Login VSI - Run VDI and RDS Concurrently

Hi Friends,

I can't remember anything so I tend to write things down so I can refer back to my memories.  My blog has become my brain as well as a conduit where I can help others!  :-)

I'm doing some interesting VDI testing that I thought I'd share with you.  I'm working with VMware Horizon View 6 and Login VSI 4.1.  I'm working with RDS in View along with Linked Clones.  Pretty cool eh?

The challenge is running a Login VSI workload with both RDS and VDI Linked Clones at the same time so I can get a mixed workload.  I didn't realize Login VSI could do this, but it's a pretty powerful tool and it can be accomplished using the CSV option when setting up your test.  So how do you do set this up?  Well, I'll show you what I did.

You'll need to create a CSV file which will contain the data that would normally be taken from the connection settings in Login VSI.  So open up your favorite spreadsheet tool and let's start creating data.  The first line is titles of what the data you're substituting.  Here I'm substituting Username and DesktopPool.  Your mileage will vary so take a look at the link I included in the previous paragraph.  Here I'm specifying user's called LoginVSI1 - Whatever # and my DesktopPool.  What you don't see is further down the desktop pool changes to RDS for my RDS pool in View and which users are assigned to it.

Save the file in CSV format.  I like to take a look at it with Notepad to make sure everything looks okay.

Good so far!

Next let's update the connection section in Login VSI.  Here you can see I've changed Username and DesktopPool to a variable so they'll be replaced with what I have in my CSV file.  Check the "use CSV file" box and put the path where it's located.  Put it someplace where your launchers, desktops and RDS's can access it.  Here I'm putting it into my Login VSI share.

You're now ready to start your test on both your VDI and RDS pools!  There's lots of other cool features available in Login VSI and I've barely scratched the surface!!

Until Next Time!
-Brain

How to Disable Internet Explorer Startup Screen on First Login - Windows 2012 R2

Hi Friends,

When you first login to Internet Explorer you get a window that says, Setup Internet Explorer <<Version Number>>  Use recommended settings, or don't use recommended settings.  This might not seem like a big deal since you tell IE what you want, click OK and it doesn't bother you again.  That would be true if I were only logging into a single machine, but I'm testing Remote Desktop for VDI use cases and have boatloads of users logging in for the first time.

I turned to my buddy Google and sure enough there were lots of pages showing how to disable the window with either group policy settings or registry settings.  I don't know about you, but I get a little creeped out editing the registry.  I know I shouldn't, but it's like performing brain surgery and if I mess something up I don't want to kill the patient.  So it was off to group policy!

Since all of my users will be logging into the same machine, the easiest way seemed to be to edit the Local Group Policy with the Local Group Policy Editor. 

Here are the steps I found:

1.  In your run command thingy type:  gpedit.msc
2.  Go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer.
3.  Find Prevent performance of First Run Customize.
4.   Set the value to Enabled.
5.  Go directly to home page
6.  ......

Wait, wait, backup!  Step 2 works just fine, but there's no Prevent performance of First Run Customize here...  Did this change from 2008 to 2012?

I read that you can also go to Group Policy Management on your AD host and create a new GPO.  The only problem is my AD server is running 2008 R2 so when I created the GPO it didn't work on my 2012 R2 host.  Now this could be that I'm clueless when it comes to Active Directory or it could be that the GPO won't work on 2012 R2 because the setting doesn't exist...  Hmmmmmmm, what to do?

I did some searches, but couldn't find anything regarding this and Windows 2012 R2.

I can't imagine Microsoft got rid of the setting, maybe they just renamed it?

Looking around I found a setting named Prevent running First Run wizard.  Could that be it?



I opened it up and it looked like the old setting.  So I enabled it and set it to, Go directly to home page.



I than logged in as a new user and it worked!!  No First Run Wizard / Startup Screen!

So if you're running 2012 R2 and want to ditch the startup screen, this might help.

Until Next Time!
-Brain