One of the first few updates for the Office 2013 suite seems to have altered the file blocking mechanism in Visio 2013. If you don’t have any 2013 style files yet and try to open a previous version, you will get the error below:

In default form, Office 2013 blocks the opening all document versions prior to that of 2013. One fix is to enter the Trust Center, as the error message indicates, and alter the file block settings unchecking the “open” boxes next to the versions you require. Interestingly if you compare the file block settings between Word and Visio they do not match. Visio does not inherit any of these behaviors.

The “open behavior” options at the bottom default to “do not open” and cannot be changed. This should resolve the problem but another way is to click “Trusted Locations” from the left side of the Trust Center and add the file paths where your Visios live. You’ll notice that this is empty by default as trusted locations are exempt from the security mechanisms.

Make sure to include the subfolders of whatever location you select.

Click Ok all the way out and you should be good to go now.

Two ways to solve the same problem. This mechanism didn’t work correctly when Visio 2013 launched a year ago but now appears that all is well.

In my original post that took a hard look at Box, I was very close to abandoning Dropbox for good and I thought I had I’ve made a decision. Goodbye Dropbox! :-)

*Update 1/14/13* Due to a single and incredibly important feature gap in the Box offering, I have to recommend staying with Dropbox as of this writing. Incomprehensibly, Box does not currently support sub folder syncing via the desktop sync client, only top level folders. This means that any nested folders with content changes or creation will not be synced across your desktop clients. This also means that there is no selective/ targeted folder sync which is particularly useful for enterprise deployments who do not wish to sync GBs or TBs of top level data across hundreds or thousands of user desktops. I made the mistake, as did many others, that Box would support sub folder syncing, because, how could they not! Box reps message in a lengthy and frustrated customer support thread that this feature will be coming sometime in the first HALF of 2013, even though customers have been asking for this for over a year. Unacceptable and I'm not willing to wait. If and when Box finally gets their act together I'll reconsider their value proposition, but for now, I'm going back to Dropbox who have supported this feature since the days of beta. Box support thread. 

There are a few things that have changed favorably since I penned that post and a key feature that I made an incorrect assumption about. Most notably, the maximum individual file size for free personal accounts has been increased to 250MB. This suits me fine based on what I store in my Dropbox today. The other thing that Box doesn’t outwardly explain well is the bandwidth limitation of 10GB. This limitation pertains to files downloaded via shared links only. Not your regular up and download traffic. As you can see here I’ve uploaded nearly 4GB of files and my bandwidth consumption is still 0.
Box regularly runs campaigns that offer very generous lifetime 50GB accounts if you’re lucky enough to jump in on time. As you can see above, I have. Even maxing out my referrals with all available Dropbox promotions I still wouldn’t hit that number. Check here to find out how to get in on the fun.
Box has also just launched v2 of their UI including new feature builds for mobile platform support. This is another existing area where Dropbox falls short. In Box, you can now preview or open numerous common file formats without having 3rd-party file previewers or Office suites. This is very cool! Box has also implemented their own flavor of the OAuth2 standard which tracks device-based logon sessions in combination with 2-factor authentication (PINs via SMS), allowing you to permit and kill selective sessions. The only thing lacking so far for me here is the ability to name the individual sessions something more meaningful. Everything just shows up generically labeled from the point of access. As someone who accesses cloud storage from multiple devices, this needs to get better for sure.
Box feels more like a true enterprise product with tons of options and plugins to enable collaboration. The application support ecosystem for Box is also very compelling. There are 7 pages of free apps that integrate with Box to perform a number of functions and tasks. Any of these can be enabled and accessed at any time.

All that said, I’m going for it. I am uploading all of my files to Box and will run exclusively from there for a trial period. Unless something goes horrendously wrong [it did, see 1/14 update above], I should have no reason to return to Dropbox.
If you’d like to try Box but want to maintain your Dropbox as well, here is a method that will allow you to keep the 2 in sync while you kick the tires.

