Book Image

VMware View Security Essentials

By : Daniel Langenhan
Book Image

VMware View Security Essentials

By: Daniel Langenhan

Overview of this book

Most people associate security with network security and focus on firewalls and network monitoring. However, there is more to security than that. Security starts with the establishment of a stable environment, protecting this environment not only from intrusion, but also from malicious intent. It is about tracking the issue and recovering from it. These elements of security are what this book aims to address. VMware View Security Essentials addresses the topic of security in the corporate environment in a new way. It starts with the underlying virtual infrastructure and then delves into securing your base, your connection, and your client. This is not only a “how-to” book, but is also a book that explains the background and the insights of View security for the experienced professional's desktop virtualization. This book takes you through the four major View security areas. Each area deals with all the aspects of security and explains the background as well as laying out simple-to-follow recipes to implement a higher security standard. We start at the Virtualization base and work our way through the various View server types. We will then dive into the problems and issues of securing a connection before we address the security of the desktop itself. We conclude with a look into the backing up of our View installation and preparing for disaster recovery.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Local Mode


In the following sections we will talk about Local Mode, to fully understand the impact that Local Mode has on security we first needed to understand what it does.

When a View desktop is made ready for a client connection, a new VM gets cloned from the View desktop template. It runs on the vSphere environment. In a normal View connection, the View Agent transports the desktop to the View Client, which is running on a physical desktop. The View Client transports the keyboard, mouse, and USB (if configured) to the View Agent.

When Local Mode is used, the VM is basically downloaded from the vSphere environment to the client. Then, the View desktop runs on the local physical device, similarly to using VMware Player or VMware Workstation (Fusion on Mac). All interactions are now between the View Client and the local copy of the View desktop's View Agent as shown in the following diagram:

Local Mode is mostly used by staff that have to work offline or remotely with no or slow connection...