VMware

Omnissa Horizon Desktop Pool without vCenter

Omnissa Horizon Desktop Pool without vCenter

You usually want to connect Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon) directly to VMware vCenter, but it can make sense to leave them disconnected from each other in some situations.

In this post, I’ll show you step-by-step how to install the VMware Horizon Agent without using the VMware vCenter integration. You can do this on persistent VDIs and Physical Machines.

The Process

The configuration will be divided into two sections. The first section covers the steps needed on the system that you will install the VMware Horizon agent on, and the second section covers the steps needed on the VMware Horizon Connection Server.

VMware Horizon Agent

  • Launch the VMware Horizon agent install with the command line argument /v VDM_VC_MANAGED_AGENT=0
  • Click Next
  • Agree to the general terms and click Next.
  • Select IPv4 and click Next.
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Install VMware vCenter

Install VMware vCenter

VMware vCenter is a wonderful application that lets you take full advantage of your ESXi hosts. If you have more than one ESXi host you should look at vCenter. The full name of vCenter is vCenter Server Appliance or VCSA.

In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to install vCenter 8. The process is broken up into two stages. Stage 1 is the deployment on the vCenter VM and Stage 2 is the final settings to the vCenter VM.

The Process

Stage 1

  • Using a system that has access to the ESXi host you plan to use to create the vCenter VM download the vCenter ISO from VMware.
  • Mount or extract the ISO. I’m going to mount it.
  • Browse to \vcsa-ui-installer\win32 and run Installer.exe
  • Select Install

The next screen is the intro screen which lets you know that the process will be in two stages. The first stage is deploying the VM and the second stage is the final settings for the vCenter VM.

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VMware Tools on Windows Server Core

VMware Tools on Windows Server Core

I’m a fan of using Microsoft Windows Server Core for as many things as possible when it makes sense. In this post, I’ll cover step-by-step how to install VMware Tools on Windows Server Core via the GUI and PowerShell.

The GUI Way

  • From ESXi or vCenter mount VMware tools to the VM.
  • Login to the Windows Server Core VM.
  • Change to the D drive (or whichever drive your disk drive is on your install)
  • Enter the following command to being the install .\setup64.exe

Sometimes the VMware tools install screen hides behind the command line window.

  • Click Next
  • Select Typical and click Next.
  • Click Install.
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ESXi Autostart VMs with CLI

ESXi Autostart VMs with CLI

Maintenance mode is great however, when you have a single ESXi host and you have perfected the perfect VM startup order and you have to place your host into maintenance mode how do you start your VMs in the same order without having to manually do it?

ESXi VMs not starting due to maintenance mode

In this post, I will detail step-by-step how to start the VM auto-start sequence after you’ve exited maintenance mode.

  • Enable SSH by right-clicking on the host and selecting Services > Enable Secure Shell (SSH)
  • SSH into the ESXi host (I’m going to use PuTTY)
  • Run the following command to autostart your VMs vim-cmd hostsvc/autostartmanager/autostart

Now your VMs will start booting up in the autostart order you created.

You can even tell your VMs to shutdown in the reverse order by just running the auto shutdown command vim-cmd hostsvc/autostartmanager/autostop

I tried to find official documentation from VMware about this process but I wasn’t able to find any.

VMware Horizon Enable Copy Paste

VMware Horizon Enable Copy Paste

I’m a big fan of using copy paste as it helps me reduce typos and allows me to paste links or other information quickly between systems. Previously I wrote a post that covers how to enable copy paste with VMRC (VMware Remote Console) however that’s not super useful for the users that are using Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon). If you want to know how to enable copy paste with VMRC you can read my post about it called VMware Copy Paste Enabler.

The default configuration of VMware Horizon is that copy paste only works in one direction. You can paste items into VMware Horizon but you can’t copy items out, from an end-user perspective they may report that as broken. Thankfully there’s an easy way to enable full copy paste in both directions in Omnissa Horizon.

In this post, I will detail step-by-step how to enable copy paste in both directions in VMware Horizon.

Perquisites

  • Have the Horizon GPO templates deployed to your Central Store.

Here’s how to deploy the VMware Horizon GPO Templates.

The Process

  • Create a new GPO.
  • Go to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > VMware View Agent Configuration > Clipboard Redirection
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VMware Horizon GPO Templates

VMware Horizon GPO Templates

In this post, I will detail step-by-step how to install the Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon) GPO templates.

