Windows 11 Microsoft Account Center

 Omnissa Horizon, Windows 11  4 Responses »
Aug 162024
 

Recently, new deployments of Windows 11 (23H2 images with the latest updates) have changed the behavior of the start menu and introduced the Windows 11 Microsoft Account Center.

This also effects 24H2, however 24H2 isn’t supported on Omnissa Horizon as of yet (to my knowledge) and probably most other VDI platforms, but this will be a concern once support is available.

The introduction of the Microsoft Account Center in the Windows Start Menu will become an issue for VDI deployments, as it changes the behavior of the Start Menu, and introduces some complexities for logging off users as well as introducing the need for training or alternative methods for users to log off.

Update – October 27 2024

When completing the latest Windows Updates, as of October 27th, 2024, the behavior has now changed.

The new behavior is now suitable for easy logoffs.

Behavior

When clicking on Start and proceeding to click on the user name, users are no longer prompted with options like “Sign out, Switch User, Account Settings”. Users are now presented with the new “Microsoft Account Center”, which on non-VDI deployments provides actions for the Microsoft Account. Optimizing your image may slightly change the behavior of the Microsoft Account Center.

Here is an example of the original start menu:

Screenshot of the traditional Windows 11 start menu with user icon.

Here is an example of the new start menu with the new Microsoft Account Center:

Screenshot of new Microsoft Account Center on Windows 11 Start Menu

Users, who are expecting to be able to sign out, will not have to click on the “…” on the top right.

Additional Considerations

In addition to the examples provided above, the following behaviors can be expected:

  • On the base image, clicking the user icon will do nothing (and may possibly kill the start menu)
  • In deployments with Hybrid domain joined Instant Clones
    • If the machine hasn’t achieved Hybrid Domain Join, clicking the user account icon will function.
    • If the machine has Hybrid domain joined but a PRT has not been issued, click the user account icon will kill the start menu.
    • If the machine has Hybrid domain joined and a PRT has been issued, it will perform properly using the new style.
  • In deployments with Hybrid Domain Joining and PRT disabled, the new “Microsoft Account Center” from the user icon, should function properly with the new style.

As of today, I haven’t seen the latest Windows Updates change older base images, but I haven’t had the opportunity to sample a large enough number of environments. If this occurs, you may need to brief users on how to log out using the new “Microsoft Account Center”, using the “Log Off” function on the Horizon Client, or possibly even create a desktop shortcut for the users.

Workaround

To workaround this issue, you may need to train users on the new behaviour, advise them to Log off with the VMware Horizon client (proper logoff, not just clicking the “X” which will only disconnect sessions), or create a “Log off” shortcut on their desktop.

I will continue to investigate and update this post, hopefully ultimately with a fix.

I have created a thread on the Omnissa Community Forums, Windows 11 23H2 – Start Menu, Account Icon Behavior Warning.

vGPU Mixed Size Virtual GPU types with VMware vSphere 8U3

 NVIDIA, NVIDIA vGPU, Omnissa Horizon, vSphere  12 Responses »
Jun 262024
 
vSphere 8U3 vGPU Mixed-Size Profiles

I’m happy to announce today that you can now deploy vGPU Mixed Size Virtual GPU types with VMware vSphere 8U3, also known as “Heterogeneous Time-Slice Sizes” or “Heterogeneous vGPU types”.

VMware vSphere 8U3 was released yesterday (June 26th, 2024), and brought with it numerous new features and functionality. However, mixed vGPU types deserves it’s own blog post as it’s a major game-changer for those who use NVIDIA vGPU for AI and VDI workloads, including Omnissa Horizon.

NVIDIA vGPU (Virtual GPU) Types

When deploying NVIDIA vGPU, you configure Virtual GPU types that provide Workstation RTX (vWS Q-Series), Virtual PC (vPC B-Series), or Virtual Apps (vApps A-Series) class capabilities to virtual machines.

On top of the classifications above, you also needed to configure the Framebuffer memory size (or VRAM/Video RAM) allotted to the vGPU.

Historically, when you powered the first VM, the physical GPU that provides vGPU, would then only be able to serve that Virtual GPU type (class and Framebuffer size) to other VMs, locking all the VMs on running on that GPU to same vGPU type. If you had multiple GPUs in a server, you could run different vGPU types on the different physical GPU, however each GPU would be locked to the vGPU type of the first VM started with it.

NVIDIA Mixed Size Virtual GPU Type functionality

Earlier this year, NVIDIA provided the ability to deploy heterogeneous mixed vGPU types through the vGPU drivers, first starting with the ability to run different classifications (you could mix vWS and vPC), and the later adding support for mixed-size frame buffers (example, mixing a 4Q and 8Q profile on the same GPU).

