write-host "Assigning the AAD Group to the Application Group"
    $AssignAADGrpAG = New-AzRoleAssignment -ObjectId $AADGroupObjId `
        -RoleDefinitionName "Desktop Virtualization User" `
        -ResourceName $CreateAppGroupDesk.Name `
        -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
        -ResourceType 'Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization/applicationGroups' `
        -ErrorAction STOP
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

Next Steps on the Host Pool

Now that the host pool, application group and workspaces are ready following are the next steps involved:

  • Generate a registration token
  • Add the session host virtual machine to the host pool

I hope you will find this helpful information for deploying a host pools, application group and workspaces within Azure Virtual Desktop. If you want to see a Powershell version of the adding the session host activities, leave me a comment below or on my socials. Please let me know if I have missed any steps or details, and I will be happy to update the post.

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

Windows 365 Cloud PC – New Reports – Connection quality & Low Utilization

13 Oct

With the recent Windows 365 Cloud PC announcements in MS Ignite 2022, a couple of new reports that were introduced and in this post we shall take a sneak peek into them..

Cloud PC Performance Reports

The overall view of the Performance (Utilization & Connection) for the entire Cloud PC deployed is available in MEM Portal -> Devices -> Overview -> Cloud PC performance

Cloud PC with connection quality issues

Overall, devices within the environment will be listed along with the connection quality details of all the Cloud PC. The categories classified are Good, Average and High. Metric includes RTT – Round Trip latency (lower values provide a better end-user experience), Remote Sign-in (time taken for an end-user to complete the sign-in to the Cloud PC) and Available Bandwidth (Internet bandwidth during the end-users connection attempt to the Cloud PC).

Cloud PC utilization

Overall, devices are listed within the environment to gauge the end-users utilization into High, Average and low categories. Depending upon the outcome, a business decision can be made on whether to resize the Cloud PC or decommission it. (Cost Savings!)

Session Performance

This report is essentially showing you the sign-in and sign-out time of the Cloud PC, along with the overall session length. This will show you how much time the end-user is spending on their Cloud PC.

Connection quality

On a specific device level, you can further deep dive into the metric. The breakdown of the RTT/Bandwidth and Sign-in time on a daily basis for the last 7 days.

Aggregated daily trends – The median average of the daily trends for a specific Cloud PC device

Reference Links

I hope you will find this helpful information for the fetch reports from your Windows 365 Cloud PC deployments and providing an excellent end-user experience. Please let me know if I have missed any steps or details, and I will be happy to update the post.

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

Filters for Windows 365 Cloud PCs based on SKU/Plans

7 Oct

We create filters for the purpose of targeting specific Cloud PCs instead of all devices. In this post, I want to give you the details to go and quickly create the Cloud PC filters based on the SKU/Plan (Basic, Standard and Premium) in which Windows 365 Cloud PC is sold by Microsoft. The guidance below (copy/paste), you can quickly get them created in under 2 mins.

Overall filters (Microsoft Endpoint Manager)

Filters

Create Filter

  • Click on Create
  • Enter the Filter Name – Cloud-PC-Basic
  • Enter Filter Description – The SKU Cloud PC Enterprise 2vCPU/4GB/128GB
  • Platform – Windows 10 and later
  • Rule Model – Equals – Cloud PC Enterprise 2vCPU/4GB/128GB
Cloud-PC-Basic
The SKU Cloud PC Enterprise 2vCPU/4GB/128GB
Cloud PC Enterprise 2vCPU/4GB/128GB

Cloud-PC-Standard
The SKU Cloud PC Enterprise 2vCPU/8GB/128GB
Cloud PC Enterprise 2vCPU/8GB/128GB

Cloud-PC-Premium
The SKU Cloud PC Enterprise 4vCPU/16GB/128GB
Cloud PC Enterprise 4vCPU/16GB/128GB

Now your filters are ready for assignments. Following is the Microsoft supported guidance on Platforms and policy types supported by filters in Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Learn which it can be applied.

I hope you will find this helpful information for creating filters based on Windows 365 Cloud PC SKUs within your environment. Please let me know if I have missed any steps or details, and I will be happy to update the post.

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

My top sessions for VMworld 2021

31 Aug

VMworld 2021 is right around the corner, and it’s time to have a personally curated list prepared for the sessions. The following category sessions I am most excited about. Note I am excited about more sessions than I can include in this blog post, but you get the idea of my direction 🙂 Though I am not speaking, I know the amount of effort to prepare the deck/recording based on my previous 3 VMworld speaking engagements. Good Luck, speakers!

