For an upcoming presentation I’m installing the VMware View Composer on a Windows 2008 R2 box and being fairly new to the VMware View architecture I just thought I should click and go… Ok, maybe I should have looked into the manual but where’s the fun in that :). In all honesty: the VMware documentation is good and well written so if I would have read the guides I probably wouldn’t ran into these problems.

View DSN Error

I got myself a Windows 2008 R2 VM, just a standard VM in my test domain. The only thing installed were the VMware Tools. So I logged into the box and launched the VMware-viewcomposer-5.2.0-983460 and after excepting the usual EULA and adding .Net 3.5 I could get to an installation dialog saying ‘ODBC DSN setup’. When I clicked on the button it would throw me an error message saying ‘Setup failed to execute the ODBC Administrator: odbcad32.exe’. I canceled this dialog box and made the system DSN manually via the Control Panel – Administrative Tools – ODBC Data Sources.

View Authentication Warning

I restarted the installation and could enter the details into the configuration screen using the manually made system DSN but after clicking next I would get an warning ‘Connecting to a remote database using windows authentication is not currently supported.’ I had to configure a local SQL account for this database in order to make a successful connection, local SQL accounts are ok although they are a hell to administer. I tend to use AD account because we can use stuff like managed service accounts.

UAC Error

Next stop was the installation itself but that gave me an error too  *sigh*.. After I turned off UAC (and rebooted) I could run the installer and finish the installation of the VMware View Composer.

So summarizing this I had to manually create a DSN, add a local SQL account and turn off UAC to run this installer. While these steps are pretty easy I made a small video showing the installation like I did:

While I hear Citrix’s product are complex and VMware View should be easy to setup I can say that this particular installation could be improved by taking away these problems. I’m fully aware that I should read the manual and thereby be avoiding these issues but the point is software developers (in general) should create software installations that run without having to go through a manual. Installing the software should be easy.. It’s the configuring part that needs a good mind.

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Kees Baggerman

Kees Baggerman is a Staff Solutions Architect for End User Computing at Nutanix. Kees has driven numerous Microsoft and Citrix, and RES infrastructures functional/technical designs, migrations, implementations engagements over the years.

Latest posts by Kees Baggerman (see all)

• Nutanix AHV and Citrix MCS: Adding a persistent disk via Powershell – v2 - November 19, 2019
• Recovering a Protection Domain snapshot to a VM - September 13, 2019
• Checking power settings on VMs using powershell - September 11, 2019
• Updated: VM Reporting Script for Nutanix with Powershell - July 3, 2019
• Updated (again!): VM Reporting Script for Nutanix AHV/vSphere with Powershell - June 17, 2019