• On a PC where you already have Dropbox installed, install the Box Sync client.
• Once installed, open a command prompt and CD to the Box directory (c:\users\username\documents\my box files).
• Create symbolic directory links to the folders in your Dropbox using mklink:

mklink /D "bin" C:\Users\username\Dropbox\bin

It’s Christmas time, things slow down at work, we take more time off to be with family, what better way to kick back than around the Wii? I’m sure years from now if I finally get a Wii-U I’ll do something similar there but for now this fun applies to the classic Wii only. I’ve been gaming on the XBox360 and PS3 for years and the PC longer than I can remember. My kids are getting old enough now to enjoy this so I decided to finally pick up a Wii + a bunch of games from eBay and create a game juke box, essentially.

It should go without saying but I will be in no way responsible for anything bad that happens to your Wii as a result of this guide. All information contained within is for informational purposes only and provided with no warranty.

Design goals:

• Play Wii games directly from USB drive formatted with NTFS and shared for other purposes.
• Make each game selectable as individual channels directly from Wii home screen.
• Don’t brick the Wii :-)

To pull this off there are a number of things that must be in place:

• SD Card (mine = 512MB) – Stores Homebrew applications and WAD files
• USB drive (mine = 1TB) – Stores games
• Homebrew channel (HBC) – Launch homebrew apps in Wii
• USB Loader – Provides the ability to play games directly from USB storage
• IOS236 - the infamous Trucha bug is ultimately what makes all this possible
• Priiloader – brick protection, blocks system updates, bypasses initial health screen, and more
• Game files as .ISO or .WBFS – either can be used to play games, WBFS files are smaller
• .wad files (forwarders) – Provides shortcuts that live in channels and save execution steps

There are multiple ways to pull this off so the following is how I chose to do it. Other loaders, IOS builds and tools may work just as well but I have no experience outside of what I used in this guide. There will be a lot of moving your SD card back and forth between your PC so an SD reader or capable laptop is essential.

Homebrew Channel

HBC provides an environment used to load applications and is the key to making my plot work. There are a number of HBC versions available depending on preference or the version of your Wii system menu. I have System menu 4.3 so am running LetterBomb.  HackMii is used to install the HBC and provides an all-in-one installer to complete this first step. Read more about how to do this and download the needed bits here.

Once successfully installed you should see a new channel in your Wii home screen like this:

When you start the HBC, any Homebrew apps contained within \apps on your SD card will now be executable within the Wii.

Trucha (IOS236)

The Trucha bug, from earlier Wii IOS versions, allows digital signatures from non-Nintendo approved software to be installed and run on the Wii. Nintendo patched this in all subsequent IOS versions. To take advantage of all the goodness Homebrew allows, this bug must be re-introduced into the Wii so that it can be exploited.

First, follow this guide to download and run the NUS downloader. This will give you a .wad file that you will need to copy to the root of the SD card. Online mode should allow this to be downloaded via wifi from within the Wii, but that didn’t work for me so I manually fetched the WAD file.

Next, grab the IOS236 installer and extract the files to the SD card. The “IOS236” directory should be placed within SD:\Apps\. This is where all SD-based apps will go. Launch the HBC and run the IOS236 installer. When asked, point to the WAD file you generated via the NUS downloader.

Towards the end of the install you will be asked if you want to enable support for pirated games. No matter what, say NO here.

cIOS

With IOS236 installed, there are 2 additional custom IOS’ that need to be installed to enable the use of a USB loader. This will install IOS236 to 2 additional slots which also get used. Grab the d2x cIOS v3.1 installer from here and copy out the “d2x-cios-installer” folder to your SD:\apps folder. Put the SD card back in the Wii and turn it on. Launch HBC and start the d2x installer. Select IOS236 as the IOS for installation.

On the next screen there will be 3 areas with moveable values. The first being the d2x version, select the latest (v8). Move down and change the base IOS to 56. Move down and change the IOS slot to 249. Continue to perform the install.

