Facts to know

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:
  • http://www.it.cornell.
  CIT's service page:
  • http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/desktop-everywhere/
• 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.

Working with A&S IT

• 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:

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• 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

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had, most of which were addressed

Reported issue to CIT,

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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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In Firefox and IE, plug-in is fine. And once loaded, one discovers it is the Adobe Flash plug-in.

Reported issue to CIT,

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on 3/2/16 (Wed)

INC000001622659 - Desktop Everywhere: Because Outlook not caching, no junk e-mail filtering. And no usable search.

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• 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,

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on 12/3/15 (Thur)

INC000001553418 - Desktop Everywhere: Acrobat not licensed

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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.

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