Using Wintellisys WVD Manager Version 2.0

As explained in the previous article, Wintellisys WVD Manager solution provides necessary management tasks that a WVD Admin require to perform for WVD tenants everyday.

If you are new to Wintellisys WVD Manager, I would suggest to read the WVD Manager Version 1.0 article which explains basic features that WVD Manager offers. We have changed a lot in WVD Manager 2.0 including the addition of WVD Tenants under the management of WVD Manager.

The focus of this post is geared primarily towards explaining what has changed and the new features that were introduced as part of Wintellisys WVD Manager 2.0 as listed below.

• Update: WVD Tenant Addition Process
• Update: New and Intuitive Interface
• Update: WVD Manager Dashboards
• Feature: RBAC Manager
• Feature: Multi-User Interface
• Feature: WVD Manager Options
• Feature: Session Hosts Manager
• Feature: FSLogix Profiles Manager
• Feature: WVD Notification Center
• Feature: Operational Log
• Feature: Tenant Configuration

If you need to know more about Wintellisys WVD Manager, please reach out to us at Sales@Wintellisys.com.

Update: WVD Tenant Addition Process
The WVD Tenant Addition process in WVD Manager 2.0 has been changed. The Tenant Addition process requires you to supply a few more details such as Tenant Access Username and password. However, before you start to add a WVD Tenant under the management of WVD Manager, you are required to prepare the environment. The preparation step includes installing required PowerShell modules and checking the status of each component. To start preparing, click on “Prepare” button as it shown in the screenshot below:

Clicking on Preparing button will show below dialogue box:

As you can see in the screenshot above, you are required to meet PowerShell modules requirements. By clicking the “Check Status” button, the WVD Manager will check the modules status on the computer and then provide the status for each task.
If you see failed for any of the line items mentioned above, click on “Install Modules” button to start installing the required PowerShell Modules.

Important: Please note that you can only install PowerShell modules by using WVD Manager if you lunched the tool under the Administrator context.

Once you see “Passed” status for all of the items under the “Prepare WVD Manager” screen, close the Prepare screen and then click on the “Add Tenant” button to start adding a WVD Tenant.

When you click on “Add Tenant” button, the “Add Tenant” screen will appear as it shows in the screenshot below:

You can add as many as WVD Tenants you want under the management of WVD Manager.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you are required to provide information such as WVD Tenant Name, Service Principal, and other information as necessary as listed below:

• WVD Tenant Name: This is the WVD Tenant Name for identification purposes. Remember you can add as many as WVD Tenants want under the management of WVD Manager.
• WVD Version: WVD Manager supports both WVD 1.0 and WVD 2.0. You need to be selecting the Azure WVD version that you are going to add. By default, it is “WVD Version 2.0” which is selected.
• Tenant ID: This is the Tenant ID of the WVD environment.
• Service Principal: Here, you need to provide the Service Principal that you have created in Azure Portal.
• Secret: Service Principal Secret.
• Subscription ID: Subscription ID of Azure.
• File Share Service: If you are using FSLogix as File Share Service, please check “Tenant is Using Microsoft FSLogix Service” so Profile Management tasks will be available under WVD Manager.
• Profile Shares: Under Profile Shares, please select whether the File Shares are hosted on Windows Servers or whether you are using Azure Files/NetApp or any other SMB Share device. The only difference when selecting options in “Profile Shares” is that if the Profile Shares are hosted on Windows Servers, you will be able to see Disk View.
• Tenant Access Username and Password: You need to provide a username and password to access the Tenant. Please note Tenant Access Username and Password has nothing to do with the Azure credentials. The Tenant Access Username and Password are managed internally by the WVD Manager.

Once you have provided the above information, please click on the “Add Tenant” button to start adding the Tenant. The process will connect to the WVD environment, verify your credentials and then report whether the addition was successful or not. Once the Tenant is added successfully under the management of WVD Manager, the WVD Tenant will be available for you to select under the dropdown as shown in the screenshot below. You can log on to Tenant by providing Access Credentials and selecting the WVD Tenant:

After logging onto WVD Tenant, you will see several options in the left pane, and the Active Users Dashboard will start refreshing automatically.

Update: New and Intuitive Interface

Wintellisys WVD Manager 2.0 ships with a new and intuitive interface as it shows in the screenshot below. As you can see in the screenshot below, the left pane is the navigation pane and right pane shows information and actions which are supported for selected left pane item.

Update: WVD Manager Dashboards
Wintellisys WVD Manager 2.0 has updated dashboard views for Active Users , Session Hosts Health and Profile Server Dashboards. To see dashboards, you will need to click on the respective dashboard item under the “WVD Dashboard” section as it shows in the screenshot below:

Active Users Dashboard: Active Users Dashboard helps you understand how many users are active and disconnected. When you click on the “Active Users Dashboard” button, the right pane will show you the items related to Active Users dashboard which includes:

• The number of Host Pools hosted in selected WVD Tenant.
• Active and Disconnected Users in each Host Pool.
• The total number of VDI joined users and users joined to each WVD Pool.
• Total number of users that have not joined VDI yet.
• User Principal Names and host pool and Session Hosts that users are connected to.
• The number of Active Sessions per Session Host.
• and overall status of WVD environment.