  • End User Services
  • Multi Cloud
  • VMware Code

End User Services

Architecting Multi-Cloud Horizon [EUS1547]

Learn how to architect multi-cloud VMware Horizon deployments. This technical session will cover the deployment options and platforms available, including Horizon, Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure, Horizon on VMware Cloud on AWS, Horizon on Azure VMware Solution, and Horizon on Google Cloud VMware Engine. Find out how Horizon Control Plane Services, such as Universal Broker and Image Management Service, aid in both administration and user access.

Speakers:
Chris Halstead, Senior Staff Architect, VMware
Hilko Lantinga, Staff Architect, VMware
Richard Terlep, Staff Architect, EUC Technical Marketing, VMware
Darren Hirons, Lead Solutions Engineer – Digital Workspace, VMware

Back to Our Future: Community Roundtable on the VDI Admin Role Development [EUS2461]

A VDIscover Experience session. The life of a VDI admin requires expertise across many areas of IT and as a result, can be very rewarding. But how does what you’re doing today translate to a career path in desktop and app virtualization in the future? Join this roundtable of community VDI experts, hosted by VMware’s Brian Madden and Ron Oglesby, to gain insights on how the VDI admin role will develop in the future and what you should be focusing on to develop skills that can make you stand out in the VDI space, including security, cloud, SaaS, and more.

Speakers:
Joris Adriaanse, Business Development Manager, FONDO.
Ron Oglesby, Staff Architect, VMware
Brian Madden, Distinguished Technologist, VMware
Maarten Caus, EUC architect, ITQ

Blasting your way into the Extreme with VMware Horizon [EUS1834]

Ever wondered where the “Extreme” bit from Blast Extreme is referring to? In this session, seeing is believing. You will witness VMware Horizon hosting insanely intensive workloads, from cloud gaming and immersive VR training to movie making and warfighting simulation. We will show what it takes to extend VMware Horizon beyond your typical VDI use cases and into the realms of media production, gaming, simulation, training and more. You will also learn how customers are utilising VMware Horizon, Blast Extreme and more to deliver next generation services during a global pandemic. Oh, and did we mention that we will show you some demos which will blow you away? This is a must-see session for any EUC enthusiast!

Speakers:
Matt Coppinger, Director, Product Management, EUC, VMware
Spencer Pitts, Chief Technologist, VMware
Johan Van Amersfoort, Technologist EUC, ITQ

Create, Automate, and Optimize a Windows Image for Horizon [EUS1549]

This technical session led by VMware End-User Computing Technical Marketing will be a deeper dive into the key elements of creating and optimizing Windows for use as a VMware Horizon desktop or RDSH host. This process is critical to the success of any virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or published application project, and is often skipped or misunderstood. All steps of the process will be covered, including how to add automation. This session will include several demos showing the process of creating an optimized Windows VDI image.

Speakers:
Graeme Gordon, Senior Staff EUC Architect, VMware
Hilko Lantinga, Staff Architect, VMware

Disaster Recovery with Multi-Cloud Horizon [EUS1548]

Learn how to design VMware Horizon to provide disaster recovery (DR) capabilities to enable availability, recoverability, and business continuity. This session will explore the strategy, different deployment options for recovery sites, options for user access, and considerations for data replication and failover.

Speakers:
Richard Terlep, Staff Architect, EUC Technical Marketing, VMware
Graeme Gordon, Senior Staff EUC Architect, VMware

Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure: Nuts and Bolts [EUS2489]

So, is it the year of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)? A profound yes. The events of this year meant that business had to pivot rapidly to a remote model (telework). And one platform that helped many businesses, small to large, is VMware Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure. In this session, you will see what is needed to get an environment up and running very quickly.

Speakers:
Linus Bourque, Principal Instructor, VMware
John Krueger, Principal Instructor, VMware

Multi-Cloud VDI Beyond the Reference Architecture: Field-Tested Practices [EUS1961]

A VDIscover experience session. The public cloud, especially a VMware-based public cloud service, is an ideal place to run virtual desktops and published application workloads. But deploying an end-user computing solution into a hybrid or multi-cloud scenario adds new considerations and complications that impact user experience. In this session, VMware End-User Computing technologists Sean Massey and Dan Berkowitz will join with leading community members to discuss the key considerations and field-tested practices for delivering a good user experience in hybrid or multi-cloud VDI environments.

