Dell ThinOS Monitoring and Telemetry Overview

A new feature in ThinOS 2402 and Wyse Management Suite (WMS) 4.3 is the addition of some great telemetry data on the ThinOS devices. It reports a bunch of info including CPU, memory, storage & network usage along with device network information, connected peripherals, connection broker, currently signed on users, & remote connection info.

In order to get this telemetry data into WMS you need to do the following 2 steps –

  • In WMS, Enable Telemetry Dashboard under System Settings\Device Monitoring
  • On ThinOS, install the Telemetry Dashboard package, go to dell.com/support, select your thin client model and select Applications, Telemetry Dashboard – current version “ThinOS 2402 (9.5.1079) Telemetry Dashboard v1.0.0.8” here.

The telemetry tab in the WMS dashboard will get populated once enabled in WMS & the package is installed on ThinOS:

It’s an easy 1 button configure to enable the Telemetry data in WMS:

You can also view the Telemetry data locally on the ThinOS device under Troubleshooting\Telemetry Dashboard:

ThinOS Telemetry Dashboard\General tab:

ThinOS Telemetry Dashboard\Monitor tab:

ThinOS Telemetry Dashboard\Network tab:

ThinOS Telemetry Dashboard\Peripheral tab:

ThinOS Telemetry Dashboard\Connection tab:

We continue to innovate in Dell ThinOS and hope you found this helpful! Any questions please let me know!

Additional Resources:

Hope you enjoyed!! Let’s connect & subscribe to blog to get latest updates!

-Chris

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New! Dell Cloud Client Workspace and VDI Updates for July!

Wow! The past few weeks the Dell Cloud Client Workspace team and VDI teams have been busy launching a flurry of new updates! I wanted to share a quick run down of some of the key announcements just happening!

🚀 Wyse Management Suite (WMS) 4.1 launched!

  • What’s new in 4.1? Check out here!
  • My quick summary here!
  • Reviewers guide here
  • Quick video overview here

🚀 Dell ThinOS 2306 launched!

  • What’s new in 2306? Check out here!
  • Updated Microsoft AVD, Citrix, VMware, Teradici, Imprivata clients and much more!

🚀 Dell Windows 10 IoT 2306 launched!

  • What’s new in 2306? Check out here!
  • Third-party application improvements, Dell Application Store updates and more!

🚀 Dell Hybrid Client 2.5 launched!

  • What’s new in 2.5? Check out here!
  • Performance improvements, updates to the UI and many clients updates!

🚀 New Dell Demo Center WMS demo launched!

  • Take a quick test drive of the Wyse Management Suite here!

🚀*New* Implementation Services for Azure Virtual Desktop

That’s it for now – enjoy!

Community Resources!

Hope you enjoyed!! Let’s connect & subscribe to blog to get latest updates!

-Chris

New Dell Wyse ThinOS Activation License & Wyse Management Suite Update

A new Dell Wyse ThinOS enhancement to be aware of is the introduction of a ThinOS Activation License that was introduced as part of ThinOS version 2205 (version 9.3.1129) & Wyse Management Suite 3.7.

This new license is required in certain scenarios as outlined here.

In some cases, you may encounter the following message below:

“Login is denied (ThinOS activation license is not available)”

You will get this for a few reasons as outlined in the release notes here and outlined below.

