That's my View

Backing up your Zimbra Desktop data

Christoph Harding — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:32:55 +0000

This week my companies email account has changed from Exchange to Zimbra Collaboration Server due to my participation in an internal pilot program. This is great because I’m already using the Zimbra server and also the desktop client privately for a while and I’m really happy with it. What I’ve never thought about before is the backup procedure of my local stored folders which are not synchronized with the cloud. In my private environment that was never an issue for me because my email account has no restricted size. With the companies account I got a limit of 2 GB which is a lot, but not enough when storing all PDF and PPT files as well as the archived mails. Because I’m a Mac user and usually using Time Machine for my backup I was wondering if there is another way to do a backup of the Zimbra Desktop data including my local stored folders. Some googleing gave me the final hint!

Can I backup the data in those 3 user data folders by simply copying them to another location?

While that is possible, it is not recommended. If you choose to do file based backup, you must first shutdown the Zimbra Desktop data engine before running any types of backup. However we recommend users do backup using the import/export features provided by Zimbra Desktop instead. You will find this feature under your Preferences tab in the Zimbra Desktop UI.

(Link to the Zimbra FAQ)

It would be possible to just backup my /home/user/Zimbra/zdesktop folder (as seen in the screenshot below) but the best way should be to use the Export function within the Zimbra Desktop client.

To export data from your Zimbra accounts please go to the preferences dialog in the tab bar. After clicking on the Preferences tab please select Import/Export.

The export dialog gives you the chance to export the whole account data including calendar and contacts of calendar and contacts separately. For a full backup I’ve chosen Account as option here. With the checkbox “Advanced settings” you can even filter the data to be exported when choosing Account. Just click on the button Export afterwards and the download as Tar-Gzipped file starts immediately. Now you can copy the file to a file server, to an Online storage or another safe location.

Be careful if you’re using more that one account in the Zimbra Desktop client! The export function does always export the data from the selected mail account. In my case I’ve a private and my company account configured and needed to export twice. But it’s easy, just select the account in the left menu bar. (Screenshot below).

I’m really looking forward to work with Zimbra CS and Desktop as my company applications in the next weeks. I definitely think that it will give me the same options then Outlook/Exchange did.

Linux as a guest

Christoph Harding — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:47:14 +0000

I’m really surprised that it works, but a guy from France got a Linux VM working with the VMware View Agent. I don’t speak French but what I get from his article is that he used Xrdp in the VM. I guess he used Wine, a Windows emulator for Linux to get the View Agent running. It’s awesome, check his blog. But don’t forget: This is highly unsupported.

Source: Blog du DS45

Cisco Tablet: Rumour becomes Truth

Christoph Harding — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:23:52 +0000

Two month ago I’ve written an article about some rumour saying that Cisco is working on their own tablet. This rumour became truth today: Cisco announced a new business tablet called Cius. The 7-inch screen device is powered by an Intel Atom processor running at 1.6 GHz and weighs 0,5 kg. According to Cisco the battery should run for 8 hours, which is 2h less then the iPad. As the iPhone 4, the Cius comes with two cameras. The front-facing cam records in high definition and the camera at the back does 5 megapixel. Video conferencing shouldn’t be a problem with that. It supports Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth and 3G. 4G should be available at a later time. I really like the micro USB port which definitely and the SD card slot. The OS is Android and with that it has access to the Android Marketplace which offers thousands of applications. The price is targeted for less then $1000. Will this be the next Boom in the tablet market? Possibly companies see this device more in the business space then the iPad which comes in my eyes as a consumer tablet. I’m looking forward to see it live once! This could be a great way to access your virtual desktop.

Upgrading VMware Tools in a virtual desktop causes PCoIP connections to fail

Christoph Harding — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:28:50 +0000

You may have already read about an issue where upgrading your ESX 4.0 host breaks connections to hosted virtual desktops with the PCoIP protocol. This issue only occurs when you’re using ESX 4.0 with VMWare View 4.0 and you’ve upgraded the host to Update 2. VMware released a permanent fix for that.

You’ll find more information at the Knowledge Base.

Delete a Replica Server from a server group

Christoph Harding — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:44:57 +0000

For high availability of the View Manager environment it’s possible to add a maximum of 4 additional connection servers, called Replica servers to one View connection server group. In total you’ll have 5 servers dealing with the connecting users. During the installation of a replica server it is manually added to the server group by the administrator and it’s configuration data is written to the View LDAP database afterwards. The new server itself does create a copy of the existing View LDAP instance and replicate all data. During operations all changes on the View servers including the Global Settings, the users and the desktops are propagated between all servers in the View connection server group. If one of the replica servers is removed from the group by disconnection or installation which is permanent it is recommend to delete this servers from the View LDAP.

To delete the Replica server you have to use the vdmadmin.exe command line utility which can be found at:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Server\bin\vdmadmin.exe

The tool must be executed on a View Server which resists in the server group. The correct syntax for the command is:

vdmadmin -S -r -s

Please find the following explanation for the parameters used in the command:

-S = This parameter tells the vdmadmin.exe tool ti manage a View server entry.

