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Liquidware, IGEL and ServiceNow Team Up to Enhance Endpoint Visibility and Performance
Visibility into endpoint metrics and new digital workspace experience management capabilities deliver critical insight to keep work from anywhere productive
Liquidware has teamed up with IGEL and ServiceNow to provide unparalleled visibility and insight into end-user experience.
Leading the Charge in Digital Workspace Management
Monitoring the user experience of your virtual desktop environment, regardless if it is Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD), VMware Horizon, Amazon WorkSpaces, Nutanix Frame, etc., is critical to success these days. Knowing the complete end-to-end user experience should not be ignored as you don’t want any blind spots for the entire connection path for end users.
Liquidware is an IGEL Ready alliance partner and has enabled tight integration and a purpose-built agent called the “Connector ID” embedded within the IGEL Edge OS. To enable monitoring of IGEL OS client sessions, simply go into the Configuration section of the IGEL Edge OS or IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) server console and check the box to enable the Connector ID. Then you enter the hostname of the Stratusphere Hub virtual appliance and that’s it, your user experience metrics will begin flowing into Stratusphere and it will allow for these metrics to be correlated with the virtual desktop sessions to get comprehensive end-to-end user experience metrics.
Here are the main features from integrating Stratusphere UX with IGEL clients:
- Verify IGEL client Meets SLAs: Ensure that the IGEL client is performing to or better than expectations/requirements as determined by the organization or organizational business unit.
- Correlating IGEL Client to Remote System: Determine and correlate the user from the IGEL client to the virtual desktop machine.
- View Latency Between IGEL clients and Remote Systems: Determine the amount of latency occurring between the IGEL client and the virtual desktop to assist in troubleshooting.
- Verify IGEL client Performance Before and After Firmware/OS Upgrades: Building a benchmark to ensure the performance of the IGEL client is the same or better after firmware/OS upgrades.
- Monitoring Local Networking Performance: Determine WiFi speed, band, protocol, Access Point, signal strength and distance from the IGEL clients as well as connectivity to ISP regardless of client/user location.
Integrating it all with ServiceNow
Integrating Stratusphere UX and ServiceNow provides significant IT Service Management (ITSM) and Return on Investment (ROI) benefits.
“The Stratusphere Base Integration Kit” for ServiceNow enables ServiceNow customers to truly integrate industry leading user experience data from Stratusphere UX directly into ServiceNow. Customers can easily customize their ServiceNow experience to include Stratusphere UX data that is unique to their operations. Organizations that have chosen Stratusphere UX find that the solution helps resolve help desk call up to 90 percent faster than traditional troubleshooting. Likewise, negative trends in user experience can be remedied before they become problems that cause user downtime.
- ServiceNow Dashboards and Reports: Users can create application specific performance dashboards as well as complete inventory reports of for applications, hardware, and licenses --– both used and unused.
Here are some of the dashboards that are available:
- Custom Dashboard to display users logged in, users with VoIP issues (Latency/Jitter), users with high virtual desktop latency, and users with high CPU utilization.
- Machine Management Dashboard to display metrics such as last boot time, monitor(s) resolutions machine age, make, model, serial number, CPU, Memory, disk, etc.…
- User Management Dashboard to allow admins to look for specific users in a friendly intuitive way and then be able to drill down into more details about their workspaces including machine information.
- User Details Dashboard to allow admins to drill down and get more details about a specific user, including what machines they are using.
Interested in more information? Reach out to schedule a demo today.
If you would like to leave a comment please don't provide any direct email addresses. Just a short name would be great.
johnnyma
Power BI common errors and how to fix them
Short list of common errors you might encounters when trying to run a Power BI report using Stratusphere API.
1) API not set up correctly
Before running Power BI, you should make sure that API access is enabled. To do so, open a web browser and enter the following URL:
[Stratusphere HUB or IP]/lwl/api
If Stratusphere has enabled access to the API on this machine, you will see the following page:
Otherwise, you will see one of 2 error messages:
- Message indicating that your license is not valid. Contact your Liquidware account manager or SE.
