I’ve talked about vMA and Active Directory (AD) integration before, also upgrading and troubleshooting it. This time out, we’re going to talk about doing this on vMA 5.0. I’ll start with the assumption that you’ve deployed vMA already.

Attaching vMA 5.0 to Active Directory (AD)

1. Make sure vMA is in DNS
   
2. Make sure vMA is using your DNS server(s):
   
3. Check DNS:
   
4. Set the hostname:
   sudo hostname vma.provmware.local
5. Do this stuff:
   vi-admin@localhost:~> sudo domainjoin-cli join provmware.local provmware@provmware.local
   vi-admin’s password:
   Joining to AD Domain:   provmware.local
   With Computer DNS Name: vma.provmware.local

   provmware@PROVMWARE.LOCAL’s password:
   Warning: System restart required
   Your system has been configured to authenticate to Active Directory for the first time.  It is recommended that
   you restart your system to ensure that all applications recognize the new settings.

   SUCCESS

Once you’ve rebooted, all should be good! Really:

While I’d love to be able to claim I was clever enough to think of this on my own, that would straight up be lying (I really am not all that clever . Well, it would be more than lying, I’d not be giving proper credit to his awesomeness Rich Brambley at VM/Etc for coming up with this gem.

Single App RDP using the Ubuntu Terminal Server Client.

I encourage you to click through to the complete article for some additional tips & tricks. For those who can’t wait, it consists of selecting the “Programs” tab of the Terminal Services Client Window and specifying the path to the application:

For me this path includes the pass through auth parameter, as well, RDP prompts you once… why type more? The end result looks like:

C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe -passthroughAuth -s virtualcenter.domain.local

Again, my thanks to Rich for sorting this one out. Hard to believe I lived without it.

Had a situation in which time in a Linux guest kept creeping about, slower, faster, etc. To the point where NTP wasn’t helping before. This in turn, like all good questions, turned me to that which is the holy oracle of all knowledge: Google.

Google, showed me that I am not alone in my struggles, and gave me some direction in my quest. That direction was to VMware’s KB 1006427: Timekeeping best practices for Linux

It seems as each distribution does things slightly differently, there are kernel parameters that can be set to overcome the time slippage.

This article presents best practices for Linux timekeeping. These recommendations include specifics on the particular kernel command line options to use for the Linux operating system of interest. There is also a description of the recommended settings and usage for NTP time sync, configuration of VMware Tools time synchronization, and Virtual Hardware Clock configuration, to achieve best timekeeping results.