Speakers:
Daniel Berkowitz, Sr. Architect, VMware
Sean Massey, Staff Multi-Cloud Solutions Architect, VMware
Eduardo Molina, EUC Practice Director, AHEAD
Johan Van Amersfoort, Technologist EUC, ITQ
Simon Long, VMware Engineer, Google Cloud Center of Excellence, Google

Accelerate Your VDI Management with vRealize Operations [MCL1899]

This session provides an understanding of why VDI and app management matters more than ever today, and how to create a digital foundation that supports ever-changing business requirements. We will focus on the new VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for Horizon and how it can help organizations overcome today’s distributed challenges.

Speaker:
Thomas Bryant, Sr. Product Line Marketing Manager, VMware

Multi-Cloud

App Modernization Deep Dive with VMware Cloud on AWS and VMware Tanzu [MCL2290]

Application modernization is top of mind for all enterprises that want to deliver value to their customers quickly. However, many organizations struggle to begin their application modernization journey due to a variety of reasons including legacy systems, lack of knowledge of the application, and application dependencies. In this session we will show how organizations can leverage VMware Tanzu and VMware Cloud on AWS to discover, analyze, and map dependencies, convert to containers and ultimately deploy a modernized application on an API driven infrastructure, while still realizing the TCO benefits that come with VMware Cloud on AWS.

Speaker:
William Lam, Senior Staff Solution Architect, VMware

Automate and Improve Day 2 Operations with vSphere Lifecycle Manager [MCL1274]

VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager enhances the way administrators plan and execute VMware ESXi lifecycle operations. Reducing the amount of time required to update and upgrade your systems is imperative as the number of systems and environments grow. This talk details the features and capabilities of vSphere Lifecycle Manager, including newly added support for VMware NSX-T and VMware Tanzu. If you are looking to further automate vSphere Lifecycle Manager with VMware PowerCLI, we will provide the information and examples needed to get started. vSphere lifecycle management has never been easier.

Niels Hagoort, Staff Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
Jatin Purohit, Sr. Technical Marketing Manager, VMware

Azure VMware Solution Best Practices for Implementation and Migration [MCL3114S]

Join us for an interactive discussion on best practices when implementing, migrating and managing your Azure VMware Solution environment. Learn from our Azure VMware Solution experts and their experiences working closely with customers throughout deployment, including how to optimize for different scenarios and how to leverage the best of VMware and Azure services.

Jeramiah Dooley, Principal Cloud Advocate, Microsoft
Shannon Kuehn, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft

Azure VMware Solution: Deployment Deep Dive [MCL2036]

In this session, we will discuss planning and deployment of Azure VMware Solution beyond the quick start. We will cover planning for network addressing, connectivity, integrating into an existing Azure hub and spoke or virtual WAN deployment, configuring monitoring and management, and establishing governance controls.

Jeremiah Megie, Principal Cloud Solutions Architect, VMware
Steve Pantol, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

Azure VMware Solution: Lessons Learned and Trends from Customer Deployments [MCL2004]

In this session, we will share lessons learned from Microsoft and VMware architects about best practices through many customer deployments and migrations to Azure VMware Solution. We will focus on deployment, security, network, migration, infrastructure components (e.g., LDAP/DNS), disaster recovery, and day 2 operations design decisions and recommendations. Specifically, we will demonstrate how architecture considerations translate from on premises to the cloud without sacrificing design principles or technology investments already in place. Migration is just one part of the customer’s modernization journey. We will also show how current applications can take advantage of native Azure services.

Emad Younis, Director, Multi-Cloud Center of Excellence, VMware
Trevor Davis, Senior Technical Specialist, Microsoft

VMware Code

Managing your Horizon Environment Using the Python Module for Horizon [CODE2747]

Learn how to get started with Python and the VMware Horizon REST API to automate desktop and RDS pool CRUD (create/read/update/delete) operations. Find out about the basic principles of the Python module for Horizon and what it takes to get started with your automation project in a session full of demo’s

Speaker:
Wouter Kursten, Professional Services Engineer, ControlUP

Pitfalls of Infrastructure as Code (And How to Avoid Them!) [CODE2758]

Are you looking to start your journey into Infrastructure as Code? Or have you already jumped in head-first? Either way, this session is for you! We’ll talk about many of the common pitfalls of IaC, and how you can avoid them. From infrastructure pitfalls, to coding pitfalls, we’ll go over all kinds of things that you may not have thought of yet. Get your questions ready, because I’m here to help you be successful in your IaC journey!

