Month: October 2014

vCenter Permissions for View Composer & VSAN

With the last few releases of View there have been a number of new features that have been included that require additional privileges in vCenter for the service account used by View.  Many customers simply use the Administrator role so do not encounter permission problems with vCenter but for more secure customers the minimum permission set is required.  The below permissions are the minimum required for View to interact with vCenter whilst still being fully functional including configuring VSAN and the View Storage Accelerator.  This should be applied at the vCenter level to the service account used by View to connect to vCenter.

perm

Allow View PCoIP Users to change their Windows Font Size

With small devices now sporting very high resolution displays, the default font size for Windows desktops might be too small for the users when they connect to Windows based Virtual Desktops on their tablets.

By default View disables the Display Control Panel, even for Administrators. The reason for this because PCoIP will actively change the resolution of the screen as a user resizes their window so by disabling access to the Display Control Panel we prevent users interfering with this behaviour. Unfortunately this prevents users changing their Windows Font Size.

nodisp

The resolution can be found in an existing VMware KB, though the KB says this only impacts Local Mode desktops which is not correct and this behaviour also applies to View 6.  The KB can be found here: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1020809

The best way to fix this problem is by using a policy found in the vdm_agent.adm policy file.  You need to alter the “Toggle Display Settings Control” and set it to “Disabled”.  This GPO should be applied to the Computer account of the View desktop.

gpo

Once this is applied to the desktop users (even non-administrators) will be able to change their display settings. If they change the resolution, PCoIP will change it back to the Windows size but they can change their Font Size which is stored in the User Hive so this will persist on floating desktops if you are syncing the profile.

disp

The second way to change the behaviour is by directly modifying the registry setting which is added a when you install the View Agent.  The registry entry you need to modify is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\NoDispCpl

If you set this value to 0 and then resize your PCoIP window, Windows will reread the registry setting and then you can change the display settings.  However the problem with this method is firstly you have to be an Administrator, and secondly it will be overwritten next time you connect to the desktop so this is really only useful for testing.

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