As I was browsing the Program Files directory on a 5.2 Connection Server the other day (trying to solve a totally different problem) I stumbled across something neat. I’ve never heard of this before, and I think a lot of people who administer a View environment day in and day out would find this really useful. It turns out that VMware has included a vSphere Web Client plugin in Tech Preview that will allow you to see the relationship between View users and their VM from the vSphere console.

The View Desktops Plug-in

With a quick search, I found that this is, in fact, included in the 5.2 documentation. It doesn’t seem to be widely blogged about though. I’m curious about why this isn’t a big deal; everyone I’ve mentioned it to since I found it seems to think they’d really like to be using it. I’ve gone through the process of implementing it in my lab, then in a non-prod environment, and now I have implemented it in a production environment. The results are really cool! Allow me to give an example to show where this could be really useful:

A user calls in to the help desk, who have limited access to the vSphere Web Client. They’re able to check the status of a VM (like power state, performance statistics, etc). The user complains of slow performance on their View desktop. In a typical scenario, the help desk administrator will log in to the View Administrator console, search based on the user, note the name of the desktop they are assigned to, then flip over to the vSphere Client to check out the VM. Imagine that instead of this process, the help desk administrator simply types the user’s name in the Search box of the vSphere Web Client. The search results show all desktops that are associated with that View user. In a very short amount of time, the administrator has located the problem VM and can begin analyzing performance data.

As you can see, this slight modification in workflow could save lots of time in the long run. It takes the number of tools needed to handle this call from two down to one. That’s a pretty steep improvement!

“Yeah, yeah,” you say. “That all sounds great. Show me how to turn it on!!” Well, keep in mind that this feature is currently still in Tech Preview. But if you’re comfortable with that, read on to see how to enable and use the plugin! There are a number of prerequisites to be fulfilled beforehand, so check here first. Once these are confirmed, move on.

On each Connection Server in the group

Set JAVA_HOME

[code]set JAVA_HOME=c:Program FilesVMwareVMware ViewServerjre[/code]

Navigate to the ViewAdminPlugin directory

[code]cd "C:Program FilesVMwareVMware ViewServerTechPreviewViewAdminPlugin"[/code]

Register with the Lookup Service

[code]regtool.cmd configureLookupService -u -ld [/code]

It may fail because it doesn’t recognize the SSL thumbprint. If so, run again including the –lt flag and the thumbprint.

[code]regtool.cmd configureLookupService -u -ld -lt 00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00(SSL thumbprint)[/code]

Return code of 0 indicates success.

On each Connection Server in the group

Register the plugin with SSO

[code]regtool.cmd register -u -lu [/code]

Return code 0 indicates success.

Walkthrough

Here’s a video walkthrough of performing the steps above in my lab. You’ll have to forgive the background noise – I recorded it in a public place over lunch 🙂 Enjoy!