Speaker:
Tim Davis, DevOps Advocate, env0

Live Coding: Terraforming Your vSphere Environment [CODE2755]

Infrastructure as code is the process of managing infrastructure in a file or a set of files rather than manually configuring resources in a user interface. This session is going to take a live look at how to make the process of getting starting with infrastructure as code in a VMware vSphere environment as easy as possible using HashiCorp Terraform, the de facto standard for infrastructure as code.

Speaker:
Kyle Ruddy, Sr Technical Marketing Manager, HashiCorp

vSAN

A Field Guide to Health Check vSAN to Operate, Upgrade and Transform [MCL1825]

Your data is the most critical part of a solution. Ensuring predictability and technical security is a daily part of the system administrator’s role. Join this deep-dive session with Paul McSharry, a VCDX certified architect from the Critical Accounts Program, to discuss and be guided through what is needed for a production VMware vSAN platform health check. Based on field experience with some of VMware’s largest vSAN and VMware Cloud Foundation strategic customers, ask questions and take away a checklist to review before upgrades and significant changes to keep your data safe. Understand the architectural design choice impacts with 6.7 and 7.x, review the data path, and discuss useful KPIs that can be monitored to ensure you get the most value of your vSAN deployment.

Speaker:
Paul McSharry, Principal Architect, VMware

VMware vSAN – Dynamic Volumes for Traditional and Modern Applications [MCL1084]

In this session, Duncan and Cormac will explore the possibilities of using VMware vSAN for traditional virtual machine applications as well as new modern/containerized applications. They will look at how vSAN continues to evolve and at some of the more recent features. In particular, they will discuss vSAN File Service, which can now be used to deliver both NFS and SMB file shares, while continuing to offer block storage at the same time. They will also demonstrate how vSAN File Service integrates with the VMware vSphere container storage interface (CSI) in Kubernetes to dynamically provision read-write-many volumes for Pods that need shared storage. The session will incorporate some common how-tos, best practices, and gotchas to avoid to enable you with the smoothest experience possible with vSAN File Service.

Speakers:
Duncan Epping, Chief Technologist, VMware
Cormac Hogan, Chief Technologist, VMware

Disaggregating Storage and Compute with HCI Mesh: Why, When, and How [MCL1683]

There are multiple use cases for disaggregating Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) storage. Common scenarios include environments with disproportionate requirements for compute and storage resources and architectures with limited local storage capacity, e.g., blade servers. HCI Mesh with vSAN provides a simple method for scaling compute and storage resources independently. You will learn why HCI storage disaggregation is beneficial, how HCI Mesh works, and what use cases to consider. There will be demos and we will also show examples of business-critical application design, tiering and scaling storage, and recommendations for successful implementation.

Speakers:
John Nicholson, Staff Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
Peter Flecha, Sr Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

I hope you will find these sessions list helpful in your journey, and please do let me know if I have missed out on exciting sessions.

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

Bye Bye VMware and Hello Dell EMC here I come!

16 Aug

Dell EMC

On 9th Aug 2018, I took the most difficult decisions of my life to leave my country India and one of the best companies in information technology VMware after working for 4.5 years. Our search for a better standard of living in a developed country and secured future for my kids ended up in Australia. We did evaluate Canada & Germany as well, but looking at all the factors, Australia was the place which we locked down to migrate and settle.

Back in early June, I started looking for an internal transfer within VMware. However, after talking to multiple bosses and divisions, nothing was materializing for an internal move. I had to make a hard choice to leave VMware and move ahead with my decision of moving countries. I began my job hunt during my notice period within VMware and 15 days later I came across a wonderful opportunity in Dell EMC @ Sydney, Australia. I am pleased that I got an opportunity in the parent and consortium of companies

Although I am going to miss working with a lot of colleagues @ VMware. But I am looking forward to working with new colleagues, projects and challenges in Dell EMC. It would be fun learning new things and solving problems from the real world and get an outside perspective. Will keep in touch on Twitter and LinkedIn

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

The Secret Sauce Behind VMware’s Internal Horizon Desktop Deployments – VMworld 2017

22 Feb

This year at VMworld, myself and my colleague Simon Long had the opportunity to talk about a project we’ve been working on for the past few years. We’ve been re-redesigning and deploying VMware’s internal Horizon Desktop environments.

