VCAP-DTA Objective 2.1 – Configure and Manage View Global Policies and Settings

Now we’ve got past upgrading, migrating and installing, it’s time to delve into some of the system wide settings in View. We’ve got (or should have) Connection Servers, Transfer Servers, Security Servers and Composer Servers. This objective focuses on global policies and global settings. So in the exam, remember these are most likely to be found at the “top level” of your View configuration, so you shouldn’t have to start going drilling into user and desktop settings. Keep that in mind if you’re asked to manipulate these settings in the exam.

That being said, there are certain settings that can be set explicitly instead of inherited. So for example, you may wish to disable USB access for everyone as you don’t want anyone plugging in a thumb drive and stealing your company assets! However, VIP users may require access, so you can configure an allow policy for them further down the tree, as it were.

So without further ado,  the skills and abilities being tested :-

• Enable and disable global policies – In View Administrator, in the left hand column is the section Policies. Open this out and you’ll see the Global Policies. You’ll be pleased to see there isn’t a great deal to set here, so hopefully as and when you’re asked to do something on the exam, it won’t told you up for too long. This screen is broken into two sections, View Policies and Local Mode Policies.
  • In the View Policies dialog, you can either allow or deny the following – Multimedia Redirection, USB Access, Remote Mode and PCoIP Hardware Acceleration. Click the Edit Policies button and make your choices.
  • Local Mode Policies is similar, but has a little more granularity to the settings. So as well as determining if a feature is available or not, you can also set policies for  Max time without server contact, Target replication frequency and Disks replicated.
• As I mentioned above, global policies don’t have to be a “one size fits all” scenario. Chances are in the exam, you’ll be asked to set a system wide policy to say disable USB Access but then set one pool to allow it. To do this, go to the pool, click the Policies tab, click Edit Policies and select USB Access to Allow. The diagram below illustrates this point and the right most column shows the effective setting, which is really useful to know!

• Configure and modify global settings – Again these settings are accessed from the left most bar from the View Configuration section.
  • Click Global Settings and again you get a split pane view of General and Security settings. General has 7 settings – Session Timeout (default 600 seconds), SSO, View Administrator Session Timeout (default 30 mins, my bet is the exam will ask you to shorten this), Enable Automatic Status Updates (updates View Administrator dashboard every 5 mins. Another one I’d expect on the exam), Display A Pre-Login message, Display Warning Before Forced Logoff  with sub option After warning, logoff after n minutes (default being 5 mins). There is also a free text box to display a warning, this may well feature on the exam.
  • Security Settings are pretty minimal too. Options here are Reauthenticate tunnel connections after network interruption, message security mode  (JMS messages are signed and verified – Mixed means enabled but not enforced. Expect to be asked to enforce this on the exam), Enable IPsec for Security Server Pairing (unlikely you’ll be asked to change this), Disable Single Sign On For Local Mode Operations (disables pass through authentication to the desktop after logging into View).

And that’s it! This section is thankfully a short one. See you next time!