VDI Archives

Video Editing and Encoding on VDI (with Nvidia GRID)

End User Computing, Homelab, Omnissa Horizon, VDI, VMware, Zero Clients/Thin Clients 1 Response »

Mar 052020

Picture of someone video editing on Laptop

Lately, I’ve been playing with video editing and encoding as a new hobby. It requires a powerful system for the production process for both editing, and encoding. While CPU power isn’t necessarily important, the CPU instruction sets and your GPU play a key part with editing and encoding.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been attempting to use my desktop rig with a couple of Nvidia GeForce cards and I’ve been struggling to be able to edit in real time, as well as encode completed video productions in a reasonable amount of time.

Well, there’s a happy ending to this story, my Nvidia Grid K1 and VDI environment saved the day!

My VDI setup

As part of my demo and homelab, I have an HPE ML310e Gen8 v2, with an Nvidia Grid K1 card. This setup is backed with an HPE MSA 2040 SAN for main storage and a Synology DS1813+ for backup and video storage.

Nvidia GRID K1 in ML310e without air baffle installed — Nvidia GRID K1 in ML310e w/o Air Baffle

On this rig, I’m running VMware Horizon 7.11 and connect to it via a 10ZiG 5948qv Zero Client.

It’s a beautiful desktop replacement as it’s silent, provides a desktop backed with a Intel Xeon Processor, and a high performance GPU.

VDI Video Editing and Encoding

For software, I’ve been using Cyberlink’s PowerDirector software. I’ve used this in the past for screen recording, as well as editing videos I use for demos.

On my physical desktop rig, even with two GPUs it struggles to allow me to preview in realtime the edits I’ve done on a project. The preview window is jolty with loss frames, and it’s hard to know what you’re doing. Also, when producing and encoding a finalized video project, it would take forever to complete even a small 5 minute video at 1080p.

When I first loaded this up on my VDI environment, the software instantly detected the Nvidia GRID card, and asked me if it could use it. From that point on the preview window was fluid, transitions and add-ins were rendered on the fly during previewing, and the final production encoding was literally over 20 times faster using 1080p. Keep in mind this VM only has one Nvidia K180q profile attached to it, so I’m only using less than 25% of the cards full capability.

Using DUO 2FA/MFA with 10ZiG Zero Clients on VMware Horizon View

10ZiG, Duo MFA, End User Computing, Omnissa Horizon, VDI, VMware, Zero Clients/Thin Clients 3 Responses »

May 062019

10ZiG 5948qv Zero Client VMware Horizon View

You have VMware Horizon View deployed along with Duo Multi-Factor Authentication (2FA, MFA), and you’re you having user experience issues with 10ZiG Zero Clients and multiple login dialog boxes and planning on how to deal with the MFA logins.

I spent some time experimenting with numerous different settings trying to find the cleanest workaround that wouldn’t bother the user or mess up the user experience. I’m going to share with you what I came up with below.

If you’re interesting in 10ZiG products and looking to buy, don’t hesitate to reach out to me for information and/or a quote! We can configure and sell 10ZiG Zero Clients (and thin clients), help with solution design and deployment, and provide consulting services! We sell and ship to Canada and the USA!

The Issue

When you have DUO MFA deployed on VMware Horizon, you may experience login issues when using a 10ZiG Zero Client to access the View Connection Server. This is because the authentication string (username, password, and domain) aren’t passed along correctly from the 10ZiG Login Dialog Box to the VMware Horizon View Client application.

Additionally, when DUO is enabled on VMware View (as a RADIUS authentication), there is no domain passed along inside of the DUO login prompt on the view client.

This issue is due to limitations in the VMware Horizon View Linux Client. This issue will and can occur on any system, thin-client, or Zero Client that uses a command string to initialize a VMware View session where DUO is configured on the View Connection Server.

Kevin Greenway, the CTO at 10ZiG, reached out to say that they have previously brought this up with VMware as a feature request (to support the required functionality), and are hopeful it gets committed.

At this point in time, we’d like to recommend everyone to reach out to VMware and ask for this functionality as a feature request. Numerous simultaneous requests will help gain attention and hopefully escalate it on VMware’s priority list.

The Workaround

After troubleshooting this, and realizing that the 10ZiG VMware login details are completely ignored and not passed along to the VMware View client, I started playing with different settings to test the best way to provide the best user experience for logging in.

