Configuring Your Server

1. Open Windows Services (Start -> Run -> Services.msc)
2. Change the properties of the Windows Audio Endpoint Service and Windows Audio Service to “Automatic”. If the services are not already started, you can manually start them at this time.
3. Open Terminal Services ( Start -> Run -> tsconfig.msc)
4. Right-click on the RDP-TCP connection and bring up its properties. Go to the “Client Settings” and make sure that on “Redirection Audio” is not disabled.
5. Fully log out and log back into the RDP connection to the server. You will see a balloon error on your speaker icon that states “No Audio Output Device is installed.”

Making Registry Changes

1. You will now need to back up your registry and some registry changes.
2. I want to reiterate the instruction to back up your registry … As with most technical guides/walkthroughs, SoftLayer will not be held liable for any corruptions that may result from you attempting these changes. The next two steps will show how to quickly back up your registry.
3. Log into your server on an account with Administrator rights, and open regedit (Start -> Run -> regedit)
4. Export the current registry (from the “File” menu) and copy it to a location off of your server so you have it backed up.
5. Locate the following key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AudioEngine\AudioProcessingObjects. This will contain several subkeys all each named with a GUID.
6. Click on each subkey, then right-click and select “Permissions.” You will then click on the “Advanced” button and the “Owner” tab. The current owner should be listed as “TrustedInstaller.”
7. Select the Administrative account and/or group from the list and click “OK” to change the ownership.
8. Select the account you just chose and give it “Full Control,” then click “OK.”
9. In the “Detail” box of each subkey, double-click on the DWORD value “MinOutputConnections” and change it from 1 to 0, then click “OK.”
10. Once you have done this for each subkey in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AudioEngine\AudioProcessingObjects, you can close regedit and restart the Windows Audio and Windows Audio Endpoint services.

Configuring Your RDP Client

Now that you have everything ready on the server, you just need to make sure your RDP client recognizes the audio. Log off of the server so you can configure your RDP client. Open RDP, go to the “Options” menu, and under “Local Resources,” select “Configure Remote Audio Settings.” Select “Play on this Computer,” and hit “OK.” Voila! You now should be able to hear sound from your Windows 2008 RDP connection.

-Bill

In the four years since our Seattle facility launched, over 60% of our original team – the folks our Dallas team trained – are still here. Being part of such a huge team and watching the SoftLayer roll out data centers around the world is exciting, and seeing our customers grow with us is even better. In the midst of all of that growth, our team is always trying to figure out new technologies and techniques to share with customers to help them meet their ever-evolving needs. The goal: Give our customers total control.

One great example of this focus was our recent launch of QuantaStor Storage Servers. We teamed up with industry leader OS Nexus to bring our customers a production-ready mass storage appliance with a combined SAN and NAS storage system built into the Ubuntu Server and provides a number of system features such as snapshots, compression, remote replication and thin provisioning. A customer could use this in a number of environments from virtualized systems to video production to web and application servers, or as a backup based server. If you’re looking for a mass storage system, I highly recommend it.

If we’ve grown this much in my first four years, I can only imagine what the business will look like four years from now. A SoftLayer data center on every corner? Maybe we can get PHIL to figure out how we can put a SoftLayer pod in the space normally occupied by a coffee shop … making sure to keep as much coffee as possible, obviously.

-Bill

Accessing Desktop Apps Anytime, Anywhere, from Any Device

The computing world is changing rapidly – driven by the consumerization of applications, the demands for employees to be in an “always on” mode, and the revolution of mobile computing. End users have become App savvy and with the advent of the “there’s an app for that” generation applications that have become very easy for end users to install and run on their own. The computing platforms they use have become self-service in nature and new applications are now easy to find and no longer require IT to research, purchase, install, and manage. In fact, IT departments have lost control over what applications run on these devices posing a huge support problem and security threat.

In today’s economy organizations demand their employees to do more with smaller staffs forcing employees to be “always on” with e-mail and other work data now delivered to their desktops, smart phones, tablets, and home computers. People on average now access work data and applications from three devices with new choices of mobile devices available almost daily.

VDI Sticker Shock – With all of these changes many IT departments have considered virtual desktops as a solution to provide access to multiple platforms, remote access, and secured network stored data. Consultants and vendors have been trying to sell organizations virtual desktops as VDI, but most organizations suffer from sticker shock facing huge start-up costs and little or no economies of scale. Most organizations fail to see any potential ROI with VDI solutions and end up tabling the decision for next year’s budget.

