Lets start post 800 by mentioning it took quite a bit of time to solve the connection problem to VDI. I hope it will help others, and if I ever run into this again myself: now I know where to look :)
Some clients make heavy use of VMware VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) which moves the desktop into the VMs in the data center.
A while ago I spent most of the day tracking down a “Connect Desktop Failed” error with VMware View Client running on a Windows 7 x64 workstation to connect to a VDI VM. It would connect to the VDI server, authenticate, start the Desktop, but could not connect to the Desktop.
The amazing thing is that the VMware view client worked fine on an XP VM workstation (with and without SNX) XP physical machine with SNX, and another Windows 7 x64 VM workstation (also with and without SNX) and Windows 7 x64 physical machine with SNX.
Clearly something was wrong with this particular Windows 7 x64 workstation that is host of most of my development VMs so I didn’t want to do a re-install.
I tried many obvious things on the Windows 7 x64 workstation:
- reboot
- disable firewall
(that would have indicated some of the ports required by VMware view were not open: in practice not all ports mentioned in the list are used) - uninstall software from various vendors that might interfere with network activity
- disabled virus scanner
- step down from VMware View Manager 5 client to VMware View Manager 4.6 client
- circumvented SNX (CheckPoint SSL VPN extender) making sure I was on the same WAN and later LAN of the VDI
- verified twice I had indeed Windows 7 SP1 applied
- laughed about the SSE support required by VMware view client
Since the “Connect desktop failed” does not return many English search results, I started browsing the Russian ones. Read the rest of this entry »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 