Expanded Guide for Windows 8 on VMware View

Last week I started trying to get a Vmware View Pool working for Demoing Windows 8 for users. At my boss's request because we could show what we can do with View and also preventing people from digging up old PCs and laptops to install it on.


I quickly found the post made by Andre Leibovici at http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=2991 on the steps to creating a VMware Pool of Windows 8 VMs. Great blog by the way. This post was exactly what I was looking for but I ran into a few problems like others in the comments of his blog that I wanted to try and answer if possible.


Normally we can we can install windows and then the VMware Tools followed by the VMware View Agent. Then create a pool selecting that VM to be replicated/cloned. However currently after looking at the logs I believe there is a issue with the VMware View Agent communication with the View Server which shows up as "Waiting for agent".

Waiting for Agent Problem

Before I had started to follow Leibovici's post I tried to create a Windows 8 VMware Automated Pool like I normally would. This is where one of my problems came up. I created the Windows 8 VM, Installed the VMware tools, then Agent and tried to create a Pool. I cloned my windows 8 VM to 5 VMs , customized them and started them. Then started "Waiting for agent". For anyone that has tried this might know this is as far as the VM ever gets. You can see the errors by checking out the logs on both the client and server.

View Agent Log Events Path: C:\ProgramData\VMware\VDM
View Server Log Events Path: C:\ ProgramData\VMware\VDM\logs


At this time I know of no solution for this issue. These VM's do exist in the ADAM Database under the Servers OU but changing the pae-OSVersion has no effect. You'll find the following links talking about it it but none of which provided a solution as of yet.

VMware KB : 1010441 - Waiting for Agent
VMware Communities: Windows 8 with View 5

While I had no luck finding a solution for this I believe its why Leibovici guide has your create a manual pool and connect the Windows 8 vm's as "Other Sources" in order to get around this problem.

Other Sources

If your like me you may never use this feature of View. If so you let me show you it should look like. From inside the VMware View Admin web site expand View Configuration and select Registered Desktop Sources. You'll notice that i have a Zero here because in this screen shot I have not yet successively connected a machine as a Other Source.

This shows you two types of sources Terminal Services Sources and Other Sources. Other Sources is what were interested in. Other Sources are normally Physical machines with the VMware View Agent Installed so that View Offer these machines in a Manual Pool. Because following Leibovici's post we want our Windows 8 VM to show up under Other Sources.

How to Search VMware View ADAM Instance

A few of the VMware View posts I've read recently had people searching for Objects by hand from the Servers OU in the VMware View Adam Database.  I"m not sure if they just didn't feel like explaining how to search it but I figured I'd five a quick guide on how to do this because even in a small View deployment this can be like finding a needle in a hay stack as there can easily be hundreds of objects.

First we need to Connect to the VMware View ADAM instance which I covered here. .

Next Right Click the "Default naming Context..."  and select New, and then Query.

Open a New Query Window. Enter what ever you want for the name.
Most likely for the "Root of Search" you want the to click browse and select the top node.
and finally the Query String you'll need to edit to find what your looking for.

Usually I'm looking for a Pool of Vms or specific VM.

When looking for a pool of VMs with same base name I can use a '*' as a wildcard search. Be sure to replace basename with your vm pool name.


(&(objectClass=pae-VM)(pae-displayname=basename*) )


If I know the full VM name then something like the following.


(&(objectClass=pae-VM)(pae-displayname=FullVMName) )

Play around and see what works. To edit your query right click it choose settings.

You can also use any type of boolean search to do more complicated searches.

Logical Operator	Description
=	Equals to
&	AND
!	Not
|	OR