While the NVIDIA vGPU solution supported this, VMware vSphere did not immediately add support so it couldn’t take advantage of this until the new release of VMware vSphere 8U3, VMware vCenter 8U3, and VMware ESXi 8U3.

To configure different classifications (vWS mixed with vPC), it requires no configuration other than using a host-driver and guest-driver that support it, however to use different sized framebuffers, it needs to be enabled on the host.

To Enable vGPU Mixed Size Virtual GPU types:

  1. Log on to VMware vCenter
  2. Confirm all vGPU enabled Virtual Machines are powered off
  3. Select the host in your inventory
  4. Select the “Configure” tab on the selected host
  5. Navigate to “Graphics” under “Hardware”
  6. Select the GPU from the list, click “Edit”, and change the “vGPU Mode” to “Mixed Size”
Screenshot showing the "Graphics Properties" for GPU adapters on VMware ESXi 8U3 with the "vGPU Mode" set to "Mixed Size"

Once you configure this, you can now deploy mixed-size vGPU profiles.

When you SSH in to your host, you can query to confirm it’s configured:

[root@ESXi-HOST:~] nvidia-smi -q

    vGPU Device Capability
        Fractional Multi-vGPU             : Supported
        Heterogeneous Time-Slice Profiles : Supported
        Heterogeneous Time-Slice Sizes    : Supported
        vGPU Heterogeneous Mode           : Enabled

It’s supported, and enabled!

Additional Notes

Please note the following:

  • When restarting your hosts, resetting the GPU, and/or restarting the vGPU Manager daemon, the ESXi host will change back to it’s default “Same Size” mode. You will need to manually change it back to “Mixed Mode”.
  • When enabling mixed-size vGPU types, the number of some types of vGPU profiles may be reduced vs running the GPU in equal-size mode (to allow other profile types). Please see the additional links for information on Mixed-Size vGPU types inside the “Virtual GPU Types for Supported GPUs” link.
  • Only “Best Effort and “Equal Share” schedulers are supported with mixed mode vGPU. Fixed Share scheduling is not supported.

NVENC offload disabled when using RDSH with NVIDIA vGPU

 NVIDIA vGPU, Omnissa Horizon, Remote Desktop Services (RDS)  No Responses »
May 262024
 
NVIDIA vGPU

When using Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon), you may note that NVENC offload is disabled when using RDSH with NVIDIA vGPU. This may also affect other VDI and Application Delivery platforms that use RDSH (Remote Desktop Session Hosts) and NVIDIA vGPU (Virtual GPU).

One of the key benefits of deploying NVIDIA vGPU with Omnissa Horizon, is being able to use the NVIDIA NvENC (NVIDIA Encoder) to hardware encode your VDI session. This is also known as H264/H265/HEVC/AV1 offload.

This means that the encoding and compression of the remoted video session is handled by the GPU, instead of the CPU, freeing up resources on the VM guest and host, reducing latency with encoding, and also providing a much better user experience.

The Observation

When deploying NVIDIA vGPU with vApps and Horizon Apps, you’ll note the following in the VMware Horizon Performance Tracker:

VMware Horizon Performance Tracker on RDSH showing software encoder

You can see above that the “Encoder Name” is using “h264 4:2:0”. This means that the CPU Software Based encoder is handing the encoding of the H264 BLAST Session. While the environment is 3D accelerated, the remoting protocol encoding is not hardware offloaded.

You’ll also note the following:

  • VMware Horizon Agent High CPU Usage
  • “nvidia-smi” on the host and VM does not report the encoder being used

This behavior is as expected due to the inability of RDS session hosts to be able to utilize NvENC. RDSH hosts utilize a software framebuffer for user environment and desktop delivery which cannot be used with NVENC.

Solution and/or Workaround

To work around this limitation, you have the option of using VDI desktops (in this case it would be preferable to use non-persistent Instant Clones) to deploy an “Application Pool” with vGPU enabled VMs.

Note that this is a major change to your solution architecture because pushing applications (and desktops) from Windows 10 or Windows 11 Guest VMs is a 1 to 1 relation, versus RDSH which supports many users to one VM.

Using Horizon, you could then push applications (not desktops) from these vGPU enabled Instant Clones, which would support NVENC and hardware offload, as shown in the example below:

VMware Horizon Performance Tracker showing NVIDIA NvEnc Hardware encoder on instant clone

In the image above, you’ll note that the “Encoder Name” is “NVIDIA NvEnc HEVC 4:2:0” showing us that NvEnc hardware offload and encoding is functioning and being used.

Note, that using this method to deploy Horizon Apps will result in more framebuffer being required, however may be offset since a smaller framebuffer can be used with individual VMs versus a large framebuffer being assigned and attached to an RDSH host.