At first I attempted to use the Kiosk mode, but had issues with some settings not being passed from the 10ZiG Client to the View Client.

Ultimately I found the perfect tweaking of settings that created a seamless login experience for users.

The Settings

On the 10ZiG Zero Client, we view the “Login” details of the “VMware Horizon Settings” dialog box.

10ZiG Zero Client VMware Horizon Settings Login Settings Dialog Box — 10ZiG Zero Client VMware Horizon Settings Login Settings

Login Mode: Default
Username: PRESS LOGIN
Password: 1234
Domain: YourDomain

Please Note: In the above, because DUO MFA is enabled, the “Username”, “Password” and “Domain” values aren’t actually passed along to the VMware View application on the Zero Client.

We then navigate to the “Advanced” tab, and enable the “Connect once” option. This will force a server disconnection (and require re-authentication) on a desktop pool logoff or disconnection.

10ZiG Zero Client VMware Horizon Settings Advanced Settings Dialog Window — 10ZiG Zero Client VMware Horizon Settings Advanced Settings

Please Note: This option is required so that when a user logs off, disconnects, or get’s cut off by the server, the Zero Client fully disconnects from the View Connection Server which causes re-authentication (a new password prompt) to occur.

So now that we’ve made the modifications to the Zero Client, I want to outline what the user experience will look like from Boot, to connection, to disconnection, to re-authentication.

Turning on the 10ZiG Zero Client, you are presented with the DUO Login Prompt on the View Connection Server.
You then must pass 2FA/MFA authentication.
You are then presented with the desktop pools available to the user.
Upon logging off, disconnecting, or getting kicked off the server, the session is closed and you are presented to the 10ZiG VDI Login Window.
To re-establish a connection, click “Login” as instruction by the “Username” field.
You are presented with the DUO Login Window.
And the process repeats.

As you can see it’s a simple loop that requires almost no training on the end user side. You must only inform the users to click “Login” where the prompt advises to do so.

Once you configure this, you can add it to a configuration template (or generate a configuration template), and then deploy it to a large number of 10ZiG Zero Clients using 10ZiG Manager.

Let me know if this helps, and/or if you find a better way to handle the DUO integration!

10ZiG Manager – Deploy Configuration Template to 10ZiG Zero Client(s)

10ZiG, End User Computing, VDI, Zero Clients/Thin Clients 4 Responses »

May 062019

You’ve created some 10ZiG Manager configuration templates, modified them to reflect the settings you need, and now you want to deploy the configuration template to your 10ZiG Zero Clients using the 10ZiG Manager.

In this post, we’ll be going over how to deploy an existing configuration template that is stored inside of your 10ZiG Manager management software.

This allows you to push out configs on the fly to either a single device, or 10,000 devices at once. This is a MUST for managing small, medium, and large sized 10ZiG deployments.

This post is part three of a three part 10ZiG Manager Tutorial series:

Please Note: we are going to assume you have created a configuration template, have modified it to the settings you required, and have your network properly configured for 10ZiG Manager to function.

Instructions

Open the 10ZiG Manager.
Choose the 10ZiG Zero Client(s) that you’d like to deploy the configuration to. You can “CTRL + Click” or “SHIFT + Click” to select more than one 10ZiG Zero Client.
In the menu, expand “Configuration” -> and select “Apply Template”.
A “Configuration Template Note” is displayed. Please read and understand this, then click “Ok”.
In the “Configuration Templates” window, select and highlight the configuration template you’d like to deploy, and then click “Ok”. In my example, I’m choosing “DA-MainTemplate”.
The “Configuration Cloning Target” dialog box is displayed. Here you can change the target hostname, and choose to immediately push the configuration. Select “Ok”.
And now the “Reboot” dialog box is displayed. Here you can choose how you’d like the reboot to be handled once the configuration is pushed to the device(s). Select your preference, or leave as default and select “Ok”.
You’ll be brought back to the 10ZiG Manager interface. Here you’ll see a new task in the tasks list at the bottom of the window.
Once completed, you have successfully deployed the configuration.

You’re done! You have successfully pushed the configuration template to your 10ZiG Zero Client(s).

You can maintain, edit, and use multiple templates for different users, organizational units, or geographical units.