-r = Remove a View server entry from the View LDAP

-s = Defines the servername to remove from the server group

After using the command on one of the servers which are remaining in the group the new configuration information is propagated to all LDAP instances.

It’s important to remove old servers which are not longer used because otherwise they will still be visible in the View Administrator console and maybe confuse the administrators.

Virtual Printing to the native printer driver in VMware View

Christoph Harding — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:32:16 +0000

Printing in a VMware View environment does almost look like printing on a physical desktop for the user. For example the user works with some office application and wants to print the document on his local connected Canon iP5300 printer. This is an ink jet printer and it does have some special features integrated with the original Canon printer driver. The user does press the print button and wants to set some properties for printing the document.

On a View desktop he’ll get the ThinPrint printer driver properties dialog instead of the Canon’s one because VMware View is using this drivers as part of the Virtual Printing component which helps to print compressed, encrypted and with no need to install all printer drivers of your local printers on the virtual desktops.

The ThinPrint offers all important printer driver features, including Portrait/Landscape printing, color and grey scale, resolution, paper size, copy count and more. This will fit for the user in 9 of 10 cases but there is this one case, where the users needs a special feature of the Canon printer driver. In this case it is possible to print directly to the original Canon printer driver which is installed on the client device. For doing that the user needs to switch to the Advanced tab in the ThinPrint driver properties dialog and enable the checkbox (Preview on client before printing).

This will force the ThinPrint driver to send the print data stream to the local client and preview the print job before printing.

From there the users just needs to click the print button and the standard Canon printer driver does open as usual.

This will help to use all functions offered by the local installed printer drivers delivered by the printers vendor. But as I said before in 9 of 10 cases you’ll not need it.

The mysterious of Chromoting

Christoph Harding — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:40:41 +0000

When Google came up with Chrome OS I guess some of the product manager hearts in the big operating system companies stopped bumping for a bit. Google with their own operating system, build on Linux, driven by the open source community and including every applications you need for a business desktop like office apps, collaboration all based on the web. But is web apps really just what you need? What about legacy native applications running on Windows, Mac or Linux? The Register has an exclusive story based on a public email from a Google engineer and some follow up correspondence which talks about a remote feature called Chromoting. What’s behind that? How will Google technically implement that feature? Maybe RDP, VNC, X11, ICA, HDX, NX……..PCoIP? How would a connection to the legacy system look like? Are they going to use a broker to manage the connection? Loads of questions and a huge room for rumour.

Link: The Register

Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 7

Christoph Harding — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 06:30:58 +0000

Web applications should be platform independent because their are standards like HTML which can be interpreted by any browser out there. They should, but many web applications are not true web applications. They use components like ActiveX or special plug-ins for the browser. Siebel is one good example for that. Loads of companies invested in web applications in the last few years and many of them are tight connected to a dedicated browser. But what if a browser goes EOL, like we see with Internet Explorer 6 today? Internet Explorer 6 can’t be installed natively on Windows 7, but many web applications still depends on it. For a company that means that they can’t move to new client operating systems, have to redesign the applications or find another way to run the legacy web application. On the VMware ThinApp blog there was an article published two days ago, which brings some videos showing how IE6 can run on Windows 7 with a Tech Preview of Thinapp.

Link: VMware ThinApp Blog

New VMware Fusion Release 3.1

Christoph Harding — Wed, 26 May 2010 07:10:17 +0000

VMware yesterday released a new version of VMware Fusion, their virtualization solution for the Apple operating system. You can download the version at the download website. Fusion 3.1 has a huge number of new features which can found in the “What’s new section”. Additionally to the new features their are improvements for graphics, boot camp and pc migrations. Also Fusion 3.1 supports 10 more operating systems.

USB Redirection with RDP

Christoph Harding — Sun, 23 May 2010 09:55:18 +0000

Back in the days of View 3.0 the USB redirection was done over a virtual channel in the RDP protocol. This changed with View 3.1 as of this release there were a second way of USB data transportation added. You can still use the RDP virtual channels and it is used as a fallback if the preferred option, a TCP connection is not available. The TCP connection is listening on port 32111 in the guest. The configuration can be seen in the virtual desktops Windows Registry at HKLM\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\Agent\Configuration\Listener. The parameter FRAMEWORKCHANNEL defines the port number which is 32111 as default. Both connections, the virtual channels and also the TCP connection can be tunnelled via the VMware View Security Server. With the USB Redirection you can use USB device filters on a class, hardware ID a specific device basis. The Registry keys for those are:

HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\ClassFilters

HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\ HardwareIDFilters

HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM \USB\AllowHardwareIDs

The format of each entry in HEX is: Vid_xxxx&Pid_xxxx -> xxxx. If a device is excluded by the class, you can specifically include it again by the hardware ID. The ClassGUID’s and hardware ID’s ca be found in the machine log file on each client.

To learn more about HID devices with VMware View please check one of my older articles. This article also gives you a quick overview of the USB log file entries.