One more to go. For the 2nd round, change the base IOS to 57 and choose slot 250. Continue to perform the install. Exit the application when the IOS files report successful installations.

Here is a good guide from the developer walking through the various options: d2x guide.

USB Loader

Now that the Wii is hacked we can get on with the fun part and enable the pieces necessary to play games. The USB loader has the job of mounting the ISO or WBFS file thus making a game on a USB drive playable. There are a few different loaders that people use, the most popular seem to be Configurable USB Loader (cfg) and GX Loader. I chose cfg as it seems to have more recent development support plus it boasts all the key features I was looking for.

Extract the cfg v70 zip and copy the contents of the \apps directory in the ZIP to the \apps directory on the SD card. Also copy the usb-loader directory to the ROOT of the SD card. This directory contains the bits necessary to download and display game covers within cfg running in the Wii. This is purely optional and I will end up not needing this functionality anyway.

Connect your USB drive to the OUTER port in the back of the Wii (the one on the bottom if laid flat). Fire up HBC again and start cfg. You should now be able to select and play any games you have available. But let’s not stop there.

You can also optionally use a forwarder for cfg which creates a channel on the Wii home screen so you can launch cfg without having to first launch HBC. IOS58 will need to be installed if you want this functionality which can be found here with instructions. The direction I’m heading, however, this is also unnecessary.

Priiloader

Priiloader is an optional safety and system menu modification mechanism that I higher recommend you install. If you ever run into a non NAND-based brick situation (banner brick), Priiloader can save you. It boots before the Wii system menu so can interrupt the native Wii boot sequence and allow you to perform a number of tasks. Priiloader also allows you to hack your system menu and change some of the native features, like removing the opening “press A” health screen. Priiloader is there for me should I ever run into trouble plus I enabled several menu hacks.

Setup of Priiloader is a little trickier than the other apps as this one will ultimately get installed to your Wii’s NAND. First, you need a .ini file containing the appropriate hacks. You can download one for your specific system menu or use the official full collection which is what I did. Nothing needs to be changed manually in the file, we’ll do this in Priiloader in a moment. I had a hard time with Priiloader initially finding my ini file so I copied it to 4 places and named it both “hacks.ini” as well as “hash_hacks.ini”. Some screens seem to indicate that it looks for both naming conventions. Copy 1 of each to the SD root as well as to \apps\priiloader on the SD card. It should be found now. :)

Extract the Priiloader app bits to \apps on the SD card, launch HBC and install Priiloader. My ini file was not found during the install so I had to select it later at boot time.

To run and configure Priiloader, power on the Wii while holding the reset button. You will see a screen similar to this:

If your hacks ini file was not found during install for whatever reason, select “load/install file” from this menu. It should then be read. You’ll know you are successful if you can select the “system menu hacks” option and configure the options, mine are shown below:

It’s very important to minimally block system and game updates as these will remove IOS236 and destroy all your hard work.

Drives

There are several methods of formatting drives for the Wii with some older methods that include complicated partitioning. The whole point of this exercise for me is that I want to use an existing NTFS drive that I use for other things. I’m not interested in FAT32 or partitioning a dedicated section to be WBFS. These are old school techniques that are no longer necessary! Keep in mind that if you do use FAT32, the maximum supported file size is 4GB so larger games will need to be split up via Wii Backup Manager. Remember to ALWAYS connect your USB drive to the outer USB port on the Wii (the one on the bottom when laid flat).

I also use a very tiny SD card (512MB) that is formatted FAT32. I only use it to store application files which are very tiny and with all this have only consumed ~30MB. Be careful if you use cfg to download cover art as by default it will save everything to your SD card. Again, the method I’m deploying here has no need for cover art that would be displayed in cfg.

