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So, where are we today with regards to our little checklist? Let’s recap what we need to do:

• Configure a VM for the first time to accept RDP, redirect the user’s home folder as well as their favorites
• Make a template out of the VM and generalize it for automatic deployment
• Manage the actual Hyper-V environment, with or without a clustered platform
• Manage the virtual machines, including templates and resource management
• Manage the OS, including patching and troubleshooting
• Automate the VDI solution as much as possible

So far I’ve managed to get RDP sort of up and running with the xrdp server. I write “sort of” because it lacks a couple of features – the major ones being no support for sound, it’s rather slow and the letter ‘d’ is mapped as a “Show desktop” shortcut, even after I removed the shortcut in Ubuntu.

Some of these might be sorted out in future releases of xrdp or by spending enough time configuring and tinkering with the settings. I don’t have that time though but let’s just cut this part some slack and move on to the next part.

I did not manage to redirect my home folder, nor my favorites but that was just because I almost threw my keyboard out the window every time I pressed ‘d’ and all my windows on my Ubuntu client disappeared. It should be quite doable to mount a Windows/SMB share and then create a symlink to these shares.

The tricky part is to generalize this setup so that any user that logs on gets his/her home folder and favorites. This I have yet to solve but I will give it another stab later, maybe tomorrow.

After that we try to create some sort of template out of the VM. Should be interesting!

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I’m a strong proponent of free things, up until where it’s actually not free. As car analogies are the bread and butter of any IT-related argument I’ll use one as well.

Maybe your uncle Brad gives you an old Chevy Suburban from 1988. Free of charge – it’s your to keep and cherish! Maybe you live in a state or country where insurance isn’t all that important and the DMV couldn’t give a crap if your car is secure as long as it runs and passes some sort of emissions test.

So, a free car – excellent!

No.

An old Chevy Suburban has a very thirsty engine that requires a lot of gas to keep satisfied. An old Chevy Suburban breaks down a lot – at least one that your Uncle Brad can give away for free. Sure, the parts are cheap but it takes a lot of time to fix it, and, if you can’t tinker with it yourself, a lot of money as well.

So, is that car really free?

No bonus points if you already figured out that the car is an analogue for an operating system.

Where am I going with all of this then? I’m glad you asked.