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Many, many "start up" issues resolved by CIT. Here are any Use was from December 2014, through August 2016. Here is a partial record of my issues, along with some remaining ones to work through. |
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Facts to know
- Updates to the desktop image are usually only done on Saturday.
- Video-enhanced service gets you dedicated video, of 256MB video RAM (~24-32 VMs split up across available video RAM).
- CIT's service does not support RDP (currently). Only accepts PCoIP.
- End-point can off-load some of that protocol's processing to hardware if it has a dedicated Teradici-licensed PCoIP hardware card.
Testing ideas
How many simultaneous connections? If I'm logged in at work (Dell Wyse), can I log in from home (browser)?
- Test from a browser of another computer in the office, first.
- Can I log into it from a browser running from within my VDI?!
In MS Outlook, I set that the "Delete" button would show on any message I compose.
- Does is it retained over time, through reboots?
What is the lowest level of processing the think client needs?
- Try to measure the value of using a client with Teradici-licensed, dedicated hardware card.
- If performance OK without the card, than can consider using cheaper clients.
- Also, if it performs OK on decent, but non-carded, hardware, then the question is how does it perform on super-low performance (even cheaper!) hardware?
- Raspberry Pi, anyone?
- See "NoTouch Desktop", elsewhere on this page.
Try out NoTouch Desktop software (Per seat: ~$32 + $6-7/yr).
- http://www.stratodesk.com/products/notouch-desktop
- Associated support software (management console, VM tool) available at no extra cost.
- 5/14/15Thur: MH created boot drive and use on one of our old, spare Dells. Worked fine.
- 5/8/15: Requested free trial software and got the links.
- 697MB
- Stratodesk-NoTouchReceiver-2.39.323-EEs-k305-150425.zip
- R:\Users\oh10\VDI related
Try out Creative Cloud software
- 5/11/15Mon: Tested out with Zack and all looked good.
- Acrobat DC still not loaded up, however.
- Info from Friday morning, 5/8/15, with KeeneS:
- May switch Acrobat to the Serialized Creative Cloud.
- Serialized Creative Cloud replacing current virtual application deployment this weekend, for Monday (5/11/15).
Issues Oliver is having
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STATUS: Experiment stopped
Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016: I have brought to a halt my CIT Desktop Everywhere engagement, which I started 12/16/2014. For over 1.5 years, this service was my primary work platform, with no other computer dedicated to me. A partial record of my issues, most of which CIT resolved, is parked below.
Facts to know
- CIT's service page:
- Updates to the desktop image are usually only done on Saturdays.
- Video-enhanced service gets you dedicated video, of 256MB video RAM (~24-32 VMs split up across available video RAM). For $2/mo. more. When of value?
- CIT's service does not support RDP (currently). Only accepts PCoIP.
- End-point can off-load some of that protocol's processing to hardware if it has a dedicated Teradici-licensed PCoIP hardware card.
- As of 4/28/16: CIT considering having "pools" so images could be tailor for departments and/ or have greater control over maintenance windows (including reverting or patching sooner than all others).
Working with A&S IT
Coordinate with A&S IT to ensure the right people are doing the right work:
Testing ideas
How many simultaneous connections? If I'm logged in at work (Dell Wyse), can I log in from home (browser)?
- Test from a browser of another computer in the office, first.
- Result: Kicks on out of other session, picking up exactly where you are.
- Within VDI, way to suspend session without logging out? That is, get the same result as the above, but without first logging in elsewhere first?
- Can I log into it from a browser running from within my VDI?!
- Result: No! Kicks you right out. (When log back in, picks up exactly where you were, as if you had tried accessing it elsewhere; see above.)
In MS Outlook, I set that the "Delete" button would show on any message I compose.
- Does is it retained over time, through reboots?
- Result: Yes! Many months later, "Delete" button still shows (as of 3/2/16).
NetID credentials retention: Confirm it's happening, by others.
- Firefox retains NetID credentials through the weekend such that logging into Remedy on Monday (after restoring all tabs after re-opening Firefox) did NOT prompt me for a NetID password challenge. It simply allowed me into Remedy.