Games

Time to get your games ready. You can install your games from disk directly within cfg or rip them to ISO from your PC. Either method works so one way or another get your games into the ISO format. From this point you can simply play your games as ISOs from cfg which is fully supported. Optionally you can transfer a Wii Backup File System (WBFS) file out of the ISO as these consume far less disk space than the full ISO. New Super Mario Bros is 100MB in WBFS vs the 4GB ISO, for example. Either way is fine just put all the game files you intend to use in \wbfs on your USB drive. Very important to have that directory in lower case as cfg will not read it otherwise if your drive is formatted NTFS.

The titles of your ISO/WBFS files is also important as cfg is picky with regard to how you name them. The title of the ISO/WBFS itself should only include the game ID, i.e. RE03N1.wbfs. It’s parent folder can be named a few different ways but it’s safe and easy to go with “game title [game ID]”, with the game ID in brackets. This is detailed in the Q&A portion of the cfg guide.

To generate WBFS or ISO files from your game media, Wii Backup Manager is an excellent tool to use. It can read and write both file formats as well as download cover art if you desire. It can also split your game files if you are using FAT32 on your USB drive.

Forwarders (WAD files)

The last step to pull of my plan is to create WAD files for each of my games. Each WAD will be installed as a channel and will launch the game directly using cfg and HBC behind the scenes. It’s completely transparent and removes the requirement to manually launch cfg or HBC.

To do this you need a tool called Wiicrazy Crap. Awesome name. There was a newer, renamed version of this called Wii Game Shortcut Creator (WiiGSC) that never left beta as far as I can see. Crap v3.3 requires .NET frameworks and executes directly from the directory structure while WiiGSC does not require .NET and can be installed. Both do essentially the same thing but I used Crap to create my WADs.

Plug your USB drive with your game files into your PC and fire up Crap. There are a lot of options here but you really only need to do 4 things. Choose your ISO/WBFS file, select your loader, select the game partition where the games live and the choose the WAD naming convention. Next click “create channel”. Below is how I created all of my WADs.

Once successful, navigate to the \wad directory within the crapv3.3b folder structure to retrieve your WADs. Copy these to SD:\wad. All that’s left now is to install your WADs.

Multi Mod Manager (MMM)

MMM is the self described Wii Swiss army knife and provides many useful tools but I use it primarily to install WAD files. To install MMM, just like the other HBC apps, extract the folder within \apps to \apps on the SD card and launch from within HBC.

At this point, when MMM loads it will likely default to using IOS58 if you installed it for the cfg forwarder. The first thing you need to check EVERY time you load MMM is that IOS249 is loaded at the bottom. If it isn’t loaded, select IOS249 from “Load another IOS” and MMM will reload with the hacked IOS. Things will not work correctly otherwise.

You can also install a forwarder channel for MMM so you can access it directly from the Wii home screen. Extract and install the MMM Forwarder DFM1 from within MMM.

Launch MMM, scroll down to “WAD Manager” and launch it. It will read all .wad files within SD:\wad. You can now individually install these files or press + next to each one you want for a batch install. Once successful, you should see a new channel for each game on your Wii home screen. The full animated banner is contained within the channel which provides a very nice effect. Each game is now selectable directly from the Wii home screen which launches the game. No more messing with HBC or game disks and my kids will be able to play whatever they want without help. Below is how this looks now:

Mission accomplished! While not a terribly difficult hack, it has a lot of steps to get to the end result. There is a lot of very old information out there in various forums as the Wii has been around since 2006 so be careful. Everything that I’ve outlined here was used to achieve this goal for me and was done with absolutely no adverse issues. Have fun and merry xmas!

References:

HBC guide and bits

NUS Downloader guide and bits

IOS236 Installer

D2x cIOS Installer Guide

D2x cIOS v8 bits

Cfg Loader Forwarder

Cfg USB Loader v70 download

IOS58 for cfg forwarder

Priiloader download and guide

Priiloader Hash hacks ini

Wii Backup Manager

MMM download

MMM Guide

MMM Forwarder

Sadly in Outlook 2013, Microsoft has decided to remove the “Quick Contacts” functionality which integrated your Lync 2010 groups/ contacts into the Outlook 2010 to-do bar. While this could ultimately change at some point in the future, for now, here is a work around to bring back the same essential functionality.