Session Summary

“How does VMware architect its own global VMware Horizon desktop environment?” “Has it encountered the same obstacles we are facing?” Over the past two years, VMware has been re-architecting and deploying its virtual desktop infrastructure with VMware Horizon, VMware App Volumes, and VMware User Environment Manager running on top of the full VMware software-defined data center stack (VMware vSphere, VMware vSAN, VMware NSX) and integrating with VMware vRealize Operations Manager and VMware vRealize Log Insight. In this session, the lead architects will reveal all.

Our session (ADV1255BU – The Secret Sauce Behind VMware’s Internal VMware Horizon Desktop) includes the following sections:

  • Where we we? – Why did we need to kick off this project (from the beginning)
  • What do we need? – Revisiting the business and technical requirements (from 3:05)
  • How do we do this better? – How do we design this new infrastructure making sure we don’t hit the same issues again (from 5:13)
  • Where we are today? – A look at what we architected and deployed  (from 9:12)
  • What did we learn? – What challenges did we face along the way (from 30:45)
  • Where do we go from here? – How can we improve upon what we have built (from 41:51)

I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Please contact myself or Simon if you have any questions around our session.

Thanks,
Aresh

VMware CIO Innovation Award – OneDesk

7 Feb

I thought I would share some pretty exciting news with you guys, I’ve recently received an award internally within VMware for a cool project that myself and my colleague Simon Long have been working on for the past 6-8 months. The project in question is called OneDesk. I’ll explain more about OneDesk shortly.

CIO Innovation Award

The award we won is called the VMware CIO Innovation award. Here is the description of the Innovation category:

“The team which best accomplished the goal of creating and developing new products and/or services.”


Aresh Sarkari – VMware CIO 2017 Innovation AwardCIOAward-Aresh

I wasn’t very lucky to receive the award in-person as the award arrived in India a couple of days late and by then Bask Iyer had to leave back for PA, CA.

OneDesk

The project myself and Simon Long have been working on is called OneDesk. For those of you who attended our VMworld session: The Secret Sauce Behind VMware’s Internal Horizon Desktop Deployments you’d have heard us talking about it during our session. For those of you who were unfortunate enough to miss it, I’ll explain all about it now.

What is OneDesk?

OneDesk is many things to many people. Here are some of its main functions:

EUC Dogfooding environment
OneDesk is an End User Computing (EUC) environment created from un-used production hardware where we deploy pre-release versions of our EUC software (Horizon, App Volumes and User Environment Manager). This allows us to test our products before we make them publicly available to our customers and providing feedback to the product teams of any issues that we encounter throughout or testing.

Pre-Production Horizon Environment
OneDesk also acts a Pre-Production environment for VMware’s internal Production Horizon desktop environments in the US, EMEA and India. The availability of our production Horizon deployments is extremely important to the business and often updating software can lead to service outages. By deploying the newly released EUC software into OneDesk as early as possible, we can use our experiences to make decisions on when we will upgrade the production environments.

Next-Generation EUC Environment
OneDesk also acts a ‘Next-Generation’ environment for our production Horizon desktop environments in the US, EMEA and India. The availability of our production Horizon deployments is extremely important to the business and often introducing new products or configuration changes can lead to service outages. We will be deploying all new products and configurations into OneDesk first, allowing us to iron out any creases and monitor stability before we consider deploying these changes into the production environments.

VMware on VMware
Last but not least, this is a VMware on VMware initiative. Where there is a business need, we look to utilize as many of VMware’s products as possible. By utilizing our own products early in the development cycle we are able to identify bugs and offer feedback to our product teams to help improve our customer’s experience once the products are released.

How is OneDesk different from the VMware production Horizon desktop environments?

The table below gives you an idea of how the services differ:OneDeskVSProduction

The table below gives you an idea of how the product version differs between OneDesk and Production: (Version may have changed since publication)
Products-OneDeskVSProduction

Here is a list of features that we’ve used OneDesk to test before we deploy the features into our production environments:

  • Instant Clones
  • Blast Extreme
  • Unified Access Gateway
  • Enrollment Server / True SSO
  • Skype For Business Plugin
  • Horizon Smart Policies (UEM)
  • NSX Edge Load-Balancer
  • NSX Distributed Firewall (Micro-Segmentation)
  • Sparse Swap Files
  • Client Cache

Product Improvement

Not only does deploying early releases of software allow us to test some really cool new features that we’ve been able to implement into Production, this also allows us to capture many bugs before we release the products to our customers. Hopefully, this means that you, our customers, have a must most stable product that you can rely on.