- Message indicating that the IP associated with your machine does not have permission. Follow the step below:
1) Copy the IP address from the error message
2) Open Stratusphere web UI and log in administration
3) Go to Hub Administration>configuration>other settings
4) Paste the IP in the field named “API client Ips”
5) Click on “save Changes”
6) Verify the changes were successful by testing the URL mentioned above ([Stratusphere HUB or IP]/lwl/api)
2) Security error message when trying to refresh data in Power BI
Power BI security is preventing the query(ies) to run from an unknown source (Stratusphere).
There are ways to modify Power BI security restrictions, but the simplest approach is to upload an SSL certificate on Stratusphere :
3) Error message after data refresh about a column name not being found
Very frequent issue, especially when opening a template designed by another but not always. Power BI is particularly finnicky about column formatting being done after a query has returned data and sometimes cannot follow the steps.
To fix this issue, follow the steps below
1) In Power BI, click on the query having issue on the left side
2) On the right side, you should see a section named “applied steps” including the following:
- Promoted Headers
- Changed Type
3) Click on the left “x” mark left of those 2 steps to remove them
4) Error message should disappear and you should see the data, except the column headers are now in the first row
5) In the top ribbon, click on “use first row as headers”. This will redo the formatting and fix the error.
6) Save
thomas
ServiceNow Integration
The "Stratusphere Base Integration Kit for ServiceNow" is available on the ServiceNow store. This application integration gives our clients the ability to use Stratusphere data in ServiceNow ITSM, CMDB and other modules with many use cases.
Review our Web Site for more Information:
Download the Solutions Brief:
ITSM Example: Help Desk Call
Contact: [email protected] for more information.
ProfileUnity Cluster Sizing Considerations
With larger environments, it’s important to consider the implications of different architectures and system types when building a ProfileUnity Console cluster. Some of the key things to note are how many geographic locations will be home to machines running the ProfileUnity Client Tools and what type of environment is being delivered. For example, single-user Desktop OSes or multi-user Server OSes with the RDSH Server Role enabled.
ProfileUnity Cluster notes to keep in mind:
- ProfileUnity uses MongoDB for the database back end and RabbitMQ for the license fabric - both are clustered automatically when you build a ProfileUnity Console cluster.
- MongoDB requires a cluster containing an odd-number of nodes under a 100% node-up scenario. This ensures a tiebreaker for cluster operations. Generally, this means 3, 5 or 7 nodes.
- MongoDB, while clustered, always requires at least 2 running nodes, hence the minimum node-count of 3.
Architecture examples:
- If you have a single site you likely only need a 3-node cluster. This would spread the load out among all nodes and allow for a single node to fail while maintaining normal operations. An example benefit would be a rolling Windows Update/reboot cycle or even a ProfileUnity Console version upgrade without service interruption.
- If you have 3 geographic regions and want to make sure that you have license and FlexDisk redundancy at each location, you might deploy a 7-node cluster. Site 1 would have 3 nodes while sites 2 and 3 would each have 2 nodes. In this configuration, the MongoDB cluster would span all 3 sites while the RabbitMQ license/FlexDisk fabric would be isolated within each site. This would allow for a single node at each site to be rebooted for maintenance, while maintaining normal operations at all sites. It would also allow for 2 of 3 sites to go dark and not interrupt ProfileUnity license or FlexDisk operations at the remaining site.
ProfileUnity Cluster sizing considerations:
- Environments with a majority of Desktop OSes, or Server OSes without the RDSH role acting as single-user desktops, can require a cluster with higher CPU requirements and lower memory requirements. The main reason is that the Liquidware Client License Service in the Client Tools only connects to the fabric to make a license "consume" or "release" request and then immediately disconnects.