VDI Gaming Demo with NVIDIA vGPU and Omnissa Horizon 8

 ESXi, NVIDIA, NVIDIA vGPU, Omnissa Horizon, vSphere  No Responses »
May 252024
 
VDI Gaming Demo with NVIDIA vGPU and Omnissa Horizon

Here’s a fun quick VDI Gaming Demo with NVIDIA vGPU and Omnissa Horizon 8, using an NVIDIA L4 GPU and the L4-12Q Profile.

This video is just for fun, and is just to show some of the capabilities of the technology, hardware, and software, in this case, with Cloud Gaming.

The NVIDIA vGPU solution provides the ability to “slice” and create multiple Virtual GPU (vGPU) devices for your Virtual Machines and Virtual workloads.

In this video:

  • Quick Introduction to NVIDIA vGPU with Omnissa Horizon 8
  • Validating NVIDIA vGPU functionality (with DirectX Diagnostics, Horizon Performance Monitor Tracker)
  • MechWarrior 5 Cloud Gaming
  • Heaven Benchmark

Environment Details:

  • 2 x HPE DL360p Gen8 Servers (2 x 10 Core Procs, 384GB of RAM)
    • 1 Server with NVIDIA A2
    • 1 Server with NVIDIA L4
  • VMware vSphere 8U2
  • Omnissa Horizon 8

Hope you enjoy the video and demo!

Network placement of NVIDIA vGPU Licensing Client Configuration Token

 NVIDIA, NVIDIA vGPU, Omnissa Horizon, VMware  2 Responses »
May 092024
 
NVIDIA vGPU Network Licensing Token

When deploying NVIDIA vGPU across a VDI environment, I often see IT teams deploy the licensing token directly on the persistent VMs, or on the non-persistent base golden image. This often causes a nightmare when the client activation token must be updated.

I highly recommend considering network placement of the NVIDIA vGPU Licensing Client Configuration token file for your deployments.

In this post we’ll review the Client Configuration Token File, why you’d want to place it on the network, and how to do so.

What is the Client Configuration Token File

The Client Configuration Token File, tells the NVIDIA vGPU driver on your VM where to find the licensing server information. This token will point the driver to either the CLS or DLS licensing server and request the applicable license to be issued.

By default, the vGPU driver will check the following location for the token:

C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\vGPU Licensing\ClientConfigToken\

While this is common, there’s a much better (and easier) method that you can use to deploy the Client Configuration Tokens, using Network Shares, to ease management of these files.

Placing the NVIDIA vGPU Licensing client configuration token on a network share

Using the Windows Registry, along with a GPO (Group Policy Object), you can configure a network location for the NVIDIA Client Configuration Token, so that your systems whether Persistent or Non-Persistent will use this location.

In the event of a token change, you can simply delete and remove the old token, and place a new configuration token, and all the systems will have immediate access to it, without manually updating individual systems.

Here we’ll use the registry and a GPO to configure the token location:

  1. Using an administrative account, create a folder called “vGPU-Licensing” on your domain SYSVOL share.
    • Example: \\Domain.com\SYSVOL\Domain.com\vGPU-Licensing\
  2. Place your NVIDIA Licensing Client Configuration Token in this folderNVIDIA Licensing Token SYSVOL
  3. Open “Group Policy Management” and create a new GPO called “VDI-NVIDIA-LicensingToken”
  4. Navigate to: Computer Configuration -> Preferences -> Windows Settings -> Registry
  5. Right Click and select New -> Registry Item
  6. Under the New Registry Window Enter the following:
    • Action: Update
    • Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    • Key Path: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\Global\GridLicensing
    • Value Name: ClientConfigTokenPath
    • Value Type: REG_SZ
    • Value Data: \\Domain.com\SYSVOL\Domain.com\vGPU-Licensing
    • Change the network location to match your environment and your setup
  7. After populating the fields, it should be similar to the following example: NVIDIA GPO Registry Client Configuration Token
  8. Hit Apply, then Ok, then link the newly created GPO to the OU where your VDI VM guests are located with NVIDIA vGPU.

That’s it! All we did was created a GPO which configures the Registry key “ClientConfigTokenPath” inside of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\Global\GridLicensing\ and set it to a network share that has the configuration tokens.

Please note, the NVIDIA licensing service accesses the network location using the services security context (not the user’s context), which is why I chose the SYSVOL share, as the computer accounts have read access to this location (example, reading the GPOs on boot and user logon).

Additionally, note that the registry key and location may vary if you’re using older versions of the NVIDIA vGPU Driver. The key used in this post is for versions 16.x and 17.x.

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