Knowledge
- Describe pool types and Desktop sources
- Understand common Desktop maintenance actions
- Refresh
- Recompose
- Rebalance
- Maintain standalone templates
- Maintain standalone images
Tools
- VMware View Administrator
- VMware View Administration Guide
Describe pool types and Desktop sources
There are three different types of pools:
- Automated: To create an automated desktop pool, View Manager dynamically provisions desktops based on settings that you apply to the pool. View Manager uses a virtual machine template as the desktop source for the pool and creates a new virtual machine in vCenter Server for each desktop. In other words, these desktops are automatically created based on demand rules.
- Supported Features: vCenter virtual machines, View Composer, Local Mode, PCoIP.
- Manual: To create a manual desktop pool, View Manager provisions desktops from existing desktop sources. For each desktop in the pool, you select a separate desktop source to deliver View access to clients. You can use many different sources, such as a physical machine (or blade), as long as the View Agent can be installed and is supported. View Composer is not available with this type of pool.
- Supported Features: vCenter virtual machines, Physical computers (and blade PCs), Local Mode, PCoIP.
- Terminal Services: You can use Microsoft Terminal Servers to provide Terminal Services sessions as desktops to View clients. View Manager manages Terminal Services sessions in the same way that it manages other View desktops.
- Supported Features: Microsoft Terminal Server.
Understand common Desktop maintenance actions
- Refresh: A desktop refresh operation restores the operating system disk of each linked clone to its original state and size, reducing storage costs. (Page 163 and 164 of View Admin Guide). As users interact with linked-clone desktops, the clones’ OS disks grow. A desktop refresh operation restores the OS disks to their original state and size, reducing storage costs.
- Recompose: Desktop recomposition simultaneously updates all the linked-clone desktops anchored to a parent virtual machine. (Page 166-168 of View Admin Guide). In a desktop recomposition, you can provide operating system patches, install or update applications, or modify the desktop hardware settings in all the linked clones in a desktop pool.
- Rebalance: A desktop rebalance operation evenly redistributes linked-clone desktops among available datastores. (Page 171-172 of View Admin Guide). A desktop rebalance operation evenly redistributes linked-clone desktops among available logical drives. It saves storage space on overloaded drives and ensures that no drives are underused.
Maintain standalone templates
Page 46-48 of the View Admin Guide covers the creation of a virtual machine for View desktops. Specifically review the “Prepare a Guest Operating System for View Desktop Deployment’ section on page 48. The main thing to keep in mind is that Thick (full) clones need a snapshot on a template, whereas Linked clones need a snapshot on a powered off VM.
Maintain standalone images
Here’s an example of a Recompose operation screen:
Be aware of the limitations for using images with Linked clones. Page 165 states:
View Composer does not support recomposing linked clones that use one operating system to a parent virtual machine that uses a different operating system. For example, you cannot use a snapshot of a Windows 7 or Windows Vista parent virtual machine to recompose a Windows XP linked clone.