So you just upgraded to Office 2013, fire up Outlook  and notice your quick contacts are gone. Don’t despair, we can fix this! First head to the View page in the ribbon and enable People in the To-Do Bar.

This will open an empty people list in your to-do bar with a lonely search box. Start by typing in the name of a person you’d like in your pseudo-quick contacts. Everyone I wanted to add were frequent contacts so appeared first in the search results. Find your desired contact, right-click and click “Add to Favorites.” You’ll notice that presence will report an unknown state at this point.

This person should now appear in your Favorites list within the to-do bar, presence still unknown. To get presence to appear there is one more step: add these people to your local contacts. From the favorites list, right-click the contact again, click the down arrow in the right lower corner,

Click “Add”…

Then click “Save” on the screen that follows.

Once the contact is saved to your local contacts list, their presence will magically appear in the list. From a functional standpoint, you are now at par with what quick contacts provided in Outlook 2010.

Repeat these steps for each contact you want to appear in your to-do bar favorites list. While not the same as having 100% of your Lync contacts auto-appearing in Outlook, at least you can still have the contacts you really care about. Or, add them all if you must!

Cheers,

Peter

Version 4 of the Box Sync software purportedly resolves the sub folder sync issue and Box has deleted all incriminating support threads. I haven’t tested to ensure this is fixed, but they claim it is.

*Update 1/14/13* Due to a single and incredibly important feature gap in the Box offering, I have to recommend staying with Dropbox as of this writing. Incomprehensibly, Box does not currently support sub folder syncing via the desktop sync client, only top level folders. This means that any nested folders with content changes or creation will not be synced across your desktop clients. This also means that there is no selective/ targeted folder sync which is particularly useful for enterprise deployments who do not wish to sync GBs or TBs of top level data across hundreds or thousands of user desktops. I made the mistake, as did many others, that Box would support sub folder syncing, because, how could they not! Box reps message in a lengthy and frustrated customer support thread that this feature will be coming sometime in the first HALF of 2013, even though customers have been asking for this for over a year. Unacceptable and I'm not willing to wait. If and when Box finally gets their act together I'll reconsider their value proposition, but for now, I'm going back to Dropbox who have supported this feature since the days of beta. Box support thread. 

Box.com just got closer than ever to really competing head on with Dropbox for the free user. Box Sync, now available for free users, fills in a very large gap that previously prevented Box users from enjoying the full desktop to cloud experience. Box Sync provides the ability to sync your top-level only cloud-based files with a local directory structure on your PC, in a mostly similar the same manner as Dropbox. Box starts free users at 5GB vs Dropbox’s 2GB but if you are lucky enough to participate in one of Box’s numerous Android or IOS campaigns, you can grab a 50GB free account fairly easily. Dropbox rides on top of Amazon’s S3 service while Box runs its own infrastructure. There’s a lot to like about Box and now with Box Sync available, is it time to make a switch? Not until they fix their sub-folder sync issue, no.
I’ve been a loyal Dropbox user for a very long time now. Even though upload speeds can be temperamental, features are some what sparse, security has been a problem, and the service can be sketchy at times, it’s still a fantastic cloud storage platform that I use daily. Just like Dropbox, Box Sync requires a local install on your PC. Once installed, you will see the Box icon in your system tray, with a familiar right-click interface list of commands. The Box solution gives you many more options including a dedicated local recycle bin, the ability to force up or downloads, enable debug logging, as well as the ability to view and save the logs! Speaking as a professional technologist this is fantastic and much more in line with a true enterprise platform! 

