• Download Thinsy Virtual Conference
• Create the Thinsy Virtual Conference VM
• Configuration

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Download the Thinsy Virtual Conference

The Thinsy Virtual Conference software is a Virtual Machine that is created from a Virtual Appliance. The Thinsy Virtual Conference – Virtual Appliance must be downloaded using the VM Orchestrator.

From the VM Orchestrator’s Library Mgmt tab(1), click on the “Download EnSpeed Virtual Appliance” link (2) as shown below, then click on the “EnSpeed” button(3) that shows up.

Then click the “Collaboration and Communication Tools” button, and finally download the newest version of the “Thinsy Virtual Conference” Virtual Appliance

When the Virtual Appliance download is complete, it will show up in the Virtual Appliance library as indicated by (1) below.

Create the Thinsy Virtual Conference – Virtual Machine

Here is how to create the Thinsy Virtual Conference – Virtual Machine from the newly downloaded Thinsy Virtual Conference – Virtual Appliance.

Choose the “Virtual Machines” tab (1), and click on the “Create VM From Virtual Appliance (2) link. In this example, the Thinsy Virtual Conference has been named MC1.

Choose the amount of memory(1) (1024 MB is a good value), and the MAC address (2) as show below.

If this is a single x86 server setup, you will need have only one server in the drop down list (3), otherwise, choose the server to place the Thinsy Virtual Conference VM on.

Leave the VM Backup radio button on “No VM Backup”. The clone VM(4) feature is a Thinsy unique feature that enables you to create additional Thinsy Virtual Conference VMs quickly. Leave it checked on.

Click next and wait for a few minutes while your VM is being created.

After VM Creation is complete, power the VM on, and click on the Console button in the VM Dashboard to bring up the Thinsy Virtual Conference Configuration page

Thinsy Virtual Conference Configuration

From the VM Orchestrator’s Virtual Machine tab, power up the Thinsy Virtual Conference – Virtual Machine, and click on the “Console” button.

The Thinsy Virtual Conference’s graphical console contains the Thinsy Virtual Conference Configuration GUI, as shown below.

The configuration tabs available are:

• Network
• SSL Cert
• Out Email
• SIP
• Desktop
• User Management

NETWORKThe Network tab enables you to configure the Thinsy Virtual Conference networking. By default it is setup to use DHCP. You can switch it to use a static IP address.

Configure Access from outside firewall

In order to enable access to this Thinsy Virtual Conference from outside the firewall, the following steps need to be taken

• Setup port forwarding on the firewall to forward a specific port, say port 1935 from the firewall’s public DNS address to this Thinsy Virtual Conference’s port 1935
• In this configuration page, enter the public DNS address of the firewall, and the port that you forwarded in step 1 above.

SSL CERT
When the Thinsy Virtual Conference Thinsy Virtual Conference comes up first, it is configured to use a self signed certificate for SSL. You can replace this with a Certificate Authority (CA) signed certificate using this GUI. The steps are intuitive, and can be outlined as follows:

• Click on the “Generate Key” button to generate a key for this server. You will be prompted for the following information:
  • Company Name
  • CN: DNS Name of server
  • City
  • State (Enter full state name such as California, not an abbreviation such as CA)
  • Country
• After key generation is complete, copy the key over to the Certificate Authority’s (Verisign, godaddy, etc.) certificate request page
• When the CA sends back the certificate, click on the “Enter New Certificate” button, and copy-paste the certificate that you received from the CA

OUT EMAIL
The “Outgoing Email” tab is useful in networks where outgoing email must be forwarded to a specific Email server.

SIPThe SIP configuration tab is used to configure the Thinsy Virtual Conference’s connection to a SIP capable telephony switch

This link has more information on configuring SIP

DESKTOP
The Thinsy Virtual Conference is configured to share a built in Linux desktop. However, most users will want to switch to using a dedicated Windows Desktop for the conference. The Windows Desktop can be that of a Windows VM, or that of a dedicated Windows PC that has a VNC Server installed

Here is a description of three different ways to configure the Conference Desktop

Windows VM running in the Thinsy Internal Cloud Platform

• VNC Server’s IP Address: This is the IP address or hostname of the VM Server (VMM) where your Windows VM is running
• VNC Port: Enter connBroker=ConfXPwhere ConfXP is the name of the Windows VM
• VNC Password: Enter thinsy
• External VM’s IP: Enter the IP address assigned to the Windows running in the VM ConfXP. This is necessary for the Upload File functionality

Windows VM running in VMware Server, VMware ESX or VMware ESXi

Edit the .vmx file of your Windows VM and add the following lines:

RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = “5900″
RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = “TRUE”
RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = “vncpass”

Remeber to open up firewall port 5900 on the VM Server, so that the Thinsy Virtual Conference can connect to VMware’s built in VNC Server

• VNC Server’s IP Address: Enter the IP address or hostname of the VMware Server, ESX or ESXi where your Windows VM is running
• VNC Port: Enter 5900
• VNC Password: Enter vncpass
• External VM’s IP: Enter the IP address assigned to the Windows running in the VM. This is necessary for the Upload File functionality

Dedicated physical machine running Windows

Install a VNC Server such as TightVNC or UltraVNC, and configure the desktop to be 1024×768 with 32 or 24 bit color.

Remeber to open up firewall port 5900 on the windows machine, so that the Thinsy Virtual Conference can connect to the VNC Server

• VNC Server’s IP Address: Enter the IP address or hostname of the Windows PC where you have the VNC Server running
• VNC Port: Enter 5900 or other port where the VNC Server is listening
• VNC Password: Enter the vnc password that your configured in your VNC Server
• External VM’s IP: Enter the IP address assigned to the Windows PC. This is necessary for the Upload File functionality

USER MGMTIn this tab, you can configure the Moderator password. Note that you can also change the Moderator password from the browser, once you are logged into the Thinsy Virtual Conference

Finally, in this release of the software, Active Directory based authentication is not implemented