VMware User Environment Manager #UEM: Predefined settings (Basic concepts)

7. December 201615. December 2016lenzker

The power within User Environment Manager (UEM) aligns with its ability of being able to create a managed personalized environment for the end-user (even/especially in a floating environment where no one has a dedicated virtual desktop).

One great feature to increase the productivity of the user is been implemented by having multiple and different pre-defined settings applied to a Window setting or application based on certain conditions.

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In the following I am going to document how what does different pre-defined settings mean.

I am assuming you already have the UEM infrastructure installed and configured. If that’s not the case, check out this post.

What are pre-defined settings

I remembering getting on-boarded at a financial provider somewhen in the 90’s (oh boy..I am getting old). Receiving AD-Accounts, Lotus Notes-Account, several other access data and a big document how to setup those applications. 5 hours later I was quiet ready to start doing my tasks.

Let’s update VMware User Environment Manager (#UEM) to 9.1: features, constraints and howto

29. September 201615. December 2016lenzker

With the release of UEM 9.1 a few nice features and fixes (and a few new constraints) have been introduced. Check the release notes here for further details (or just read on).

VMware’s User Environment Manager gives us the opportunity to deliver a condition based and personalized user-experience within or (virtual and non-virtual) desktop environment.

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In the following I show what steps are involved to Update UEM from 9.0 to 9.1 (and believe me, this is quiet a simple one from a technical perspective)

Let’s troubleshoot User Environment Manager (#UEM) 9.X: How to avoid errors during the installation

27. September 201627. September 2016lenzker

As I have written in my last post UEM is a game changer in the way how we can create great VDI solutions.

Having worked a lot with VMware’s User Environment Manager (UEM) within the last month I saw many errors made and occurring during the installation phase.

Even though the the installation is quiet straight forward, some minor mistakes can happen from time to time. I am going to summarize which symptoms might occur, how to check to gather further information and what most possiblely has caused the malfunction.

At the moment the post is focusing on the Active Directory Group Policy based installation & configuration within UEM. The newest version 9.1 allows us to it also in a non-ad way. If demand is there, I can add a section for that topic as well.

I am not going to cover the basic installation steps. Chris Halstead did a great job on that topic (and for all the things he worked on [flings, blogs, etc.]).

Please use that one for the basic installation tasks and come back to this post if you need to troubleshoot further ;-) With the following list you can fix 98% of the problems that might occur during the UEM installation ;-).

.@lenzker’s year of VDI: What has changed in 2016 with #VMware #Horizon

23. September 201626. September 2016lenzker

Everyone working within the EUC and virtualization field knows this joke. Every year some analysts and vendors are promising us that this year is going to be the year of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).

Within the last 5 years of my professional career I gained a lot of practical experience and feedback about VDI projects within Germany. I am trying to summarize what has happened within the VDI field over the last years and which technologies and solutions within the Horizon stack changed the way how we deliver virtual desktop in 2016 compared to 2012 (2013/2014/2015 ). If you want to see how specific Vendors within the VDI world evolved I would recommend you to also read this nice article about the state of EUC market by Rob Beekmans.

In theory a EUC strategy based on VDI offers many advantages.

Operational benefits (control over the desktop, easier rollouts & updates of OS and Applications)
Multiple access options (multiple endpoints from every location)
Security benefits (Data is always within a controlled domain)
Management benefits

To have a great VDI infrastructure as an outcome of project the following conditions should all be met within the implementation. I would simply call them success factors:

The Total costs of ownership (capital and operational expenditures) did not exceed the old solution
The user experience was identical or better than the old solution
The VDI design allows all of the operational benefits
The organization around the desktop has been adopted to manage virtual desktops

How did the technologies and therefore our design constraints have been changed over the years? Let me try to summarize it.

Deploying EUC Access Point via the Deployment Utility (fling) fails

12. July 201612. July 2016lenzker

Some of you might know that VMware finally creates an alternative to the Horizon View Security Server based on a virtual linux appliance. I don’t want to argue about that topic, but I think we all can agree on that many security people will like the idea to get rid of our Windows based Security Server within the DMZ.

Since the inital deployment of VMware Access Point can be really painful, Chris Halstead created a nice little GUI that helps us during the deployment.

Just fill in the relevant parameters and the small tool will create an output string that gets executed via my beloved ‘OVFtool’.