The local client itself offers only a few options with most of the behind the scenes work happening online, as is the case with Dropbox.
You can rate limit up or download speeds and auto-sync everything. Also, unlike Dropbox, Box properly includes an auto-updating mechanism to keep Sync up to date. The lack of this feature in Dropbox really puzzles me.
Box also provides more granular sharing and security controls on the cloud side. Any folder or file anywhere in the hierarchy can be shared and customized for collaboration. Links can be left wide open, set to preview only with no download, or collaborators can be expressly invited and allowed. Passwords and link expiration are features available only in a paid plan.

You can also selectively sync any file or folder, initiate bulk uploads, plus a number of other things.

*Update 12/15/12*
Box just increased the file sizes for personal users to 250MB.

So far, Box looks great now! 50GB (if you’re clever), local to cloud sync, granular controls, enterprise-built platform…what’s missing? As it turns out, only file size limitations. Free accounts on Box are limited to 100MB 250MB per file and 10GB shared link bandwidth per month where Dropbox does not have these limitations.
Cheers, :-)
Box vs Dropbox

VDI is one of the most intensive workloads in the datacenter today and by nature uses every major component of the enterprise technology stack: networking, servers, virtualization, storage, load balancing. No stone is left unturned when it comes to enterprise VDI. Physical desktop management can also be an arduous task with large infrastructure requirements of its own. The sheer complexity of VDI drives a lot of interesting and feverish innovation in this space but also drives a general adoption reluctance for some who fear the shift too burdensome for their existing teams and datacenters. The value proposition Unidesk 2.0 brings to the table is a simplification of the virtual desktops themselves, simplified management of the brokers that support them, and comprehensive application management .

The Unidesk solution plugs seamlessly into a new or existing VDI environment and is comprised of the following key components:

• Management virtual appliance
• Master CachePoint
• Secondary CachePoints
• Installation Machine

 

Solution Architecture

At its core, Unidesk is a VDI management solution that does some very interesting things under the covers. Unidesk requires vSphere at the moment but can manage VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop, Dell Quest vWorkspace, or Microsoft RDS. You could even manage each type of environment from a single Unidesk management console if you had the need or proclivity. Unidesk is not a VDI broker in and of itself, so that piece of the puzzle is very much required in the overall architecture. The Unidesk solution works from the concept of layering, which is increasingly becoming a hotter topic as both Citrix and VMware add native layering technologies to their software stacks. I’ll touch on those later. Unidesk works by creating, maintaining, and compositing numerous layers to create VMs that can share common items like base OS and IT applications, while providing the ability to persist user data including user installed applications, if desired. Each layer is stored and maintained as a discrete VMDK and can be assigned to any VM created within the environment. Application or OS layers can be patched independently and refreshed to a user VM. Because of Unidesk’s layering technology, customers needing persistent desktops can take advantage of capacity savings over traditional methods of persistence. A persistent desktop in Unidesk consumes, on average, a similar disk footprint to what a non-persistent desktop would typically consume.

CachePoints (CP) are virtual appliances that are responsible for the heavy lifting in the layering process. Currently there are two distinct types of CachPoints: Master and Secondary. The Master CP is the first to be provisioned during the setup process and maintains the primary copy of all layers in the environment. Master CPs replicate the pertinent layers to Secondary CPs who have the task of actually combining layers to build the individual VMs, a process called Compositing. Due to the role played by each CP type, the Secondary CPs will need to live on the Compute hosts with the VMs they create. Local or Shared Tier 1 solution models can be supported here, but the Secondary CPs will need to be able to the “CachePoint and Layers” volume at a minimum.

The Management Appliance is another virtual machine that comes with the solution to manage the environment and individual components. This appliance provides a web interface used to manage the CPs, layers, images, as well as connections to the various VDI brokers you need to interface with. Using the Unidesk management console you can easily manage an entire VDI environment almost completely ignoring vCenter and the individual broker management GUIs. There are no additional infrastructure requirements for Unidesk specifically outside of what is required for the VDI broker solution itself.

