INUVIKA OPEN VIRTUAL DESKTOP FOUNDATION SERVER EVALUATION GUIDE Mathieu SCHIRES Version: 1.0.1 Published March 24, 2015 http://www.inuvika.com
Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 Pre-requisites 3 3 Using Third-Party Virtual Machine Software 4 3.1 VMWare Installation.................................... 4 3.2 VirtualBox Installation................................... 4 4 Starting the Evaluation 5 4.1 Server Roles......................................... 5 4.2 Accessing the OVD Administration Console....................... 5 4.2.1 OVD Servers..................................... 5 4.2.1.1 Servers tab................................ 5 4.2.1.2 Shared Folders tab............................ 5 4.2.1.3 Login Scripts tab............................. 5 4.2.2 Users Section.................................... 5 4.2.2.1 Users tab................................. 6 4.2.2.2 Publication Wizard............................ 6 4.2.3 Applications Section................................ 6 4.2.4 Other Sections................................... 6 4.3 Ready to Start a User Session............................... 6 4.3.1 Desktop Mode................................... 6 4.3.2 Portal Mode..................................... 6 4.3.3 Java Access...................................... 7 4.3.4 HTML5 Access.................................... 7 5 Next Steps 8 Page 1
1. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this documentation is to guide interested parties through an evaluation of OVD. The OVD Demo Appliance (ODM), a virtual machine which embeds all the basic components for evaluating and testing OVD, will be used in this document to present the solution. The ODM is based on an "Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty) 64 bits" operating system. This document doesn t present the steps to install OVD into a virtualized infrastructure such as VMWare vsphere or Microsoft Azure. Note that the ODM delivers the OVD Foundation Server functionality for Inuvika OVD. Page 2
2. PRE-REQUISITES You need to download the ODM on http://archive.inuvika.com/ovd. The downloaded file is named Inuvika-OVD-1.0.1-Demo-Appliance.ova. This file can be used with either VMWare or VirtualBox. The installation process is described in the following section Using Third-Party Virtual Machine Software Page 3
3. USING THIRD-PARTY VIRTUAL MACHINE SOFTWARE For the easiest setup, we recommend using a DHCP network with a bridged interface on your host machine configuration. 3.1 VMWARE INSTALLATION For the purpose of this evaluation, you can use the VMWare Player product. To import the ova file, in the Menu select on Player>File>Open. The import will take a few minutes and the ODM will be ready to use. 3.2 VIRTUALBOX INSTALLATION Alternatively, ODM may also be installed using VirtualBox. Start VirtualBox and import the Inuvika ova file. You will have to click on "Reinitialize the MAC address..." and then accept the Software License Agreement. By default, VirtualBox fails to assign a network interface and so you will need to update it in the Virtual Machine settings and save the configuration before starting the virtual machine. Page 4
4. STARTING THE EVALUATION ODM is easy to use and allows you to quickly get an idea of what OVD is and how it works. Start the ODM Virtual Machine and check the shell console that will be displayed to get the IP address listed to access OVD. Once ODM has completely started, enter the Virtual Machine IP in a web browser and links for accessing the OVD Administration Console (OAC) and the OVD Web Access (OWA) will be displayed as well as links to other information. To see the various user guides consult the appropriate documentation available in the section "Documentation" 4.1 SERVER ROLES ODM contains the OVD Session Manager (OSM), the OVD Web Access (OWA), the OVD Application Server for Linux (OAS) and the OVD File Server (OFS). More information about each component is available in the "Architecture and System Requirements" documentation which provides an overview of the components in OVD and describes how these components interact. 4.2 ACCESSING THE OVD ADMINISTRATION CONSOLE The OAC is a web based user interface that allows system administrators to manage and configure the OVD Farm. To see the servers that are currently configured in the OVD Farm, go to the Servers section in the administration console. 4.2.1 OVD SERVERS 4.2.1.1 SERVERS TAB On this page, you will see a single server which uses the OAS and OFS roles. If you don t want to use user profiles (no user data stored), you can disable the OFS role by clicking on the "disable the role" button. The list of the applications installed on the OAS is available by clicking on "Role:APS" The user profiles and shared folders stored on the OFS can be displayed by clicking on "Role: FS". 4.2.1.2 SHARED FOLDERS TAB The Shared Folders tab allows you to manage shared data spaces. A shared folder can be created to share documents among specific users or user groups in a controlled manner 4.2.1.3 LOGIN SCRIPTS TAB The Login Scripts feature allows you to add specific scripts that will be run when the user sessions is launched. You can use, for instance, this feature to connect the user session to a remote drive. 4.2.2 USERS SECTION This section displays the list of users and user groups. Publications (see "Application Publishing" in the "Overview of Open Virtual Desktop" document), are also available in this section. Page 5