Note: You will be required to refresh dashboard by clicking on “Refresh Dashboard” button located in the “Actions” pane if you do not see any data in the Active Users dashboard.

Session Hosts Health Dashboard: Session Hosts health dashboard can be launched by clicking the “Session Hosts Health” button under the “WVD Dashboard” category in left pane. The Session Hosts Health dashboard displays the following information:

• The number of Sessions Hosts deployed in each Host Pool.
• Session Hosts that are enabled for new sessions.
• Heartbeat status of all Session Hosts.
• Idle Session Hosts.
• Virtual Machine status of all Session Hosts

Tip: By checking the numbers in the Session Hosts Dashboard, you can easily find out how many Session Hosts are idle and how many hosts are not serving clients.

FSLogix Health Status Dashboard: If you are using FSLogix with WVD implementation, you can see FSLogix health status by clicking on “FSLogix Health Status” button located under “WVD Dashboard” pane. The FSLogix Health Status shows below information:

• Number of Disks configured in the FSLogix
• Disk allocated size, used, and free space on each disk.
• Profile Status on each FSLogix box.
• Large Profiles on each FSLogix box.
• And Disk charts indicating the overall status of the disk.

Feature: RBAC Manager

In Wintellisys WVD Manager 2.0, we added the capabilities to allow/disallow tasks with the help of RBAC Manager. The RBAC Manager helps you create users under the management of WVD Manager and assign each WVD Management tasks to each user. To see RBAC Manager interface, click on “RBAC Manager” item in the left pane as shown in the screenshot below:

When you click on the RBAC Manager item in the left pane, the right screen will show you RBAC Manager interface as shown in the screenshot below:

Feature: Multi-User Interface

Unlike WVD Manager 1.0, Wintellisys WVD Manager 2.0 supports running Manager running on a single computer with multi-user login. The overall objective is to allow a single interface to be used by multiple users on the same computer. The Multi-User Interface is enabled by default. All you need to do is log on to WVD Manager using either Tenant Access Credentials or RBAC Credential.

Feature: WVD Manager Options

There are a few items of the Wintellisys WVD Manager which you can control by enabling/disabling items in the WVD Manager Options. The WVD Manager Options can be lunched from “Configuration” category in left pane. Once lunched it shows a screen that helps you enable/disable items as shown in the screenshot below:

As shown in the screenshot above, you can enable logging VMs which remain Idle as part of Cost Analyzer. Similarly, you can enable/disable whether Active Users Dashboard should refresh or not when you start the application or switch to a WVD Tenant.

Feature: Session Hosts Manager

In WVD Manager 2.0 we included the ability to deploy Session Hosts. The Session Hosts Manager interface can be seen by navigating to “WVD Managers” category and then selecting “Session Hosts Manager”. Once selected, Session Hosts Manager screen provides you the ability to create multiple deployment templates as shown in the screenshot below:

Session Hosts Manager supports below features:

• Ability to create multiple deployment templates.
• Ability to deploy single or multiple Session Hosts to a selected WVD Pool.
• Copy existing templates
• Attach Host Deployment Templates to Auto-Scaling Policies.

FSLogix Profiles Manager

If your Tenant is using Microsoft FSLogix Service for profile management, WVD Manager 2.0 provides a profile management pane. The FSlogix Profiles Manager, found under “WVD Managers” category in left pane, can be used to see list of profiles hosted on each FSLogix box, their last access and write time and also let you perform some profile management tasks such as Compacting Profiles, deleting profiles and checking and fixing Profiles Permissions as shown in the screenshot below:

FSLogix Profiles Manager can also show you profile sizes in a chart and lets you filter those profiles with big sizes and export them to a CSV File.

Feature: WVD Notification Center

WVD Notification Center can be used to send you notification when one of the event occurs defined as part of the notifications that you create. For example, you can have an email sent to you when Session Hosts Heartbeat is not available or when desired Session Hosts are not serving clients. The WVD Notification Center can be lunched from “WVD Managers” category found in left pane.

Note: WVD Manager 2.0 ships with pre-configured notifications as it shows in the screenshot above. We are in the process of adding more notifications as we hear from our customers. If you would like to add a notification as part of the WVD Notification Center, please feel free to reach out to us at Sales@Wintellisys.com.

Feature: Operational Log

The Operational Log pane contains the activities which are performed by the RBAC Users. It shows date and time when an action was performed and the user who performed the action. Note that Operational Log is accessible to the Super User. Normal users or RBAC Users will not have access to Operational Log interface.

Feature: Tenant Configuration

In WVD Manager 2.0, we added an interface to check Tenant Configuration and be able to update the configuration. For example, you can update Service Principal, File Service Options and also change Tenant Access Credentials. As part of Tenant Configuration, you can also check the list of RBAC users which are assigned to the Tenant and the tasks that they are authorized to execute for selected Tenant as it shows in the screenshot below:

If you need to know more about Wintellisys WVD Manager, please reach out to us at Sales@Wintellisys.com or fill this form.