Installation Machines are provided by Unidesk to capture application layers and make them available for assignment to any VM in the solution. This process is very simple and intuitive requiring only that a given application is installed within a regular VM. The management framework is then able to isolate the application and create it as an assignable layer (VMDK). Many of the problems traditionally experienced using other application virtualization methods are overcome here. OS and application layers can be updated independently and distributed to existing desktop VMs.

Here is an exploded and descriptive view of the overall solution architecture summarizing the points above:

Storage Architecture

The Unidesk solution is able to leverage three distinct storage tiers to house the key volumes: Boot Images, CachePoint and Layers, and Archive.

• Boot Images – Contains images having very small footprints and consist of a kernel and pagefile used for booting a VM. These images are stored as VMDKs, like all other layers, and can be easily recreated if need be. This tier does not require high performance disk.
• CachePoint and Layers – This tier stores all OS, application, and personalization layers. Of the three tiers, this one sees the most IO so if you have high performance disk available, use it with this tier.
• Archive – This tier is used for layer backup including personalization. Repairs and restored layers can be pulled from the archive and placed into the CachePoint and Layers volume for re-deployment, if need be. This tier does not require high performance disk.

The Master CP stores layers in the following folder structure, each layer organized and stored as a VMDK.

Installation and Configuration

New in Unidesk 2.x is the ability to execute a completely scripted installation. You’ll need to decide ahead of time what IPs and names you want to use for the Unidesk management components as these are defined during setup. This portion of the install is rather lengthy to it’s best to have things squared away before you begin. Once the environment variables are defined, the setup script takes over and builds the environment according to your design.

Once setup has finished, the Management appliance and Master CP will be ready, so you can log into the mgmt console to take the configuration further. Of the initial key activities to complete will be setting up an Active Directory junction point and connecting Unidesk to your VDI broker. Unidesk should already be talking to your vCenter server at this point.

Your broker mgmt server will need to have the Unidesk Integration Agent installed which you should find in the bundle downloaded with the install. This agent listens on TCP 390 and will connect the Unidesk management server to the broker. Once this agent is installed on the VMware View Connection Server or Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller, you can point the Unidesk management configuration at it. Once synchronized all pool information will be visible from the Unidesk console.

A very neat feature of Unidesk is that you can build many AD junction points from different forests if necessary. These junction points will allow Unidesk to interact with AD and provide the ability to create machine accounts within the domains.

Desktop VM and Application Management

Once Unidesk can talk to your vSphere and VDI environments, you can get started building OS layers which  will serve as your gold images for the desktops you create. A killer feature of the Unidesk solution is that you only need a single gold image per OS type even for numerous VDI brokers. Because the broker agents can be layered and deployed as needed, you can reuse a single image across disparate View and XenDesktop environments, for example. Setting up an OS layer simply points Unidesk at an existing gold image VM in vCenter and makes it consumable for subsequent provisioning. 

Once successfully created, you will see your OS layers available and marked as deployable.

 

Before you can install and deploy applications, you will need to deploy a Unidesk Installation Machine which is done quite simply from the System page. You should create an Installation Machine for each type of desktop OS in your environment.

Once the Installation Machine is ready, creating layers is easy. From the Layers page, simply select “Create Layer,” fill in the details, choose the OS layer you’ll be using along with the Installation machine and any prerequisite layers.

 

To finish the process, you’ll need to log into the Installation Machine, perform the install, then tell the Unidesk management console when you’re finished and the layer will be deployable to any VM.

Desktops can now be created as either persistent of non-persistent. You can deploy to already existing pools or if you need a new persistent pool created, Unidesk will take care of it. Choose the type of OS template to deploy (XP or Win7), select the connected broker to which you want to deploy the desktops, choose an existing pool or create a new one, and select the number of desktops to create.

Next select the CachePoint that will deploy the new desktops along with the network they need to connect to and the desktop type.

Select the OS layer that should be assigned to the new desktops.

Select the application layers you wish to assign to this desktop group. All your layers will be visible here.