- Subsequently going into Confluence did require me to log in using my NetID credentials.
What is the lowest level of processing the thin client needs?
- Try to measure the value of using a client with Teradici-licensed, dedicated hardware card.
- If performance OK without the card, than can consider using cheaper clients.
- Also, if it performs OK on decent, but non-carded, hardware, then the question is how does it perform on super-low performance (even cheaper!) hardware?
- Raspberry Pi, anyone?
- See "NoTouch Desktop", elsewhere on this page.
Try out NoTouch Desktop software (Per seat: ~$32 + $6-7/yr).
- http://www.stratodesk.com/products/notouch-desktop
- Associated support software (management console, VM tool) available at no extra cost.
- 5/14/15Thur: MH created boot drive and use on one of our old, spare Dells. Worked fine.
- 5/8/15: Requested free trial software and got the links.
- 697MB
- Stratodesk-NoTouchReceiver-2.39.323-EEs-k305-150425.zip
- R:\Users\oh10\VDI related
Try out Creative Cloud software
- 5/11/15Mon: Tested out with Zack and all looked good.
- Acrobat DC still not loaded up, however.
- Info from Friday morning, 5/8/15, with KeeneS:
- May switch Acrobat to the Serialized Creative Cloud.
- Serialized Creative Cloud replacing current virtual application deployment this weekend, for Monday (5/11/15).
Issues Oliver had, most of which were addressed
Reported issue to CIT, on 4/22/16 (Friday)
Per phone conversation with Jeff, 2 people (myself included) reported this problem last week.
-----Original Message-----
From: Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) [itservicedesk]
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2016 10:16 AM
To: Oliver B. Habicht <oh10>
Subject: INC000001659658 Slowness in VDI: A recent, negative change
We believe this particular issue was due to an issue with a Microsoft patch (Update for Microsoft Outlook 2013 (KB3114941)). While we attempt to secure our VDI environment by installing all relevant software patches, we must rely on Microsoft and other vendors to do aggressive testing prior to releasing software updates.
The weekly VDI recompose process is lengthy and our maintenance timeline is short. We were able to remove this update after we received notification from Microsoft, but it had been deployed in our VDI image. We had to balance interrupting the VDI service for all users vs. inconveniencing a few users.
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From: Oliver B. Habicht
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2016 9:29 AM
To: Cornell IT Service Desk <itservicedesk@cornell.edu>
Subject: RE: INC000001659658 Slowness in VDI: A recent, negative change
Jeff,
Thank you for writing. The rubber-banding of textual inputting and other related slowness was not evident this week (3+ days, now).
Did you determine what it may have been, in order to prevent or address future symptoms like this? Has that scope been determined?
Is there monitoring put into place to detect this kind of problem so end-users are not the first having to report it? (Most won't, based on my experience.) A good way to monitor such a service is for service provider staff members to "live" in the service which can at least confirm that what I experienced may have just been restricted to my virtual instance rather than a system-wide issue (scope of problem)
I am no longer seeing the problem so, from my narrow perspective, as a single end-user, you can close this ticket. But I would appreciate knowing the answers to the above questions, moving forwards. Thank you, -Oliver.
----------------------------
I am reporting periodic, frequent slowness in my VDI. Please restore the performance to what it was!
Some symptoms:
- I type and takes 10 seconds for text to show up. This was happening a lot this week.
- Seconds worth of latency between moving windows and me seeing the change.
- Just once: Print job taking half a minute before it “took”. This condition retained the print screen so I could not get back to the application (Outlook, in this case).
This is a significant change in service. I have been “living” in CIT’s Desktop Everywhere VDI service (for a year or so now?) and I have not run into these (frustrating!) conditions. What has changed?
I have an “ideal” VDI set-up: Dell Wyse All-In-One on Cat-6 network.
Not yet reported (3/14/16)
Adobe Flash Player plug-in won't load in Chrome
In Chrome, plug-in won't load ("Can't load plugin") so video at BBC site won't work. Ex:
- http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35381524
- Can't tell what the plug-in is that won't load, alas.
In Firefox and IE, plug-in is fine. And once loaded, one discovers it is the Adobe Flash plug-in.