4.2.2.1 USERS TAB ODM is pre-populated with a set of default users. The password for these users is the same as the user login for each user (eg login: cholland, password: cholland). When clicking on a user name, you will have access to further information about this user (the user groups associated with the user, available applications and session settings). It s possible to override the system defined session settings with user specific session settings for users that you choose. 4.2.2.2 PUBLICATION WIZARD The Publication Wizard provides an easy way to publish applications. This wizard lets you create a new user group with the selected users that should be in the user group, or to use an existing user group to associate with an existing application group or a new one application group that you can create with selected applications. 4.2.3 APPLICATIONS SECTION This section lists all the Applications and Web Applications that are available, as well as the available Applications groups. With the ODM, only Linux applications are pre-installed such as LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and others. More information on how to install additional applications is described in the OVD Administration Guide. 4.2.4 OTHER SECTIONS The other sections in the administration console refer to detailed configuration settings that are best referenced in the OVD Administration Guide. 4.3 READY TO START A USER SESSION The ODM is configured to be used immediately without any additional configuration. To run your first user session, enter the IP address displayed in the ODM console in a web browser. The user authentication screen will be displayed along with several session options. If this is the first time that the browser is being used to access OVD, then the system will try to download a Java Applet to the browser, see Java Access for more details. The various options are described below. 4.3.1 DESKTOP MODE Starting a session using "Desktop Mode" will display a Linux desktop that is populated with the Applications that have been published for the user. The OVD Desktop is based on the XFCE desktop environment. 4.3.2 PORTAL MODE Starting a session using "Portal Mode" will display a web based interface with icons representing the Applications that have been published for the user. A web based file manager application allows users to access data that the user is permitted to access. When launching applications in Portal Mode using Java access, the applications will be presented seamlessly which means that the applications appear to run locally. The applications are run in a separate browser window. When launching applications in Portal Mode using HTML5 access, the applications are contained within the browser window that was used to start the user session. Page 6
4.3.3 JAVA ACCESS ODM is configured to use Java access by default. Java-based access requires a Java Applet to be downloaded from OWA, installed and run. It will be necessary to install a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) on your client machine if one has not already been installed. If you already have a JVM installed, then the download will start automatically and the user will see notifications requesting authorization for the Java applet to run on the machine. The Java mode will automatically redirect your local drives into the OVD user session thus making any documents stored on those drives available for processing by the applications published for the user. Further details on the requirements for Java Access are described in the OVD Architecture and System Requirements document. 4.3.4 HTML5 ACCESS HTML5 access, unlike Java access, does not allow redirection of your local drives. However, this access does not require any software installation nor does it require a JVM. Page 7
5. NEXT STEPS You now have the basic information to be able to experiment with OVD, open documents and run applications. After choosing the mode and access type, select a user eg cholland and enter the password "cholland". Try out the various modes to understand the different user experience in each case. Advanced configuration can be used to configure the various default modes, enable and disable various options and make these settings available either system wide or for specific users. For more detailed information please refer to the OVD Administration Guide. Page 8