What’s CAC (Common Access Card)?

The DoD (Department of Defense) issues a smart card known as CAC (often called a, "CAC card") to personnel, as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s HSPD-12 (Homeland Security Presidential directive) mandate.  CAC’s are used by military personnel, civilian personnel, contractors, reservists, and other consultants and service providers to authenticate against various systems.

There are many flavors of zero clients, from the Samsung NC-190 to the Wyse P20 to the Dell FX100 to other variations from companies such as ClearCube.

As Simon Bramfitt discussed in this post, VMware demonstrated a PCoIP-capable iPad client at VMWorld 2010 last week.  This is great news for those of us implementing VMware View, as I can attest to the interest in using tablets as end points.

I show the Wyse PocketCloud app connecting to a VMware View (works great with 4.5) backend quite often.  Here’s how this is accomplished.

• Configure a VPN connection back to the mothership.

Continuing on with the VMware vCloud Director article already posted here, this article covers the high-level communication connections for a VMware vCloud Director environment.

The components of VMware vCloud Director communication:

Click image for larger version.

There are many concepts in VMware vCloud Director that will be new to even some of the most seasoned VMware administrators. As time permits over the coming weeks, I will attempt to dissect some of the pieces as I have been fortunate enough to have had a lot of hands-on with the product throughout its various stages over the last few years.

For a working Dell AIM Controller setup script, please scroll to the bottom.

I don’t have Red Hat licenses lying around, nor do I want to be forced to use one for a PoC, lab or demo environment. There are other companies out there with great products I want to use but for some God forsaken reason require the use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (well, maybe a few good reasons as well).

It’s no secret that I am a fan of leveraging the full Liquidware Labs (LWL) suite when getting engaged to deliver virtual desktop solutions.

I was recently asked by a colleague how to meter the use of VMware ThinApp packages.

What is metering?

Metering is monitoring ThinApp package usage for licensing, compliance, auditing or monitoring.

For example, if Organization_A is licensed for 50 copies of Notepad++ and Organization_A thinapp's Notepad++, how do they ensure they remain in compliance? Or, if someone us distributing ThinApp packages from a cloud service provider, how do they easily manage and monitor all of the application users?

I’ve been asked more and more lately to provide a strategy on managing a segregated VMware View environment with only one management console.

Most of the time, the customer assumes they need two completely separate VMware View environments, when what they ultimately want can often be accomplished by leveraging the Tag feature of VMware View.

How do Tags work?

A Connection Server can have one or many Tags associated with it. A Desktop Pool can also have one or many Tags associated with it.

Note, this site does not support communism.

Several times a week I'm working with customers on designing, implementing, tweaking or customizing their particular VDI solution.

I've been a part of some very cool projects and have had to address some very specific needs.

One of the customer requirements I recently had to work with was:

• The existing Windows XP workstations must boot and force the VMware View Client to launch immediately.

I often get engaged to help customers choose between the proper zero/thin/thick clients on the market for their particular VDI solution. One topic of conversation that often comes up is USB connectivity, redirection and speed.

Before the discussion can be held in full, it is important to clarify the difference between how Microsoft’s current Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) handles USB disk drives and how VMware View using PCoIP handles the same situation.

The user account used by VMware View Composer to join computers to the domain needs to have the ability to add and move Computer accounts in and out of the Computers container (as new computer accounts joined to the domain, unless pre-staged, end up in the Computers container first, and are then moved to the appropriate OU defined in the QuickPrep settings:

For a 2000 or 2003 Active Directory Domain:

For those out there building custom solutions for their Android-based tablet/device, it is important to understand what processor the device is using. One of the devices I recently had the opportunity to test was a unit from Archos. With the announcement of the Cisco Cius this week, I imagine more and more solution developers will be poking around their Android tablets to build innovative solutions.