ThinOS enhancements

  • Added ThinOS Activation devices licenses in Wyse Management Suite—The licenses must be used in the following two scenarios:
    • Devices that are converted from other operating systems must use the ThinOS activation licenses to enable VDI function. Without the ThinOS activation license, you cannot log in to any Broker agent on the devices. The ThinOS activation licenses are used automatically when registering to Wyse Management Suite.
      • For example, you bought Windows 10 IoT/Windows Embedded devices in the past and converted them to ThinOS at one point
      • If you bought a newer platform, i.e. Dell 3420 thin client laptop and ThinOS was NOT installed at the factory but instead onsite, then you will need the ThinOS Activation license
    • Non-PCoIP ThinOS clients that are upgraded from ThinOS 8.6 can use ThinOS Activation license to enable the PCoIP function. Go to Services > WDA Settings > Enable PCoIP Activation License to enable this option in ThinOS 9.x policy. Restart your device for the function to take effect
      • For example, you upgraded ThinOS 8.x without PCoIP and have upgraded to ThinOS 9.x and you use PCoIP with VMware Horizon
  • Support for Dell Wyse Latitude 3420 Thin Client
    • You must have ThinOS Activation devices license for Latitude 3420 to enable VDI function

This license takes effect starting with ThinOS 2205/9.3.1129 & Wyse Management Suite 3.7 as noted in the release notes here.

If you are running into this issue after upgrading to ThinOS 2205, you may need to reach out to your Dell account team to likely purchase the appropriate ThinOS Activation License if you fall into one of the categories.

Alternatively, you can roll back to prior versions of ThinOS until you identify the reason you are getting this license message & purchase the proper ThinOS activation license(s).

The new ThinOS Activation License is discussed in greater detail here, Dell ThinOS – Installation & Activation License User Guide. This document also covers installing ThinOS on newer hardware manually such as the Wyse 3420 thin client laptop IF it is not pre-loaded at the factory.

If you use WMS on prem you will need to export your ThinOS Activation License from WMS Cloud to WMS on prem server as noted here.

Hope you found this helpful!

Additional Resources:

  • Dell Wyse ThinOS 2205/9.3.1129 Release notes here
  • Dell Wyse ThinOS 2205/9.3.1129 Administrators Guide here
  • Dell Wyse Management Suite Release notes here
  • Dell Community forums for ThinOS here
  • Excellent Dell Wyse community located here
  • Dell Wyse ThinOS Technical Support here

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Dell Wyse Management Suite (WMS) 3.6 Install

The latest release of Wyse Management Suite, 3.6, is out! I put together a brief summary of the installation process if installing locally on a Windows 2019/2016/2012 server. Alternatively, WMS can also be run as a hybrid cloud solution as noted here. Enjoy!

You can download Wyse Management Suite v3.6 from here along with documentation and release notes here.

  1. Launch the installer, WMS_3.6-xxx.exe and click ‘Next’ to begin

2. Accept EULA and click ‘Next’

3. Choose Typical or Custom and be sure to check off ‘Turn off IE Enhanced Security Configuration’ then click ‘Next’. I selected Typical for this standard install.

4. Provide credentials for both database access and administrator credentials. Note: The administrator credentials will be the login credentials you’ll use to log into the WMS console.

5. I clicked ‘Next’ past this section as it’s specific to using Teradici zero clients which I’m not using. If you are, see more info at page 15 here

6. Select an option to create the WMS service account from the below options.

7. Provide credentials for the Software Vault as noted below.

8. Click ‘Next’ to accept the default security configuration

9. Select the installation and repository location as noted below

10. Once you click ‘Next’, the installation will start!!

11. Once install finishes, click ‘Launch’ at the end and a wizard will finalize the install. You can see more of these final steps here starting at Step 14.

Additional Resources:

  • Wyse Management Suite download here
  • Wyse Management Suite documentation here
  • Excellent Dell Wyse community located here
  • Dell Community forums for Wyse Management Suite (WMS) here

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Dell Wyse ThinOS 9 & 802.1x Configurations

I recently came across an issue that took some time trying to resolve regarding 802.1x configuration on ThinOS 9.1 that I wanted to share.

Ultimately, the issue came down to the SSL certificate name not matching the certificate name entered into the Wyse Management Suite (WMS) configuration.

When the device was trying to authenticate, it was using a certificate name that didn’t match what was in the WMS configuration and failed to authenticate because of this.