Technically speaking you can fully use Horizon without any of the GPO templates however there are a lot of useful settings in them that you can configure.

Before installing the Horizon GPO templates I recommend you create a Central Store. Here’s how to Create Active Directory Central Store.

I recommend making a note that you’ve added an extra GPO template to the Central Store.

The Process

  • Download the Horizon GPO Bundle from Omnissa.
Horizon GPO Bundle Download
  • Extract the contents of the VMware Horizon Extra Bundle zip file.
Extracting Horizon GPO Bundle
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VMware Tech Showcase

VMware Tech Showcase

Today at VMware Explore, VMware announced the Tech Showcase program created by the VMware xLabs team part of the VMware Office of the CTO (OCTO) team. Tech Showcase is a free program that will give you early access to products before they are fully released to the public.

It’s similar to VMware Flings, what sets it apart is that the feedback you provide will go directly to the teams working on the product, this allow for collaborations with you that will help shape the future of that product.

A good way to think of it is if you had access to VMware Tanzu before Tanzu existed and you could provide feedback to the teams building Tanzu to help shape what Tanzu is today.

The two Showcase Services that are being offered at launch are Project Keswick and Project Trinidad. VMware plans to add more in the future.

Project Keswick is like a Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment) but it runs ESXi and the PE is actually an optimized version of Kubernetes that you can use to deploy your edge workload. I’m very curious about how this will evolve. You can read more about Project Keswick in VMware’s documentation here or you can read the original announcement on the OCTO blog here.

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Install VMware Horizon Connection Server

Install VMware Horizon Connection Server

In this post I’ll show you step-by-step how to install the VMware Horizon Connection Server on-premises specifically version 2303 (other versions will follow a very similar process).

Prerequisites

  • A domain joined Windows Server that will be the Horizon Connection Server.
  • A static IP on the Windows Server.
  • An Active Directory Group for Horizon Administrators.
  • A password for Horizon data recovery backups.

The Process

  • Login to the server that you will be installing the Horizon Connection Server on, this should be the only function of that server.
  • Download a copy of the Horizon Connection Server installer from VMware.
  • Run the Horizon Connection Server installer that was just downloaded.
  • Click Next
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My VMware vExpert Journey

My VMware vExpert Journey

I’ve recently reached an exciting milestone. I became a VMware vExpert!

vExpert is a program run by VMware, it’s for people that want to give back to the VMware community, which can be done via a multitude of ways one of them being blogging like this very website. Anyone and everyone can apply, I highly encourage you to apply.

To fully understand why this is an important milestone in my life, we need more context. Computers and technology have always fascinated me. I look at everything with the mindset of trying to understand how and why something works. What does it take to break it? And what does it take to fix it?

I feel like I’ve always had some form of a home lab, at the time I had no idea what a home lab was. To me, it was just some computers that I could play with and break and fix and learn with. Almost all of what I know today is all self-taught from doing exactly that.

They say you never stop learning and I fully believe that. I am constantly learning new things and improving what I know.

My Path Forward

Some time ago, I decided to change my website into my notebook about tech things. My reasoning for this is to remember how I did something and, I want to give back to the internet as there have been countless times where other websites just like mine have helped solve a problem or taught me something.

After changing my blog real people started commenting on my posts, and I gained a new friend, Stephen Wagner who runs his own tech blog just like mine. You can find his blog here https://www.stephenwagner.com.

Stephen is vExpert Pro and he saw that my blog has VMware content, he told me about the vExpert program. I had no idea the vExpert program existed. He encouraged me to apply and helped me with the whole application process.

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VMware Horizon Customize Web Portal

VMware Horizon Customize Web Portal

VMware Horizon’s web portal has a decent appearance out of the box. However, I wanted to customize it to make it look like my own.

If you have a customized login background on your Microsoft 365, it could be beneficial to create a consistent end-user experience by making them look similar.

I couldn’t find any official documentation from VMware about this. I suspect the customizations might break when you upgrade to a new version of VMware Horizon. With all of that aside altering the images on the HTML portal is actually really straightforward.

Here’s how to change the default background and the default logo on the VMware Horizon HTML web portal.

  • Go to your current VMware Horizon web portal and right click on the VMware Horizon logo and select Open image in new tab
  • You will now have a new tab that has a URL that looks something like this horizon.yourwebsite.com/portal/webclient/icons-21414280/logo.png
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