Why can't I see a preview of the environment desktops in Lab Manager nor Environment Viewer?

Question

When I select on an environment in Lab Manager, on the right it just shows a computer clip art for each VM. I've seen in demonstrations that I should be able to see a live preview of the desktop.

Its the same result when using the environment viewer. Each VM is just a little computer clip art instead of a small preview window. 

Is there something that needs to be enabled for this to show a live desktop?

Brandon

Answer 1

Hello Barndon,

Based on this MSDN artile,

You can interact with the virtual environments you create by using Microsoft Test Manager and Microsoft Environment Viewer, an additional tool that is included in Visual Studio Test Professional. You can connect only to deployed environments. Whether you can open a remote connection to each virtual machine in the environment depends on the state of that virtual machine.

Please take a look at the article I offered above for further information about How to: Connect to a Virtual Environment: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee518907.aspx

Thanks.

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Vicky Song [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 2

Hello Barndon,

Based on this MSDN artile,

You can interact with the virtual environments you create by using Microsoft Test Manager and Microsoft Environment Viewer, an additional tool that is included in Visual Studio Test Professional. You can connect only to deployed environments. Whether you can open a remote connection to each virtual machine in the environment depends on the state of that virtual machine.

Please take a look at the article I offered above for further information about How to: Connect to a Virtual Environment: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee518907.aspx

Thanks.

---

Vicky Song [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Vicky,

That answer has nothing to do with my question. I'm not asking how to connect to the environment, I'm asking how to get the small live preview window for each VM in the environment. 

Answer 3

Hello Barndon,

Yes, I understand that you would like to get the live preview window for the VM in the Environment. And in order to achieve that you need to connect to that VM machine first. Do you mean even though you have connect to the VM machines, you still can't get the live preview window? In the right pane, are you able to right-click the VM machines and select the Connect option?

Thanks. 

---

Vicky Song [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 4

Hello Barndon,

Yes, I understand that you would like to get the live preview window for the VM in the Environment. And in order to achieve that you need to connect to that VM machine first. Do you mean even though you have connect to the VM machines, you still can't get the live preview window? In the right pane, are you able to right-click the VM machines and select the Connect option?

Thanks. 

Vicky,

I shouldn't have to connect to a VM first in order to get the live preview of ALL the VMs in the environment. With the Lab Manager window opened to the Environments section, if you click on an environment on the left side, you should see the set of VMs on the right side. There should be a small live preview window of each desktop where you can see what each VM is doing.

For example, here's a snapshot of what I'm referring to:

Now if I connect to the environment it brings up the Environment Viewer. Here, I should get a preview window as well for all the VMs in the environment like this:

But in my Lab Manager and Environment Viewer, I only get little computer icons like this:

Answer 5

Are you able to connect to these VM's with your credential. If you use some other credential, try to lauch MTM with those credentials.

The other thing you can try is to add yourself as an admin on the VM Host where the VM is hosted.

Thanks,

Anuj

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http://www.anujchaudhary.com

Answer 6

Are you able to connect to these VM's with your credential. If you use some other credential, try to lauch MTM with those credentials.

The other thing you can try is to add yourself as an admin on the VM Host where the VM is hosted.

Thanks,

Anuj

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http://www.anujchaudhary.com

Anuj,

Yes, I can connect to the VMs with my credentials just fine. Even connected I don't get the preview. See here:

Being an admin on the host won't be possible because we have many users and a host farm and we can't allow users to be admins on the VM hosts. There has to be another way. I'm allowed to connect to the VM so why can't the little preview work?

Brandon

Answer 7

Any more thoughts on this issue?

Answer 8

Hello Brandon,

I am very sorry for the late response as I did not receive the email alert.

As far as I know that the preview window in MTM is somewhat the same as that in the Hyper-V manager, that is you can't preview one machine when another user is working on it. Please take a look at both the Hyper-V manager and the MTM to make sure that there are no other team members already connected to them.

Thanks. 

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Vicky Song [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 9

Hello Brandon,

I am very sorry for the late response as I did not receive the email alert.

As far as I know that the preview window in MTM is somewhat the same as that in the Hyper-V manager, that is you can't preview one machine when another user is working on it. Please take a look at both the Hyper-V manager and the MTM to make sure that there are no other team members already connected to them.

Thanks. 

---

Vicky Song [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

No one is connected to the machines.

Answer 10

Hi,

The only user who gets previews is the "Owner" (which is the user who deployed that environment from MTM)

Refer to this post:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vslab/thread/932ea60e-821c-4aed-9417-9b18d3e62d60

and this:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vslab/thread/3cd06a5d-202c-4358-80f9-a44f999ef8fd

Apparently this is a quite common problem, 3 threads on front page.

Greetings

Johannes

Answer 11

Hi,

The only user who gets previews is the "Owner" (which is the user who deployed that environment from MTM)

I don't get a preview of environments I own.