Choose the virtual hardware, performance characteristics and backup frequency (Unidesk Archive) of the desktop group you are deploying.

Select an existing or create a new maintenance schedule that defines when layers can be updated within this desktop group.

Deploy the desktops.

Once the creation process is underway, the activity will be reflected under the Desktops page as well as in vCenter tasks. When completed all desktops will be visible and can be managed entirely from the Unidesk console.

Sample Architecture

Below are some possible designs that can be used to deploy Unidesk into a Local or Shared Tier 1 VDI solution model. For Local Tier 1, both the Compute and Management hosts will need access to shared storage, even though VDI sessions will be hosted locally on the Compute hosts. 1Gb PowerConnect or Force10 switches can be used in the Network layer for LAN and iSCSI. The Unidesk boot images should be stored locally on the Compute hosts along with the Secondary CachePoints that will host the sessions on that host. All of the typical VDI management components will still be hosted on the Mgmt layer hosts along with the additional Unidesk management components. Since the Mgmt hosts connect to and run their VMs from shared storage, all of the additional Unidesk volumes should be created on shared storage. Recoverability is achieved primarily in this model through use of the Unidesk Archive function. Any failed Compute host VDI session information can be recreated from the Archive on a surviving host.

Here is a view of the server network and storage architecture with some of the solution components broken out:

For Shared Tier 1 the layout is slightly different. The VDI sessions and “CachePoint and Layers” volumes must live together on Tier 1 storage while all other volumes can live on Tier 2. You could combine the two tiers for smaller deployments, perhaps, but your mileage will vary. Blades are also an option here, of course. All normal vSphere HA options apply here with the Unidesk Archive function bolstering the protection of the environment.

Unidesk vs. the Competition

Both Citrix and VMware have native solutions available for management, application virtualization, and persistence so you will have to decide if Unidesk if worth the price of admission. On the View side, if you buy a Premier license, you get ThinApp for applications, Composer for non-persistent linked clones, and soon the technology from VMware’s recent Wanova acquisition will be available. The native View persistence story isn’t great at the moment, but Wanova Mirage will change that when made available. Mirage will add a few layers to the mix including OS, apps, and persistent data but will not be as granular as the multi-layer Unidesk solution. The Wanova tech notwithstanding, you should be able to buy a cheaper/ lower level View license as with Unidesk you will need neither ThinApp nor Composer. Unidesk’s application layering is superior to ThinApp, with little in the way of applications that cannot be layered, and can provide persistent or non-persistent desktops with almost the same footprint on disk. Add to that the Unidesk single management pane for both applications and desktops, and there is a compelling value to be considered.

On the Citrix side, if you buy an Enterprise license, you get XenApp for application virtualization, Provisioning Services (PVS) and Personal vDisk (PVD) for persistence from the recent RingCube acquisition. With XenDesktop you can leverage Machine Creation Services (MCS) or PVS for either persistent or non-persistent desktops. MCS is deadly simple while PVS is incredibly powerful but an extraordinary pain to set up and configure. XenApp builds on top of Microsoft’s RDS infrastructure and requires additional components of its own such as SQL Server. PVD can be deployed with either catalog type, PVS or MCS, and adds a layer of persistence for user data and user installed applications. While PVD provides only a single layer, that may be more than suitable for any number of customers. The overall Citrix solution is time tested and works well although the underlying infrastructure requirements are numerous and expensive. XenApp offloads application execution from the XenDesktop sessions which will in turn drive greater overall host densities. Adding Unidesk to a Citrix stack again affords a customer to buy in at a lower licensing level, although Citrix is seemingly removing value for augmenting its software stack by including more at lower license levels. For instance, PVD and PVS are available at all licensing levels now. The big upsell now is for the inclusion of XenApp. Unidesk removes the need for MCS, PVS, PVD, and XenApp so you will have to ask yourself if the Unidesk approach is preferred to the Citrix method. The net result will certainly be less overall infrastructure required but net licensing costs may very well be a wash.