Reported issue to CIT, on 3/2/16 (Wed)
INC000001622659 - Desktop Everywhere: Because Outlook not caching, no junk e-mail filtering. And no usable search.
Any considerations on getting the Outlook working in VDI better, and closer to what experiences on a normal desktop?
Examples:
When marking an email message as junk, one gets this dialog box:
Also, because caching is turned off, search within Outlook is useless. I must go to Office 365 (web) to search my email, which then takes me out of my desktop email client and is not as efficient.
Why these limitations matter, regardless of the technical or storage challenges they present to the VDI service:
These issues seem really important to address since email is a large part of what many people at work use a computer for, Any interference with effectively using email makes it really hard to recommend VDI as a production environment for staff or faculty. This is especially true for "core" client capabilities as preventing junk filtering, or preventing searching.
Reported issue to CIT, on 12/3/15 (Thur)
INC000001553418 - Desktop Everywhere: Acrobat not licensed
Why is this product not serialized? It had been working just fine, before.
Answer: This sometimes happens. Restarting VDI session only known way to fix the problem.
Also, first time launching Acrobat after a restart produced (always produces?) this error:
Acrobat doesn't launch after dismissing error. However, trying same thing again launches Acrobat, with no errors.
Reported issue to CIT, as of 10/19/15 (Mon)
INC000001516309 - Desktop Everywhere: Problems with OneDrive syncing.
- OneDrive not syncing in consistent location after VDI restart. And (related?) errors.
Multiple locations and creation of multiple associated support directories:
What that causes to be seen within "Favorites":
And the reported failures from today's syncing (10/19/15), even after a "Repair" invoked:
Did recommended aggressive "cleaning" (see Remedy ticket for details).
- Others using OneDrive seem not to have this problem. Thus, problem with just my OneDrive, and nothing to do with VDI?
Oliver's situation, and his VDI Office/ Groove (prior tech. name for OneDrive):
Office version, in VDI:
OneDrive (Groove.exe) version, in VDI:
And a OneDrive anomaly in Oliver's Office365 interface in which OneDrive is not pinable, but otherwise completely usable via the web:
"Pin to nave bar" is red and not selectable. It is selectable, and does pin to the nav bar, for Michael and Roger.
Reported issue to CIT, as of 5/29/15 (Fri)
I reused ticket number INC000001364135, "INC000001364135 -VDI tweaking: Box Edit still not working."
Box Edit sync client still not working.
Although the Box Edit seems to be running ,it doesn't seem to work at all.
That is, within the Box.com site, it's as if Box Edit is not installed. Thus documents can't be edited within the site. Must instead old-school it and downloaded the document, edit it locally, and round-trip it back to the site.
Notes: Box Edit no longer states an error when starting up on Windows log-in as it was doing in the past (below). And the icon shows up in the task bar, bottom right.
- Update Tues., Sept. 6, 2016: On my last day of using the service, I was still seeing that Box Edit did not run correctly on boot-up, and had been seeing it. So it must have come back at some point!
When I use Box Edit from a Windows non-VDI system, the tested file edits just fine within MS Word, saving directly to Box.com without needing to do the whole round-tripping thing.
Reported issue to CIT, as of 5/14/15 (Thur)
I reused ticket number INC000001364135.
Cannot reset client to factory settings via base Linux OS. Nor access base Linux
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OS desktop's "Admin" capabilities.
Not fixed, but getting closer. I can now get to the base Linux OS's System Information at the log-in dialog. That contains some helpful info, but provides no controls.
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Workaround I found involved pulling the network cable on boot-up. That's not ideal. Instead, want to be able to do within the base Linux OS, as I used to be able to do with this system before getting CIT's *.ini configuration.
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Keeps to WebEx Document Loader. See below in the "Doesn't retain settings" section for screenshot.
Data:
| Date | Note |
|---|---|
| 7/6/15 | Reverted again to WebEx Document Loader. I moved it back to Dell color printer. It's been a while since this has happened, but since it did again happen, starting up this log. |
USB flash drive
Can't see USB storage device at all. Simple USB flash, 64MB from Dell.
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