Connecting to VM through thin client.

[Berserk87]

I have a Windows 7 virtual machine setup through VMware. I would like to connect to it through a thin client using vmware view. 

I've setup my old laptop using this guide. 

As far as I can tell I need vmware view connection server but the only links I can find are 64-bit or 3rd party websites. 

I don't know if i'm missing something. 

[+BudMan MVC]

So you don't have view, but you want to have your client connect to a view server?

 

Kind of need VIEW

 

See in first sentence of that guide

"we have a full VMware View infrastructure."

 

http://www.vmware.com/products/horizon-view

[Berserk87]

It IS horizon...I did see that on the guide but couldn't figure out where or what view was packaged with. 

Every time I found view on their website it was by itself but said that I didn't have access to it and wouldn't give me a buy or trial option. 

It's only $3000, what a deal!

[Berserk87]

Ok. So I have Windows Server 2008 virtual machine. In order to get vmware view server connection I need to setup a domain controller. (man this is getting expensive). 

[sinetheo]

  On 25/05/2015 at 22:19, Berserk87 said:

Ok. So I have Windows Server 2008 virtual machine. In order to get vmware view server connection I need to setup a domain controller. (man this is getting expensive). 

 

 

What is wrong with Windows Remote Desktop? You can configure your router with a wake on lan magic packet or use some remote tools like logmein if you do not feel comfortable opening that port up. I would open a random high port and use that one for remote desktop on the other computer. That way you can go into your desktop to launch your VMs.

 

FYI MS has ported Windows Remote Desktop to Android too

[Clirion]

  On 25/05/2015 at 22:19, Berserk87 said:

Ok. So I have Windows Server 2008 virtual machine. In order to get vmware view server connection I need to setup a domain controller. (man this is getting expensive). 

 

VMWare Horizon View is a Virtual Desktop Solution designed to deliver desktops to a user in a Corporate enviroment.  It is designed to use AD as part of the security.  It can be used at home or in a lab situation, but it is very expensive to do.

 

If you only want to use the Virtual Machine with a Thin Client, use RDP as sinetheo pointed out in the post above me.  Much cheaper and should be able to do done easily.

[Berserk87]

For some reason I believe/believed that setting up the laptop as a thin client through vmware would give me better performance then running RDP. 

As ridiculous as this sounds what I wanted to try was using my laptop as a client to access a virtual machine to see if I could play higher end games on my old laptop. 

[Berserk87]

I've got a windows 2008 server setup as the active domain directory and I've installed vmware viewer on a seperate server and connected it to the domain.

Now I'm just trying to figure out the last few steps to get the viewer to connect to the server.

[Berserk87]

I can't seem to figure out these last few steps. I think i'm missing something. 

I have two windows 2008 servers running. One is for active domain directory. The other has vmware view server connection running and has that machine listed under available connections. 

On the thin client im putting in the ip address of the view server and it wont connect. 

/imanoob. 

[+BudMan MVC]

Not sure why you are playing with this to be honest, are you really going to fork over cost of view?  Are you going to pay for AD?

 

To be honest if all you want to do is remote desktop from a laptop booting a min OS there are much easier FREE ways to do it..

 

http://thinstation.github.io/thinstation/

 

Is just 1 example..  LTSP would be another with rdesktop you could then be on any VM or physical machine to use..  This is much easier to setup and FREE.. Can even boot the laptop via pxe and get to what, that way no reason to not leave a OS on the laptop you could really use on is own, etc. etc..

 

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP

[n_K]

Playing games over RDP is a mistake, and if you try it you'll soon see why.

If you want to game, game on the decent PC, not through an intermediatry.

[Berserk87]

  On 27/05/2015 at 11:40, BudMan said:

Not sure why you are playing with this to be honest, are you really going to fork over cost of view?  Are you going to pay for AD?

 

To be honest if all you want to do is remote desktop from a laptop booting a min OS there are much easier FREE ways to do it..

 

 

Mostly fun / curiosity. 

I would prefer free/simple software if its available. I just want to be able to connect my laptop to a virtual machine on my main PC and have it function as close to native as possible with good performance. 

[binaryzero]

RDP.

 

Make the thin client boot up, auto login, and launch the RDP session. I do similar with the fleet of thin clients I manage, however we're using Citrix. 

[Berserk87]

I've download and setup a vm running thinstation but I don't know what to do beyond that. 

I've played with ubuntu but i'm not a linux guy. can't seem to figure out how to install / setup rdesktop. 

[Berserk87]

looks like my install went weird. starting again and building new image. 

[jamieakers]

Citrix isn't going to get you anywhere here, it's simply a layer over the top of RDP anyhow so you'll get the graphics of RDP but a bit slower because of Citrix being in there too.  If you want to remotely game on a laptop you'd be better off with something specifically designed for this - for example the Steam client does this out-of-the-box quite well.