- Environments running a majority of Server OSes with the RDSH role enabled will require both CPU and additional memory as the number of client machines increases. In this situation, because the server will be making many license "consume" and "release" requests throughout the day, the Liquidware Client License Service connects to make the first license "consume" request and remains connected until rebooted. These open connections require the ProfileUnity Console cluster to have a higher memory requirement.
For cluster sizing suggestions, please refer to this KB article: https://liquidwarelabs.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039686092-ProfileUnity-Cluster-Sizing-Suggestions
Dashboard - Imports - Physical Desktops
Dashboard - SpotCheck - Physical Desktops
This Can be imported into your 6.1.4+ Stratusphere System.
Note: After Import you will need to press F5 to refresh the dashboard list.
Chris_Walker
Office 365 Flexapp Recipe
###Install Office###
Setup /download configuration-Office365-xXX.xml
Once downloaded start FPC Capture
Setup /configure configuration-Office365-x64.xml
Once complete Save FPC Capture, Save Icon
Playback and add script to post activate
Add Office365Repair.bat
Save app
Bat script details.
32 bit
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Integration\integrator.exe" /R /License PRIDName=O365ProPlusRetail.16 PackageGUID="9AC08E99-230B-47e8-9721-4577B7F124EA" PackageRoot="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root"
64 bit
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Integration\integrator.exe" /R /Msi MsiName="SPPRedist.msi,SPPRedist64.msi" PackageGUID="9AC08E99-230B-47e8-9721-4577B7F124EA" PackageRoot="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root"
XML Details
Makes adjustments for your environment
<!-- Office 365 client configuration file sample. To be used for Office 365 ProPlus apps,
Office 365 Business apps, Project Pro for Office 365 and Visio Pro for Office 365.
For detailed information regarding configuration options visit: http://aka.ms/ODT.
To use the configuration file be sure to remove the comments
The following sample allows you to download and install the 64 bit version of the Office 365 ProPlus apps
and Visio Pro for Office 365 directly from the Office CDN using the Monthly Channel
settings -->
<Configuration>
<Add OfficeClientEdition="32"
Channel="Broad">
<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
<Language ID="en-us" />
<ExcludeApp ID="OneDrive" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Teams" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Publisher" />
</Product>
</Add>
<Updates Enabled="False" />
<Display Level="Full" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
<Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="1" />
<Property Name="FORCEAPPSHUTDOWN" Value="FALSE"/>
<Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="1"/>
<Property Name="SCLCacheOverride" Value="1" />
<Property Name="SCLCacheOverrideDirectory" Value="%appdata%\Microsoft" />
<Property Name="PinIconsToTaskbar" Value="TRUE"/>
</Configuration>
MrSmith
Stratusphere Top 5 Issues Found in Client Environments
Working with our clients in Physical, Virtual/VDI and Cloud environments we see many of the same issues. This video shows the top 5 issues that we have found and helped clients resolve.
How can I create the best FlexApp Packaging Console?
The best FlexApp packages come from a clean FlexApp console. To start, you read the guide found here:
Next, you should install your runtimes, which can be found here:
https://liquidwarelabs.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042135011-Runtime-Installer-Package
Finally, you should use the following process to optimize your image, assuming you are using version 1703-20H2 of Windows 10:
First, download the attached .TXT file and rename it to an .XML
*** YOU MUST TURN OFF TAMPER PROTECTION FOR THIS TO FUNCTION CORRECTLY. OPEN WINDOWS SECURITY, AND DISABLE TAMPER PROTECTECTION BEFORE YOU EXECUTE THE VMWARE OPTIMIZER!!! ***
1. Run the attached template in the same directory as the VMWare Optimizer.
2. Run the VMWare Optimizer, select the FPC_Windows 10_Version 8 template, select Analyze and then Optimize.
3. Disable the user account that you're currently logged into.
4. Enable the SID-500 master Administrator account and set a password.
5. Reboot. There may be an error at login where it tries to login with the cached account that you first used to build the OS. This is normal.
6. Login with the Administrator account.
7. Snapshot and save the image. You can now clone it for use as an FlexApp Packaging Console. Enjoy!