Hosted Virtual Desktops – Hosted virtual desktops are cloud desktop services provided in the cloud by a service provider. Unlike typical VDI deployments, with these cloud desktop services, all of the infrastructure is provided by the service provider, and the client organization can purchase virtual desktops as they need them and are not subject to uncontrolled costs or continually expanding infrastructure.

Hosted virtual desktops are purchased from the service provider as a simple operations expense that can be budgeted as a per user per month cost and can even reduce their overall costs of Microsoft licensing and data storage compared to more expensive VDI solutions. Beyond the infrastructure cost benefits, the cloud desktop services provider centrally manages these virtual desktops – including mundane tasks like Windows and anti-virus updates. With the expertise of managing thousands of virtual desktops for many clients, a cloud desktop service provider delivers a consistent end user experience and a very high quality of service. These cloud desktop services are then accessed anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Outsourced desktop management is also a considerable cost savings to organizations that varies based on their internal support structure.

Bring your Own Device, BYOD/BYOC – Many organizations have considered “bring your own device/computer” programs as an employee benefit. BYO programs allow employees to select their own computing device or bring their own computer to work while accessing their employer’s supported desktop environment, applications and data through use of a virtual desktop.

Some of these programs have been driven from the top by executives who want to access corporate resources from their iPad or other personal device. Other BYO programs have been developed to attract and retain technically astute employees by giving these employees a choice of computing platforms as an employee benefit for hiring the brightest and most qualified and sought after job candidates. And some BYO programs exist to essentially create a controlled, secured, and legitimate way to allow employees to connect to their corporate resources without having employees’ rogue devices accessing the network.

Just as with any virtual desktop solution, hosted virtual desktops are often a better approach than VDI. ICC Global Hosting has worked with Citrix to provide a Hosted BYO program which specifically provides a service for quick BYOD proof of concepts or smaller scale BYOD deployments. These cloud desktop services are then delivered to virtually any device including PCs, Macs, thin clients, iPads, iPhones, Android tablets and phones, and other mobile devices.

Virtual Desktops on SoftLayer’s CloudLayer Platform – SoftLayer recently announced the availability of cloud desktop services managed by ICC Global Hosting. This partnership combines the scalability and security of SoftLayer’s CloudLayer Platform with ICC Global Hosting’s hosted virtual desktop expertise.

SoftLayer clients benefit from the enhanced performance and security of applications running along with hosted virtual desktops on the CloudLayer Platform. This solution lets clients obtain the all the features and benefits of VDI without the overhead and headaches of VDI. Organizations may now access cloud desktop services Anytime, Anywhere, and from Any Device with ICC and SoftLayer.

-Mark Moeller, ICC Global Hosting

Because the Internet has made content so much more accessible, it’s usually easy to log in remotely to your home PC using something like Remote Desktop, but what if your home computer is not powered on? You hope a family member is at home to turn on the computer when you call, but what if everyone is out of the house? Most people like me in the past would have just given up altogether since there would be no clear and immediate solution. Leaving your computer on all day could work, but what if you’re on an extended trip and you don’t want to run up your electricity bill? I’d probably start traveling with some portable storage device like a flash drive or portable hard drive to avoid the problem. This inelegant solution requires that I not forget the device, and the storage media would have to be large enough to contain all necessary files (and I’d also have to know ahead of time which ones I might need).

Given these alternatives, I usually found myself hoping for the best with the portable device, and as anticipated, there would still be some occasions where I didn’t happen to have the right files with me on that drive. When I started working for SoftLayer, I was introduced to a mind-blowing technology called IPMI, and my digital life has never been the same.

IPMI – Intelligent Platform Management Interface – is a standardized system interface that allows system administrators to manage and monitor a computer. Though this may be more than what the common person needs, I immediately found IPMI to be incredible because it allows a person to remotely power on any computer with that interface. I was ecstatic to realize that for my next computer build, I could pick a motherboard that has this feature to achieve total control over my home computer for whatever I needed. IPMI may be standard for all servers at SoftLayer, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a luxury feature.

If you’ve ever had the need to power on your computers and/or access the computer’s BIOS remotely, I highly suggest you look into IPMI. As I learned more and more about the IPMI technology, I’ve seen how it can be a critical feature for business purposes, so the fact that it’s a standard at SoftLayer would suggest that we’ve got our eye out for state-of-the art technologies that make life easier for our customers.

Now I don’t have to remember where I put that flash drive!

-Danny

The DesktopLayer from CyberlinkASP

Hosted virtual desktops – SoftLayer style.

