Wyse ThinOS

Wyse Management Suite (WMS) on Azure Installation

chrismessier Blog, Management, Microsoft, Wyse ThinOS , ,

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.

  1. 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.

Hope this helps others down the road!

Enjoy!

Wyse Management Suite documentation here

Connect to the Dell Community here!

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New! Dell Wyse Training via Dell Education Services!

chrismessier Blog, Management, Wyse ThinOS , , ,

Hey all! I wanted to let you know Dell has just released several new Dell thin client and Wyse Management Suite training offerings!

Here is a list of the offerings:

You can check out the various options here!

Enjoy!

Connect to the Dell Community here!

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New Dell Wyse ThinOS Activation License & Wyse Management Suite Update

chrismessier Blog, Management, Security, VMware Horizon, Wyse ThinOS , ,

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 ThinOS 9 & 802.1x Configurations

chrismessier Blog, Security, Wyse ThinOS ,

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 9.1 & Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD/AVD) Support

chrismessier Blog, Microsoft, Wyse ThinOS , ,

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;

  1. ThinOS 9.1 & WVD product summary noted here
  2. ThinOS 9.1 administrators guide here, release notes here, & 8.6 to 9.1 migration guide here
  3. 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’.

  1. 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! wmswvd1_46. 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
  • Excellent Dell Wyse community located here
  • Dell Community forums for ThinOS here
  • Microsoft AVD Community forums here
  • Great AVD information site & user community here

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Dell Wyse ThinOS 9 & Netscaler/ADC

chrismessier Blog, Citrix, Security, Wyse ThinOS , ,

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)

chrismessier Blog, Security, Wyse ThinOS ,

“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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Microsoft Teams Optimization for Dell Wyse ThinOS 9

chrismessier Blog, Citrix, Microsoft, Wyse ThinOS , ,

 

Microsoft Teams Optimization is now available for Dell Wyse ThinOS 9 with the launch of the latest Citrix WorkSpace app 2006 for Linux. Users of ThinOS 9 can now download this latest Citrix WorkSpace app and get the benefits of Microsoft Teams Optimizations in a Citrix environment.

Unified Communications have always been a challenge in virtual desktop environments and the continued innovations in this area are much needed.

Citrix does a nice job of outlining the details of how the optimization works along with a quick video in this blog post.

Here are some additional details:

  • Download this latest Citrix WorkSpace App 2006 for ThinOS 9 here
  • Check out ThinOS 9 release notes for additional details here

Supported Platforms and Management Software:

  • Wyse 5070 Thin Clients (ThinOS)
  • Wyse 5470 Mobile Thin Clients (ThinOS)
  • Wyse 5470 AIO Thin Clients (ThinOS)
  • Wyse 3040 Thin Clients (ThinOS)
  • Wyse Management Suite 2.1

Citrix resources for Microsoft Teams Optimization

ThinOS 9 Resources

Enjoy!

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SSL Certificates & Wyse Management Suite

chrismessier Blog, Citrix, Microsoft, Security, VMware Horizon, Wyse ThinOS , , , , ,

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):

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Dell Wyse ThinOS – “SSL Certificate Authority is Unknown”

chrismessier Blog, Citrix, Microsoft, Security, VMware Horizon, Wyse ThinOS , , , , ,

“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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