Deploying VDI with Kaviza

Virtual Desktop infrastructure has become a very hot technology nowadays and
the simple reason for this is that it simplifies the management, provisioning,
and securing of desktops by migrating them to the datacenter. But the issue with
VDI deployment is that, it's pretty difficult and needs a lot of technologies to
work properly and in sync. Well, we can't reduce the number of technologies
required for VDI to work properly, but this time we have been able to find out a
solution for deploying VDI, which is pretty straightforward and is more or less
self sufficient. The other benefit of this application is that, it is a virtual
appliance and hence requires lesser effort in terms of deployment. The name of
the application is Kaviza. We will be talking about how to deploy and use Kaviza
in two part story starting with this article which is the first part and will be
talking about the deployment of this appliance.

Booting the appliance

You will require a working VMWare ESXi server ready before you can start
deploying Kaviza. The configuration and installation of VMWare ESXi server is
out of the scope of this article, and we expect that, you have the basic knowhow
for installing VMWare ESXi server. VMWare ESXi server is free and can be
downloaded from http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/. Once your VMWare ESXi
server is up and running you have to download Kaviza's appliance from http://www.kaviza.com/Registration.aspx.
This site will allow you to download the 60-days trial version of the product.
Else you can order the product and buy from the same website.

Once you have registered and downloaded the appliance, you have to extract
from the zip file. After extracting you will find an OVF (Open Virtualization
Format) format appliance. Now you need to import this appliance to your VMWare
ESXi server. Doing this is pretty simple; all you need to do is to first install
VMware vSphere client on a machine sitting on the same network and then connect
it with the ESXi server so that you can manage it graphically. And once the
vSphere is connected click on the File  Deploy OVF Template option. A box will
open, here browse to the location where the Kaviza appliance is stored and
select the OVF file. This will create a virtual machine with Kaviza. Once Kaviza
is installed, boot the Virtual machine and wait till it gets an IP from the DHPC
server.

Configuring Kaviza

To make things simple, let's assume that IP address which Kaviza has got is
192.168.5.65. So, once the machine has got the IP address, go to another machine
in the same network and go to the link http://192.168. 5.65/dt. This will open
up kaviza's login page. Here provide the username as “kavizaadmin” and password
as “kaviza” and you will be able to login to the Kaviza system.

And once you login, kaviza will start up the wizard to configure the basic
settings. This will first ask you to configure the hypervisor where the desktops
will be installed virtually. Here you can either select VMWare ESK, MS Hyper V
or XEN. But as we already have a VMWare ESXi server preinstalled, which is
running the Kaviza appliance, we can use the same machine for desktop
virtualization. So we will select VMware ESX, and will provide the IP, username,
password and the datastore (the partition where the virtual machines will be
kept) for the same.

Here you have to select the hypervisor you are going to use with kaviza for virtualization of the desktop and provide required settings for the same.

The next step will be to configure the grid. Here you will need to create a
new grid for your Kaviza configuration. Further this grid will be used to add
more failsafe Kaviza boxes to the setup. After you are done with this step, you
will be asked to select if you want to use Kaviza's inbuilt user database for
session broking or if you want to integrate it with an Active Directory. As we
were doing a test deployment we went with the Kaviza's local database. The last
section in this Wizard asks you if your virtual desktops will be managed by
VMware VCenter or not. Here just select no and proceed. Once the wizard is done,
your Kaviza setup will be more or less ready. Now the next big thing is to
configure  template/s for your desktops which will be used for creating all the
desktop sessions.

Creating the first template

To create the template first of all you will need a Windows XP installation
inside the VMWare ESXi box. You can simply create a new virtual machine in your
ESXi server using vSphere and install Windows XP on top of it. Now you have to
go back to Kaviza's web interface and then go to Templates and tab and click on
“Import an existing virtual machine as a working desktop” link. This will show
you the Virtual machines running on the ESXi server with the same datastore. Now
select the correct virtual machine with Windows XP from here and say create.
This will add the machine to the “Working Desktop” list. Now you have to
configure certain things to the Virtual Windows XP machine so that it can be
used as a template. To do so click on the connect link on the same page, and if
you have enabled the remote desktop of the virtual XP instance, then it will
open the RDP connection to the machine. If not then access the machine from the
vSphere interface.

Here you have to select the hypervisor you are going to use with kaviza for virtualization of the desktop and provide required settings for the same.

Once you have logged into the machine, first make sure you have installed all
the necessary application which you want to be available on the template. Now
open up the browser from the same machine and go to http://192.168.65/dt/dtagent.zip
. This will download a small zip file. Extract the file and run the
installation.bat file. Once the bat file is successfully installed you should be
able to add the virtual machine as a template.

To do so, go back to kaviza's interface and click on the Prepare link on the
same page which says “Working Desktop” udder templates tab. This will first ask
you the serial number of the Windows XP installation and your time zone.

Then it will initiate a remote command sequence on the virtual XP instance.
It might ask you for some user verification as well. Once this is done your
first sample template is ready. Next month we will see how you can use this
template to create a fleet of virtual desktops in just few clicks.