How to configuring IBM WAS / RAD for PVS streamed Virtual Machine

Maxi Post by our guest Author

Application Name: IBM Websphere Application Server 8.5 and IBM Rational Application Developer for Websphere 8.5

Issue statement: Problem with IBM RAD/WAS faced by users who are using the lock down images was, when they create server profiles in RAD it gets saved in RAD installation directory which is c:\program files(86)\IBM\websphere_WAS8.5\Appserver\Profiles, on next reboot they will with no option but to create a new profile every time they launch RAD/WAS. So the option let with us is to provide Citrix personal vDisk or a persistent VM for these use cases. Instead of moving to PVD and persistent VM, here is how we mitigate to retain these users in streamed disk with modification in application configuration.

Please follow the steps to configure IBM Websphere Application Server 8.5 and IBM Rational Application Developer for Websphere 8.5 for streamed vDisk environment to redirect the IBM Rational Application Developer for Websphere 8.5 profiles in D drive instead of the default C drive path (c:\program files(86)\IBM\websphere_WAS8.5\Appserver\Profiles)

Navigate to path c:\program files(86)\IBM\websphere_WAS8.5\Appserver\Properties\

Files that needs to be modified are a)wasprofile.properties  b) wsadmin.properties c) xd.spi.properties

Find ${was.install.root} and replace with D:/Program Files (x86)/IBM/WebSphere_WAS8.5/AppServer 

Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\WebSphere_WAS8.5\AppServer\bin\ProfileManagement\eclipse64\configuration and make changes as shown below

osgi.instance.area.default=D:/AppData/Local/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/workspaces/WCT85

osgi.configuration.area=D:/AppData/Local/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/configurations/WCT85  Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\SDP_RAD8.5\configuration and make changes as shown below

osgi.instance.area.default=@user.home/IBM/rationalsdp/workspace

Change it to:

osgi.instance.area.default=D:/IBM/rationalsdp/workspace 

 

Once the Changes are modified to properties file, upon launching of WAS/RAD or the Profile management Tool of RAD it’s going to create profile and associated workspace/logs in the D drive.

You may experience error when trying to create Profile using the PMT 8.5 Tool as shown below

After investigating the logs at the mentioned location you can get a clue to resolve it. Here is how to?

Just create a folder named “properties” in D drive in the mentioned path. This will resolve the profile creation issue.

How to retain RAD workspace location

Finally for the users to retain their workspace location on subsequent launches, we need to retain a file from

c:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\SDP_RAD8.5\configuration\.settings\org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs

to some common location or a script to copy the file from source to D drive and copy it back to source location for user to retain the workspace location on every RAD launch.

A better way is to educate users to create workspace in D drive with the common location like D:\IBM\rationalsdp\workspace. By hardcoding the path in the preference file in the base image on every reboot the preference file will show the common workspace path from the cache file, this will eliminate use of logon script / Appsense configuration for file copy just to retain the workspace preference.

Publish MS Dealer Management System (DMS) application in full screen mode

With XenApp 6.5 we had an option to maximize application by checking the box as shown below

Somehow this feature is not available while publishing application via XenApp 7.6 . To workaround we can use CTX132434 and publish application. In the below example I am trying to publish MS DMS application for the users in full screen mode. VBS script used to for DMS looks like this

Placed this VBS under shared location and then published application using the path with working directory as %windir%\system32\

Now when application will be forced to launched in full screen mode

Should I upgrade to XenApp 7.6 ?

Are you confused about upgrading your existing XenApp 6.5 infrastructure to new XenApp 7.6?                           

Did someone told you that XenApp 7.6 doesn’t have all the feature of XenApp 6.5 hence don’t upgrade ? Well I tried answering by asking  you 7 question which will help you take decision. Please watch the video

How to enable “Share file instead of Copying it “ for VMM

I came across many deployment and keep forgetting it how to enable “Share file instead of copying it ” option for VMM. Yes I know Microsoft Article explain how to do this but missing screenshot .

Provided that all the library share has been setup perfectly , when we try to share the ISO instead of mounting we get following error message

“Error (12700)
VMM cannot complete the host operation on the xyz.com server because of the error: 'xyz' failed to add device 'Virtual CD/DVD Disk'. (Virtual machine ID 86AF5EBE-0B3D-4075-8BF2-DA7117C54322)

'xyz': User account does not have permission required to open attachment '\\Mxyz\DataStore\ISO\XenApp_and_XenDesktop7_6.iso'. Error: 'General access denied error' (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID 86AF5EBE-0B3D-4075-8BF2-DA7117C54322)
Unknown error (0x8001)

Recommended Action
Resolve the host issue and then try the operation again.”

We need to give access to VMM server for all the node. Select the Hyper V node and then choose “Use any authentication protocol” and add services.

Select VMM server as computer name. This will list CIFS share.

We need to repeat this step for all the node

Configure HP Quality Center for Streamed XenDesktop 7.6

HP Quality Center is web based tool used by tester and developer (Don’t ask me more detail beyond this : ) )

While working with HP QC we must know it requires:

• Requirements for QC to work is to have MS office 32 bit for now in base image, early next year TCOE/HP will update UFT after that we will be able to   use MS office 64 bit.
•   HP QC will work only in IE 32 bit version
• HP Quality Center download 280 MB of plugin and store under c:\users\APPDATA\LOCAL\HP

Now with above requirement if we are planning to deploy desktop class OS then you have multiple choice to choose from Flexcast model

Challenge : We have tried using UPM to synch around c:\users\APPDATA\LOCAL\HP but couldn’t  succeeded. So we tried PVD (Personal vDisk ) route but PVD does require minimum space and spending space just for 280MB file is waste of valuable storage space.

Solution: How about using Streamed static non persistent desktop. Once users logged in, desktop will be assigned to the users at the same time image can be streamed. We need to find out the way to redirect  APPDATA\LOCAL\HP . Remember this is not straight forward and that’s why we are discussing here.

User profile SID  sits in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Currentversion\ProfileList which is non-persistent since the C:\ drive is streamed in  read-only mode.

So first redirect : HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

 

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

When running Quality Center  for the first time it loads ALM-Platform-Loader.msi, a copy and associated files are copied to AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temprorary Internet Files\Content.IE5 folder.  Because of the read-only nature of the images and the UPM is not synchronizing AppData\Local contents when a VM is rebooted and re-logged. It also creates a folder under AppData\Local\Temp called TD_80; this folder disappear when a user reboots the VM.

To fix this we have to do two more redirection 

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

CACHE

Tem and Temp here to be redirected:

All the registry changes can be pushed via GPO along with UPM .

Credit : Thanks for sharing this inputs my friend, you know whom I mean