I’ve really enjoyed designing and deploying OneDesk and watching its value to VMware grow as we utilize it more and more. I’m looking forward to seeing where we can take OneDesk in the future. Watch this space.

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

Vulnerability Scanner for WannaCry and NoPetya – VDI environments

31 Jul

With a lot of enterprises in the middle of the WannaCry and NoPetya vulnerability. If you are running a enterprise VDI environment the fix is pretty simple. Just target your Master VM or Golden Master images and run the Windows Update. Once you have updated the image simply Recompose or Push-Image the desktops pools with the latest updates. Your environment is quickly secured! These vulnerability reiterate the importance of regular patching within the production environments for your Core infrastructure + Master Images.

WannaCry Patch for All Windows versionshttps://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms17-010.aspx

Vulnerability Scanner

A quick and easy way to scan your environment is using a free EternalBlue vulnerability scanner. – http://omerez.com/eternalblues/

image

Simply download the scanner and launch it on a Windows VM of your choice on Windows 7/8.1/10.

IP Range:
The tool by default tends to select the /24 subnet. However, if you have a bigger subnet like a /19 to scan simply enter the Start and End of the entire subnet range. In this example its a 192.168.0.0/19. It will scan for 8190 IP addresses.

image

I hope you scan your environment ASAP! Get rid of the vulnerability ASAP!

Thanks,
Aresh

EUC Session for VMworld 2017

3 Apr

Folks, I have submitted a session for the VMworld 2017. If you would like to see them go on stage then please vote!

My Session:
The secret sauce behind VMware’s internal Horizon desktop deployments [1255]
Ever asked yourself “How does VMware architect their own global Horizon desktop environment?”, “Have they encountered the same obstacles we are facing?” Over the past two years VMware has been re-architecting and re-deploying their virtual desktop infrastructure with Horizon, App Volumes and User Environment Manager (UEM) running on top of the full VMware SDDC stack (vSphere, VSAN, NSX) and integrating with vRealize Operations Manager and Log Insight. In this session the lead architects will reveal all.

Direct Link to my session VOTE HERE: https://my.vmworld.com/scripts/catalog/uscatalog.jsp?search=1255

How to Vote?
Create a new account if you don’t have a existing one –
https://www.vmworld.com/myvmworld.jspa and click on “Create Account”

VMworld 2017 Catalogue
Search in VMworld 2017 Catalogue –
https://my.vmworld.com/scripts/catalog/uscatalog.jsp. Search here for other interesting sessions.

I highly recommend voting on other great sessions submitted by my colleagues.

Please Vote!
Aresh Sarkari

How to collect logs from Horizon View 6.x/7.x Instant Clones – Desktop VM’s

7 Feb

If you have desktops deployed via Horizon View 6.x/7.x Instant Clones technology it can get very difficult to collect the Horizon View Agent logs from the desktop VM for troubleshooting/analysis purposes. The moment the end-user logs-off from the desktop it gets into the Status = Disconnected –> Deleting.

vCenter Task for log-in and log-off of the desktopvCenter Task Log-in/Log-Off

vCenter Task for Deleting –> Customizing –> AvailablevCenter Task Delete - Customizing - Available

The above operations happen very quickly. Suppose in our scenario the desktop was failing on the Status=Customizing (View Administrator). The desktops status would change into the Error state and after couple of seconds get into delete will remain in a loop until the desktop becomes available. This is by design as the Instant Clone is trying to re-create the desktop There was no way to capture the logs for analysis or troubleshooting.

Resolution:Now you can disable the recovery of the Instant Clone desktop VM if they are in the Status=Error (Strictly for troubleshooting purposes). This setting can be enabled at Desktop Pool Level

Desktop Pool Setting (disable autorecovery):

  • Open the Horizon View ADAM – (DC=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int)
  • Go to OU=Server Groups – on you right select OU=DesktopPoolName (this is the name of your desktop pool)
  • Search for pae-RecoveryDisabled and click Edit
  • Enter Value =1 and click Add – OK
  • ADAM

Now whenever your desktop within the Pool will be in Status=Error it will not delete the VM and keep it in the Error state for you to capture the logs and perform troubleshooting. Please revert the changes of this settings once you have finished analysis. I hope these steps would be helpful leave a comment down below

Additional KB:
Connecting to the View ADAM Database (2012377)

Thanks,
Aresh