Some errors we received in the event log but weren’t very descriptive although it appeared to be a certificate authentication issue based on ‘private key passphrase needed for SSID’ error message.

  • TLS: Failed to set TLS connection parameters
  • EAP-TLS: Failed to initialize SSL
  • WLAN: CTRL-REQ-PASSPHRASE-0:Private key passphrase needed for SSID
  • WLAN: EAP: Failed to initialize EAP method: vendor 0 method 13 (TLS)

Example log:

We then looked at the WMS 802.1x configuration and verified the certificate name, in this case, ‘wyse.pfx’ – note the lowercase ‘w‘. We uploaded again to WMS and verified we got prompted for password so that looked correct.

We then looked at actual certificate we uploaded, ‘Wyse.pfx’, and made note of the case – capital ‘W‘ vs the lowercase ‘w‘ that was entered in WMS console so we changed WMS to match certificate name. We changed it from ‘wyse.pfx’ to ‘Wyse.pfx’. Once we did this and rebooted device, it connected to the network successfully!

Lesson learned, it’s never a bad idea to verify case sensitivity and try to make sure they match to avoid this potential pitfall!

Hope you found this helpful!

Additional Resources:

  • More details on 802.1x configurations noted here
  • If you are new to ThinOS 9.1, here is a quick video overview of some of it’s features.
  • Looking for more details on ThinOS 9.1? Check out the release notes here
  • Excellent Dell Wyse community located here
  • Dell Community forums for ThinOS here

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Dell Wyse ThinOS 9 & Netscaler/ADC

I’ve run into a few issues lately where customers are currently using ThinOS 8.x successfully with Citrix Netscaler/ADC but having issues connecting with Dell Wyse ThinOS 9.x.

In more than one case, it’s been an issue with the existing Netscaler Session Policy that was setup specifically for Wyse devices and contains information from the ThinOS 8.x User-Agent HTTTP/S request header that may no longer apply to ThinOS 9.

The ThinOS 8.x User-Agent request header is: CitrixReciever WTOS/1.0

The ThinOS 9.0 User-Agent request header is: “CitrixReceiver”/18.12.0.65534 (X11; Linux x86_64) Warthog/9.0.8024 (Release) X1Class CWACapable

**Update 8/2021 #1 ** ThinOS 9.1 User-Agent request header has been changed to: CitrixReceiver/18.12.0.65534 (X11; Linux x86_64) WTOS/9 (Release) X1Class CWACapable (‘Warthog/9.0.8024′ was replaced with: ‘WTOS/9’)

**Update 8/2021 #2 ** If ThinOS is using the built-in web browser to connect to an MFA site, for example, Okta, Duo, etc.. then the HTTP header will be one of the following:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/66.0.3359.181 Warthog/9.0 Safari/537

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/66.0.3359.181 Electron/3.1.11 Safari/537.36

Note: The following below may not be true if using >9.1 as the http header now again contains “WTOS”.

The issue I’ve seen is many customers using ThinOS 8.x have a Netscaler Session Policies setup to look for a User-Agent to include “WTOS” or “WTOS/1.0” and that does NOT exist in the 9.x User-Agent header so the existing Session Policy will be ignored and not applied.

Network trace from ThinOS 8.6_511:

Network trace from ThinOS 9.0_4024:

 

Network trace from ThinOS 9.1.2101 / CWA 21.1.0.14.8

 

To fix this, you have 2 options.

Option #1: Create a new session policy on Netscaler/ADC to contain something from the ThinOS 9.x header, for example, ‘Warthog’ (name for ThinOS 9) so it uses the policy.

Option #2: Wyse Management Suite has the ability to specify the User-Agent header under the WMS Citrix Broker/Netscaler section.  