10ZiG Manager – Add hardware to USB Redirection in Configuration Template

10ZiG, End User Computing, VDI, Zero Clients/Thin Clients 4 Responses »

May 062019

Let’s say you manage numerous 10ZiG Zero clients and your users all have similar USB hardware that needs to be redirected to the VDI session. In most cases the hardware will be redirected without any configuration necesary, but what about when that doesn’t happen. You need to push a configuration template with the device information to your 10ZiG Zero Clients.

In my case, I use a YubiKey Security Key. I regularly use this for logins in Chrome and noticed that it wasn’t being directed via USB redirection.

This post is part two of a three part 10ZiG Manager Tutorial series:

Now there’s two ways to do this:

On the 10ZiG Zero Client, go to settings, USB redirection, and change the preference from “Default” to “Include”. This must manually be done on every Zero Client inside of your infrastructure (time consuming).
Add the USB hardware ID to your configuration template inside of the 10ZiG Manager and then push this to all your 10ZiG Zero Clients that you manage (super fast, can be deployed to thousands of devices in seconds).

In this post we’re going to cover the later, and show you how to add this to a config template. In my example, we’ll be adding the YubiKey security key with a hardware identifier (USB Product ID/PID) of 1050/0120 (Vendor ID: 1050, Product ID: 0120). We’ll be manually adding the hardware ID/PID to the config template in this tutorial.

Please Note: You can also add the settings on a 10ZiG Zero Client, and generate a template by pulling the config from that client. You can then push this to others as well.

To find out the Hardware ID/PID, you can either use the “Device Manager” on Windows, or plug in the device in to a 10ZiG Zero Client, go to settings, USB Redirection, and you should see the device name, along with the HID/PID info.

Instructions

Open the 10ZiG Manager.
Randomly choose a 10ZiG Zero Client from the list, right-click on it to open the menu. Expand “Configuration” -> Select “Manage templates”.
In the “Configuration Templates” window, right-click on your existing template (or create a new one), and select “Edit”.
In the “Template Configuration – Template Name” window, double-click on “USB Device Redirection”.
In the “USB Device Redirection” window, click on “Add”.
Enter in a friendly name, and enter your Vendor ID and Product ID in to the fields. For a YubiKey Security key, I did the following.
Click OK on all the fields, save the template. The configuration has been saved to the configuration template.

You’re done! You can now deploy this template to a single 10ZiG Zero Client, or deploy it as a batch to many 10ZiG Zero Clients.

10ZiG Manager – Create Configuration Template from 10ZiG Zero Client

10ZiG, End User Computing, VDI, Zero Clients/Thin Clients 4 Responses »

May 062019

So you’ve purchase some 10ZiG Zero Clients, configured the 10ZiG Manager, and want to create a configuration template to deploy to all your devices.

In this post, we’ll be going over how to create a configuration template from a manually configured 10ZiG Zero Client, so that you can edit it, and then deploy it to other 10ZiG Zero Clients (whether it’s a single unit, or 10,000).

Once you have a configuration template, you can add certificates, modify the VDI configuration, configure keyboard/mouse input, USB Redirection, and more! Doing all this with a configuration template allows you to manage and maintain a large amount of 10ZiG Zero Clients with ease.

This post is part one of a three part 10ZiG Manager Tutorial series:

Please Note: We are going to assume that you have manually configured at least one of your 10ZiG Zero Clients as a base configuration that you want to generate a template from. If not, make sure you do this before generating a template. We are also assuming that you have configured the 10ZiG Management software so that the Zero Clients can connect to it.

Instructions

Open the 10ZiG Manager.
Choose the 10ZiG Zero Client that you have already configured in the list and right-click on the unit.
In the menu, expand “Configuration” -> and Select “Generate Template”.
A warning explaining how the configuration is merged is presented, please read and understand this.
In the “Configuration Templates” window, type in a template name in to the “Template Name” field, and then select “Ok”. I’m calling mine “DA-MainTemplate”.
A warning explaining changes is presented, please read and understand this.
You will be brought back to the 10ZiG Manager, and will see the “Generate configuration template” task in the tasks list at the bottom of the window. It should eventually complete and be marked as successful.
The configuration template has been created.

You have now created a configuration template inside of 10ZiG Manager! You can edit this, and eventually deploy it to other 10ZiG Zero Clients on your network.

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