2 more question about ESXi -- console doesn't work and disabled NIC

[nk215]

I just notice yesterday that when I install view-agent and view-agent-direct-connect on my Win7 guest, the console - from vShere client- no longer works. Basically, the console will show the windows boot up, with the animation and everything however it will stop at “Starting Windows”. The guest OS continue to boot up fine and I can use view-client to log onto the guest.

Here’s the issue. If I accidently disable the network card in the guest via view-client. I am SOL. I can’t logon to the guest OS anymore. Shut the guess down, remove the NIC, boot it up, shut it down, and add a new NIC, boot it up - doesn’t fix the issue. I didn’t change the NIC emulator in the test however. I am pretty sure if I put in a PCI NIC and do the pass-through, it would work.

Here are the questions:
Is it normal to not have the console working property when view-agent/direct connection are installed on Win7 guest?

What’s the way round accidently disable the NIC in a guest OS since I won’t be able to log onto it via view-client and I won’t be able to use the console from vShere client.

Thanks

 

[whitey]

I seem to remember this happeneing to some similar effect. Like right now as I type this I am on my win7 VDI session served up through Horizon to my HP t310 zero client. If I attempt to open a console session to the SAME vdi VM from the vSphere classic C# client it gives me the attached screenshot, if I then go onto try to open that same VM in a web client popout (uses VMRC web browser popout, BAD idea, don't even try it) my screen goes NUTS, starts looping/making sounds like a new devices is connecting repeatedly, lose control of session, have to reset zero client only to be returned by same looping nonsense. I did however save a reboot of my win7 vdi VM by snapping ctrl+shift+esc to bring up task mgr, took a few tries to allow me to control any screen input but then I quickly killed off chrome VMRC console session that had me buggered up...yeah don't do that. HAHA

 

[nk215]

Can the HP t310 connect to a guest VM with view-agent and view-agent-direct-connection? I don't have a server OS to install Horizon Sever on. How's the zero client connect to a guest? does it have a menu with multiple guests to pick from?

Thanks

 

[whitey]

Not sure good sir, I use the zero client on full-fledged Horizon deployments w/ proper/recommended infrastructure/architecture deployment models so I have a connection broker, security server (so I can access VDI infra on WAN). I think I saw some recent chatter last week about a direct-connect method on here but I've never used/taken that route as I have access to all VMware bits/lics so YMMV taking this route.

The inherent nature of the t310 being a stateless/zero client I can only show you the menu from cell phone pictures unless I just show you a soft client interface, give me a bit and I'll shoot those up here. Zero client connects to the guest by first dhcp'ing onto LAN, having a configured connection broker that manages/presents the VDI pool of VM's (per pool/Vm entitlements), horizon guest agent takes care of heartbeating to broker and broker does session assignment/proxying and off to the races.