In early 2006, we were introduced to SoftLayer. In 2007, they brought us StorageLayer, and in 2009, CloudLayer. Each of those solutions met a different kind of need in the Application Service Provider (ASP) world, and by integrating those platforms into our offering, DesktopLayer was born: The on-demand anytime, anywhere virtual desktop hosted on SoftLayer and powered by CyberlinkASP.

CyberlinkASP was originally established to instantly web-enable software applications that were not online in the past. Starting off as a Citrix integration firm in the early days, we were approached by multiple independent software vendors asking us to host, manage and deliver their applications from a centralized database platform to their users across multiple geographic locations. With the robust capabilities of Citrix, we were able to revolutionize application delivery and management for several ISV’s.

Over time, more ISV’s starting showing up at our doorstep, and application delivery was becoming a bigger and bigger piece of our business. Our ability to provision users on a specific platform in minutes, delete them in minutes, perform updates and maintain hundreds of customers and thousands of users all at one time from a centralized platform was very attractive.

Our users began asking us, “Is it possible to put our payroll app on this platform too?” “What about Exchange and Office?” They loved the convenience of not managing the DBs for individual applications, and they obviously wanted more. Instead of providing one-off solutions for individual applications, we built the DesktopLayer, a hosted environment for virtual desktops.

We deliver a seamless and integrated user experience utilizing SoftLayer, Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop. When our users log in they see the same screen, the same applications and the same performance they received on their local machine. The Citrix experience takes over the entire desktop, and the look and feel is indistinguishable. It’s exactly what they are accustomed to.

Our services always include the Microsoft suite (Exchange, Office, Sharepoint) and is available on any device, from your PC to your Mac to your iPad. To meet the needs of our customers, we also integrate all 3rd party apps and non-Microsoft software into the virtual desktop – if our customers are using Peachtree or Quickbooks for accounting and Kronos for HR, they are all seamlessly published to the users who access them, and unavailable to those that do not.

We hang our hat on our unique ability to tie all of a company’s applications into one centralized user experience and support it. Our Dallas-based call center is staffed with a team of knowledgeable engineers who are always ready to help troubleshoot and can add/delete and customize new users in minutes. We take care of everything … When someone needs help setting up a printer or they bought a new scanner, they call our helpdesk and we take it from there. Users can call us directly for support and leave the in-house IT team to focus on other areas, not desktop management.

With the revolution of cloud computing, many enterprises are trending toward the eradication of physical infrastructure in their IT environments. Every day, we see more and more demand from IT managers who want us to assume the day-to-day management of their end user’s entire desktop, and over the past few years, the application stack that we deliver to each of our end users has grown significantly.

As Citrix would say “the virtual desktop revolution is here.” The days of having to literally touch hundreds of devices at users’ workstations are over. Servers in the back closet are gone. End users have become much more unique and mobile … They want the same access, performance and capabilities regardless of geography. That’s what we provide. DesktopLayer, with instant computing resources available from SoftLayer, is the future.

I remember someone telling me in 2006 that it was time for the data center to “grow up”. It has. We now have hundreds of SMB clients and thousands of virtual desktops in the field today, and we love having a chance to share a little about how we see the IT landscape evolving. Thanks to our friends at SoftLayer, we get to tell that story and boast a little about what we’re up to!

- Chris M. Lantrip, Chief Executive, CyberlinkASP

Let’s see how old the audience is. Raise your hand if you ever had to yell into a phone telling a datacenter tech what to type.

“’S’ as in Sam, ‘H’ as in Harry, ‘O’ as in Oscar, ‘W’ as in Wally, SPACE, ‘D’ as in David, ‘E’ as in Edward, ‘V’ as in Victor, ‘I’ as in Isabel, ‘C’ as in Charlie, ‘E’ as in Edward, ENTER” (extra credit to whoever can name the OS without using a search engine or reading ahead).

For some of you this is a recent event, but there will come a day when our IT generation can regale the youngsters with stories of “When I first started in IT, we didn’t have this fancy KVM stuff you kids have today…”.

KVM over IP isn’t exactly brand new. It has been around for a few years starting with external devices hanging off the back of the server. But it is becoming much more common to find daughtercards from your favorite motherboard manufacturer with this capability. The motherboard suppliers have already added other server control technologies like IPMI and iAMT to the motherboard. I wonder how long until KVM over IP makes the jump from the optional daughtercard to coming standard on the motherboard? I’ll bet we’ll see it before you can spell VMS.

-@nday91