Month: July 2014

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How to use openssl to create a certificate (CER) and PFX file to connect to Azure using the App Controller

First create the certificate for upload to the Azure account via the Azure web page:
jonas@nyx:~$ openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout privateKey.key -out certificate.cer
It will ask for country, name, etc. Just enter something.

Next, create the pfx file required for the App Controller:
jonas@nyx:~$ openssl pkcs12 -export -in certificate.cer -inkey privateKey.key -out certificate.pfx

The App controller will also ask for Subscription ID This is listed under “settings” in your Azure account (far bottom on the left hand pane)

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XenDesktop 7.5 mapped drive execute permission

By default it’s not possible to run executables (install software) from a client drive which has been mapped to a XenDesktop VM. A work around is to copy the files to a network share and run the installation from there, but it takes time and can be a fair bit of extra work.

Instead, it’s possible to enable execute permissions via a quick and simple registry modification on the VDA (the XenDesktop VM). No DDC or client PC changes are required.

  1. Start “regedit”
  2. Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\GroupPolicy\Defaults\”
  3. Add the key “CDMSettings”
  4. Add the following DWORD value: “ExecuteFromMappedDrive”
  5. Set “ExecuteFromMappedDrive” to “1”

A restart of the VM is required for the changes to take effect.

Tested on XenServer 6.2 with XenDesktop 7.5 on a Dell R720 with NVIDIA K2 GPU card (K240Q and K260Q vGPUs assigned to the VMs).

XenDesktop75_execute_from_mapped_drive

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VMware default user names / logins and passwords

Consistency in user names and passwords would be nice, but unfortunately that isn’t always the case. While setting up VMware’s vCenter, vCOPS and vShield recently I came across a few default logins / passwords worth jotting down for reference:

VMware vCenter Operations Manager: UI VM console login

Admin account: admin

Password: admin

root account: root

Password: vmware

VMware vCenter Operations Manager: Web GUI login

User: admin

Password: admin

 

VMware vCenter appliance login (same for both local console and Web GUI):

User: root

Password: vmware

 

vCenter appliance URL for initial access and configuration

https://[vCenter IP]:5480

 

vCenter appliance URL for normal web access (the web client: alternative to using the vSphere client)

https://[vCenter IP]:9443

 

vShield Manager console:

User: admin

Password: default