  • Under ‘Citrix Broker’ settings from ThinOS 8.x policy

  • Under ‘Broker Settings’ settings from ThinOS 9.x policy

Finally, we also saw an issue where we get the following error; INFO: “Waiting for token to change, then enter the new tokencode”

The existing Netscaler/ADC policy was set to have an RSA policy first BUT since that policy was setup using the 8.6, “WTOS”, header, it was going to the second policy and only allowing LDAP, but threw this error. Once we fixed the policy as noted above with proper header, we were able to use or RSA policy as primary, and the LDAP as secondary.

You can configure this behavior under the “Citrix Netscaler/ADC” settings section in the ThinOS 9 policy.  

Hope you found this helpful!

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Dell Wyse ThinOS Security Message (8.6_511)

“Client configuration were obtained using an unsecure connection. Please consider the potential security risk before proceeding.”

To resolve this, you will want to enter the following value on the Advanced section in WMS:

signon=yes enablemessage=no

This Advanced section is located under your group profile located in Advanced Device Configuration\Advanced as shown below.

You will then enter, signon=yes enablemessage=no, on an available line as shown in the example below:

Additional details:

Release notes here.

HTH!

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SSL Certificates & Wyse Management Suite

In a previous post, here, I covered how to resolve the SSL error message, “SSL Certificate Authority is Unknown” when using ThinOS.

In this post I will cover how to upload SSL certificates into Wyse Management Suite (WMS) and how to assign them to a specific group configuration/profile for ThinOS 8.x and 9.x.

The process is slightly different for ThinOS 8.x & ThinOS 9.x but I will cover both below. 

How to upload SSL certificates for use by ThinOS 8.x:

1. In WMS, browse to “Apps & Data”:

2. Scroll down to “File Repository”:

3. Click “Add File” to upload Certificate:

4. Browse out to the Certificates you exported. You will need to do for each Certificate you exported.

 

5. Once you click upload it should show up under the ‘Apps & Data – Inventory File Repository”:

 

How to upload SSL certificates for use by ThinOS 9.x:

    1. In your ThinOS 9 policy, browse to “Privacy & Security\Certificates”. Here you can turn on “Auto Install Certificates” and browse to the certificates you want to upload as shown below:

 

How to assign SSL Certificates to WMS configuration group/policy: 

Once your certificates are imported into WMS, you then need to assign them to your ThinOS profile you are using under, “Groups & Configs” select the group you want to edit following steps below;

  • ThinOS 8.x: in the policy, browse to “Device Configuration\Security\General Settings”. Select “Auto-install Certificates” and your Certificate should show up in the list to select. Once you are done, click “Save & Publish”. The next time the device reboots, it will pick up the new Certificate.

  • ThinOS 9.x: in your policy, browse to “Privacy & Security\Certificates”. Here you can turn on “Auto Install Certificates” and browse to the certificates you want to upload as shown below:

This completes the process of uploading your SSL certificates to WMS and assigning them to a ThinOS policy.

For more assistance, check out Dell Community Forums (formally Dell TechCenter):

@chris_messier ~~> Subscribe to blog to get latest updates <~~

 

Dell Wyse ThinOS – “SSL Certificate Authority is Unknown”

“SSL Certificate Authority is Unknown”

A common issue connecting to a VDI connection broker, i.e Citrix, VMware, etc.., from Dell Wyse ThinOS or any thin client, is an SSL certificate error. There are generally 2 reasons why.

  • the Root Certificate Authority certificate is not installed on the device
  • the Intermediate Certificate Authority certificate is also not installed on the device

Error: SSL Certificate Authority is Unknown

This is easily fixed by installing both the missing Root and likely the Intermediate certificate.

To do this, you can simply export from a browser, and then import on the device, generally through Wyse Management Suite (WMS) or even a USB key if you had to.

I will cover the 3 step process to fix this.

  1. Export the required certificates from a browser
  2. Upload into Wyse Management Suite
  3. Assign the certificates to the device profile

Steps to export certificate from browser:

  1. In this example, I used https://portal.vmware.com as an example to work with certificates but this would be your VMware Horizon server, Citrix Storefront site, Citrix Netscaler/ADC, Microsoft Azure MFA site, etc…
  2. Click on the SSL padlock on your browser as shown below to bring up below window. Click on ‘Certificate (Valid)’ field.

