Wow! The past few months for the Cloud Client Workspace (CCW) team have been busy including just finishing up Dell Technologies World 2024 last week! If you’re not familiar with the CCW portfolio check out our client overview guide to get familiar with our solutions!
I wanted to share a quick run down of some of the key announcements in the past couple months!
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!
I wanted to create a quick 2-min demo showing the Dell ThinOS bootup and login process to a Windows 365 Cloud PC .
The process is pretty quick and the experience is the same whether it’s Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), VMware Horizon, Citrix Virtual Apps/Desktops, etc…
In this demo I pre-populate the users Azure AD credentials via Wyse Management Suite to speed up login and is an example of what you may use in a kiosk environment.
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!
One of the options with Wyse Management Suite (WMS) cloud or on-prem is the ability to install a remote repository to host OS images or packages. This isn’t often required, especially with ThinOS, as the images and packages can be hosted centrally in WMS cloud or the main repository as part of your on-prem install. We also can host packages in WMS cloud for Windows 10 IoT & Dell Hybrid client.
In this case, the customer wanted to convert their existing home users who are using Windows 10 IoT based thin clients to Dell ThinOS thin clients using WMS cloud. In order to do this we needed a cloud hosted repository to host this ThinOS conversation image for all the Windows 10 IoT thin clients to download the ThinOS image from. We installed the WMS repository on a Windows Server 2019 VM in Azure and synced it with our WMS cloud portal.
I wanted to outlined the WMS repository installation and Azure virtual machine configuration below.
Review the WMS repository installation prerequisites here in the WMS admin guide in order to configure your Azure, or on-prem VM installation.
2. Download the latest WMS repository installation from the WMS downloads site here
3. Install the WMS repository following the below prompts;
4. NOTE: Once the installation finishes and you click ‘Launch’ it make take 1-2 minutes for the installation to finish, close and then launch the browser, so be patient while it finishes. The WMS repository service is starting and the web page will be unavailable until it starts. You can confirm the services started by looking here:
5. Once the web pages launches, you will be brought to the registration page. Once you are here you have a few options to configure:
The URL of your WMS server
Here we have the option to “Register to Public WMS Management Portal” or specify the FQDN of your on-prem WMS server. In my case, we are going to register to WMS cloud so we will select “Register to Public WMS Management Portal” & select “us1.wysemanagementsuite.com” (or eu1. if you’re using that tenant).
The second important item is the ‘WMS Repository URL“. This will be the URL the client that is downloading the image from will connect to. In my case, since we are using WMS cloud and doing this for remote home based users, we need to make sure that WMS Repository URL resolves externally to my server and is accessible over the Internet. By default, it lists the hostname of the server.
Here I selected “us1.wysemanagementsuite.com” & changed my WMS repository URL to an FQDN that maps to my Azure WMS repository VM: hostname.vditoolbox.com
6. Once you click ‘Register’, it will connect to your WMS management server and register successfully.
7. You can confirm it registered succussfully by looking on your WMS console under Portal Administration\File Repository:
8. At this point, your WMS repository is installed and successfully connected to your WMS portal!
9. From here, in my example I downloaded the Windows 10 IoT to ThinOS conversation image to my Azure repository and synced with my WMS portal. By default, ‘Automatic Replication’ is selected but you can also click ‘Sync Files’ or ‘Check-In’ to ensure the repository is synching & checking in successfully. If you’re doing a conversion as well, you can read more here.
10. The final step is to make sure your Azure VM is accessible externally. In my example, I used hostname.vditoolbox.com that has DNS record that resolves to the public IP address of my Azure VM. I’ve included an example of the lab setup I had during testing and yours will likely be different based on network, security groups, etc.. but wanted to give you an idea.
Troubleshooting:
We initially were receiving an error when pushing the conversion image but not a smaller package. The issue turned out to be an issue with the header and we think the the very long file name compared to that of other package files and it was getting blocked. When the thin client connected to download the image, the Azure Web Application firewall was blocking the connecting and the thin client displaying the following error:
WMS Repository Server is not available or required imaging files are missing. Trying again….Number of Retry = 1
We also saw the following error right before imaging started, followed by the one above:
When we looked at the WMS WDA logs we saw the following:
18/01/2023 13:26:37.376 E 5764 6 Unable to perform http request… 18/01/2023 13:26:37.392 E 5764 6 CCMConnectionData: BaseConnectionString: https://us1.wysemanagementsuite.com:443/Mac: “b0:4f:13:bf:08:f4″OwnerId: “50359860”WyseId: “wyse3826922988332208998″AuthCode: “****”UserAgentHeader: “Stratus /4.7.5.0 (WES 10.0.17763; en-US; Wyse 5470; Revision:14.6.2.13; cls:A)” 18/01/2023 13:26:37.392 I 5764 6 WebException returned ProtocolError – The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request.
The Azure administrator then looked at the Azure Web Application firewall logs and saw the following:
REQUEST-920-PROTOCOL-ENFORCEMENT.conf 920450 Restricted HTTP headers: The use of certain headers is restricted. HTTP header is restricted by policy (%{MATCHED_VAR}) Pattern match ^.*$; Within Tx:restricted_headers at REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES. /wms-repo/image/os?filePath=ThinOS_2211_9.3.3099_WES_Conversion%5CThinOS_2211_9.3.3099_WES_Conversion%5CThinOS_2211_9.3.3099_WES_Conversion\u0026fileName=commandsXml.xml
Once the Azure admin relaxed this rule, the device was able to download the image immediately.
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.
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
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!
The Dell Wyse team has recently launched support for Windows Virtual Desktop(WVD) on Dell Wyse ThinOS 9.1. This is big news as it allows us to use a non-Windows thin client endpoint to connect to your WVD environment! Microsoft posted a quick announcement about this as well here.
I’ve covered some details about the configuration below and you can access the official documentation here;
ThinOS 9.1 administrators guide here, release notes here, & 8.6 to 9.1 migration guide here
Note – If you are still on ThinOS 8.6 you can learn how to upgrade to 9.x here
The configuration for ThinOS & WVD is pretty straightforward with the only configuration needed is a Wyse Management Suite (WMS) policy to specify Windows Virtual Desktop under the broker setting which is shown below.
Note – by default, the WVD client package is pre-installed on 9.1 but incase it’s not or you’re looking for latest you can get from support.dell.com under drivers for your model, for example 5070, search for ‘wvd’.
In WMS, edit your ThinOS 9 policy and browse to ‘Advanced –> Broker Settings –> Windows Virtual Desktop Settings’ as shown below
2. Under the following section you just need to choose the appropriate WVD deployment model you are using. You will chose either the latest WVD ARM (Azure Resource Manager) based deployment model or the ‘classic’ WVD non ARM based deployment. In my testing, I am using the Azure portal ARM based deployment so I selected the (ARMv2) option. When you are done, click ‘Save & Publish’.
3. Also under, Broker Settings\Global Broker Settings set to – “Windows Virtual Desktop” on your policy as shown below:
4. Once the updated WMS policy is received by your device, you should see your new WVD setting reflected on your device as shown below
4. Once the devices reboots, you should be prompted with the Microsoft Azure AD login screen as shown below 5. At this point you are ready to login into WVD and access your VMs! 6. In this case I have access to a Windows 10 VM!
Hope you found this helpful!
Additional Resources:
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
ThinOS 9.1 release notes discussing WVD setup here & 8.6 vs 9.1 feature comparison here
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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6. In this case I have access to a Windows 10 VM! 
VDI Toolbox 