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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New! Dell VDI Updates – Microsoft AVD on Azure Stack HCI, Citrix & VMware Updates!

Wow!! The Dell VDI product team has been busy at work and released a bunch of new updates that I wanted to share!!

They released some great content around Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Stack HCI & some new design and implementation guides for Citrix & VMware.

You can access all this great content here or some direct links below – enjoy!!

Azure Virtual Desktop

VMware Horizon

Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops

Additional Resources:

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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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New! Wyse 5470 Thin Client Laptop and 24″ All in One!

Dell has recently released 2 new models, the Dell Wyse 5470 Thin Client Laptop and a 24″ All in One thin client!

The big news here is it’s the first thin client laptop Dell has released that runs Wyse ThinOS. The thin laptop also comes in Windows 10 IoT along with the ThinLinux platform. We’ve had Windows and Linux based thin laptops in the past but we’ve always had demand for a ThinOS version so it’s finally here!

The other Dell Wyse first is a ThinOS based 24″ All in One which we seen lots of interest in the healthcare space and other verticals interested in AIO’s. This replaces the previous 21.5″ ThinOS and the 24″ Teradici based options we had.

See more below!

Product video of 5470 All in One here!

Product video of 5470 Thin Client Laptop here!

Enjoy!

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New Updates! Cisco Jabber & Microsoft Skype for Business Enhancements for Wyse ThinOS

Cisco Jabber & Microsoft Skype for Business, and other unified communications solutions, are some of the solutions often requested in virtual desktop deployments. Citrix & VMware have both made some key advancements on the server side, i.e. Citrix HDX RealTime Optimization Pack (RTME) & VMware Horizon Virtualization Pack for Skype for Business.

Most of the client side solutions to ‘offload’ some of this processing has been focused on using Windows, or Windows Embedded, based endpoints. The request of many customers is to simplify & secure the endpoint as much as possible, which can lead to using a non-Windows based endpoint and running Windows 10/7 in the data center.

Dell Wyse just released Wyse ThinOS 8.6 which includes support for Cisco Jabber Softphone for VDI for Citrix and Skype for Business on VMware Horizon.

You can see more on these announcements here and some technical details in the Wyse ThinOS 8.6 release notes here.

Enjoy!

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NVIDIA Releases Updates to NVIDIA GRID GPU line!

Today, NVIDIA announced some updates to the  line of NVIDIA GRID GPU’s for VDI. I continue to see the use cases increase for GPU’s in VDI so great to see these new releases. The increase in user density is one of the key considerations customers always ask; how many users per server/GPU? Great to see the users density continue to increase!

Here are some details from todays launch webinar and my key takeaways;

  • renamed vWorkstation license version to Quadro Virtual Data Center Workstation Software (Quadro vDWS)
  • newer P40 & P6 GPU’s do NOT have 512MB profile (min is 1Gb)
  • a new license server will be released; 5.0
  • 50% more vGPU per physical GPU (improves density!)
  • updated/newer monitoring and insight integration into VMware vRealize Operations and 3rd party’s, i.e. Liquidware Labs, Lakeside, ControlUp, eGInnovations, etc..

Updated NVIDIA GRID line:

You can see press release here.

Introduction to VMware NSX & VDI

nsx

In my quest to learn a bit more about VMware NSX for Horizon virtual desktops I came across a few great resources I wanted to share. If your not familiar with VMware NSX you can get a good overview of this network & security solution here: VMware NSX for VDI. In order to further secure virtual desktops, NSX allows you to create rules and policies that are VM & user centric to control various levels of access to the users VM.

A lot has been talked about whether VDI is inherently more secure than a physical PC environment and the opinions vary. A great post a few years ago was hotly debated on this topic on BrianMadden.com and is worth a read.

vdi_security
BrianMadden.com

However you look at it, the industry is evolving to help further secure virtual desktop environment’s and VMware NSX is one solution to help in that area.

A great overview of the solution is below. Another deep dive that I thought was great can be found here.

New NVIDIA and VMware Community (NVC)!

GRID_COMMUNITY

NVIDIA & VMware recently launched an online community for customers looking to deliver a VDI solution based on the combination of NVIDIA & VMware to deliver high end graphics. The community allows customers and partners to exchange best practices and troubleshooting ideas to get up and running.

It looks like a great resource for folks looking to deploy these solutions as there tend to be a lot of nuances with trying to deploy multiple solutions together so a community forum is a great source!