3. This will bring up the certificate information:

4. Click on “Certification Path” tab bring up the following:

5. Select the top level certificate, in this case, “Sectigo (formally Comodo CA)”

6. This will bring up the Root certificate as shown below, “Comodo RSA Certification Authority”. This is the first certificate we want to export.

7. Click on the “Details” tab and select, “Copy to File”:

8. Take defaults and follow the wizard to export the certificate:

9. Once you export the top level Root Certificate, follow the same steps to export the Intermediate certificate. This Intermediate is chained, or trusted, by this top level Root Certificate so we need both certificates in this chain.

10. In the browser, select the Intermediate Certificate, “COMODO RSA Domain Validation Secure Server CA” and select “View Certificate”:

11. Select “Details” and “Copy to File” to export the certificate:

12. Follow wizard again to export the Intermediate Certificate:

13. You now have successfully exported both the top level Root Certificate, “Comodo RSA Certification Authority”, and the Intermediate Certificate, “COMODO RSA Domain Validation Secure Server CA”.

Once exported you need to upload them into your WMS server. It’s a simple process and the steps to upload the certifications are outlined here. Once complete, resume to step 15 below to assign the certificate(s) to your group configuration/profile.

15. Once certificates are imported into WMS, you then need to assign them to your ThinOS profile you are using under, “Groups & Configs” select the group you want to edit following steps below;

  • ThinOS 8.x: in the policy, browse to “Device Configuration\Security\General Settings”. Select “Auto-install Certificates” and your Certificate should show up in the list to select. Once you are done, click “Save & Publish”. The next time the device reboots, it will pick up the new Certificate.

  • ThinOS 9.x: in your policy, browse to “Privacy & Security\Certificates”. Here you can turn on “Auto Install Certificates” and browse to the certificates you want to upload as shown below:

 

This completes the process of exporting the SSL certs, uploading to WMS, and assigning them to your profile. This should resolve the issue of “SSL Certificate Authority is Unknown”.

For more assistance, check out Dell Community Forums (formally Dell TechCenter):

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How To: Wyse Management Suite and Active Directory Integration

One of the great features of Wyse Management Suite (WMS) Pro is the ability to integrate it with Active Directory so you can log into WMS using your existing Active Directory accounts.

The process is pretty straightforward as outlined in admin guides but recently working on this with a customer I wanted to document the process with some additional details that helped.

  • Go to ‘Portal Administration’, ‘Active Directory (AD)’
  • Enter your Active Directory information as outlined below:
    • Name: FQDN of domain controller
    • Domain: domain name
    • Server URL: ldap://ip_fqdn of domain controller
    • Port: 389


  • Once you click ‘Save’ and it’s successful, you will see the following screen:

  • Click on the ‘icon’ to add by either Groups, Users, and also search by OU to enumerate from AD.


  • You will then see your existing Groups appear below:


    You could also search just for a specific Group, i.e. WMS Administrators:


    You could also search just for a specific User, i.e. wyseuser: (NOTE: User account must have email associated with account in order to show up, otherwise you will get an error message while trying to import users.


    You could also search by Organizational Unit (OU), i.e. Management


  • Once you have imported what you choose, the users will show up under the Users tab in WMS under, ‘Unassigned Admins’. Note: This may take a few minutes to show up after importing from AD.

  • Select the account and select ‘Edit User’:

  • Select ‘Roles’ and assign the appropriate role for the user:

  • Once complete, the user will show up under the ‘Administrator(s)’ tab:

  • On the WMS Portal logon screen, choose ‘Sign in with your domain credentials’ to log in with your newly imported and assigned AD user.

  • Enter your AD user account and login!