Setting Up VMware View!

tstrip007

Well... I've been tasked with setting up a View environment at work so I have begun the process of setting it up in my lab. The original request was to be able to rapidly deploy x number of virtual desktop environments for remote workers. Currently I have 10 or so XP boxes setup in our vsphere environment for this purpose but I am not able to "rapidly" create more if needed. Cloning still takes 30+ minutes per vm. I need the linked cloning feature so that I can rapidly create and also preserve our precious resources. I will be following the advice from this site for the setup. I never used it before so I am pretty excited see how well it works.

Tommy_D

Good luck! We have several client using VDI, however is it Xen Desktop running on a vSphere back-end...I would like to give it a go as well...let me know how that lab works out for you!

broli720

I'm assuming that you're using XP strictly for testing purposes.

kj0

That's quite interesting, That makes 3 of us all in less than a week that have been tasked with setting up view.

ReadySetVirtual: 2 Week to learn Horizon View Challenge - Day 1.

Asif Dasl

I found this along my travels on the Internet tonight - it may be of some use to you... I was looking for something else and noticed the View link

View | VMFocus

tstrip007

Thanks Asif. Yah no deadline on this which could be a good or bad thing. Didn't even think about the DT exam, may be something to consider once its all said and done. @broli, sadly they are not for test purposes. We have begun to weed xp for 7 though. All desktops in View will be 7. @kjo, very cool, Ill be keeping up with your progress!

Essendon

Count me in too. I am gunning for the VCAP-DTA, so let's bounce ideas off each other.

iBrokeIT

Definitely jealous, sounds like a fun project!

kj0

tstrip007 wrote: »

@kjo, very cool, Ill be keeping up with your progress!

Essendon. Skype/Hangout sesh?

smackie1973

I've been administering a small (300 vm's) View estate for a few years and once you understand how the linked clones and replicas work, it's fairly straightforward. My company is in the process of tendering to put 95% of our company on View as part of our Win 7 upgrade project so we will be migrating from View 5.0 on vSphere 5.0 to View 5.3 (maybe 6 as it's due out soon and supports vSan) on vSphere 5.5

One tip i'll give you: - make sure you have decent I/O on your storage. Storage design is the main thing you need to focus on.
Oh and to save you having to figure it out, here is the syntax for your linked clone naming pattern: - PCNAME-{n:fixed=3}
This will create PCNAME-001, 002 etc

kj0

Here's a very good VDI write up. Pretty recent as well.

Everything you always wanted to know about VDI but were afraid to ask (no, it's not an STD)

Balantine

Horizon View is not just for VDI.

It also supports Remote Desktop Session Hosts.

Along with the UDP transport that makes Horizon View 6 a Citrix-killer.

tstrip007

I have no clue what its capable of. Just know the basics. Best way for me to learn is to lab it up, play, and explore all of the features before I attempt anything in production. I appreciate any tips and tricks along the way. Thanks balantine and smackie. I hoping that I develop it for remote agents and it eventually becomes adopted company wide. Anyone using thin client PC's with View? Currently I am rebuilding my vsphere lab as it expired. May have to rebuild again before I even get to View because I'm starting to think my patience will run out without solid state drives lol.

Essendon

A good storage design is a very important factor in any successful VMware deployment. More often than you'd think, arrays are designed for size/capacity rather than performance. People throw all sorts of workloads at the array and while initially it may perform satisfactorily but as more I/O is generated performance begins to suffer. vDesktops that performed great and server VM's that were once snappy now freeze and simultaneous AV scans bring the array down to its knees (vShield helps). The gist of this:

- design the array for performance, availability and scalability, capacity can always be increased as you go. Array vendors are more than eager to give you an extra shelf or two
- it's highly recommended to run VDI and Server workloads on separate arrays. If your budget does not allow for this, make sure you monitor your performance.
- have a good handle on the type of workloads you will be supporting. A dozen Word 2013 sessions and a dozen AutoCAD sessions will generate completely different I/O.
- watch out for spikes in usage. These will be when multiple users log on in the mornings, sign out in the evenings and when your AV scans kick in. You can stagger your AV scans, make sure you do that.
- see if your hosts have any local flash or your if your array has flash disks in it. If the budget is there, get an array with significant flash disks in it. Flash becomes your Tier 0 disk, your read/write cache, data stays on flash if it's hot and is only drained to spinning disk if it goes cold. Other arrays will read/write to flash first and at a later time (of your choosing), drain to capacity disk.
- saying it again - always keep an eye on performance!

tstrip007

A little update to this. I moved most of my vsphere lab to SSD storage and wow does it make a difference. I have a fully functional view lab setup. I created my first pool and it works great. Going to play around with it some more and setup more pools with different settings. My understanding is that it is creating linked clones off of a VM snapshot. The snapshot being the master image for the pool. Eventually I will have to dive deeper into how its using the resources but my next step is creating the pools exactly how they would be in my production environment (minus the number of vm's). This tech is real cool, Im hoping I can get this into production.

Essendon

Interesting stuff this, isnt it! I'll just slightly correct your understanding of linked clones - You are right the clones are created off a snapshot of the parent VM. But there's a little more to the process. The snapshot is not the master image, View will create a replica disk off the snapshot (1 per pool), this disk is the master image. The replica disk is read only, linked clones are created off the replica disk and are r/w. When a pool is deleted, the replica is also deleted if no linked clones reference this replica.

tstrip007

Essendon, thanks for clearing that up. So the following is the "replica disk" you mention right? Going to run through the cbt's and get caught up. Might as well renew my DCV with the DT.

Essendon

Yep, that's right. Here is a screenshot of the creation of a new pool I created this morning (after rebuilding my lab with Horizon 6). Notice the tasks below.

kj0

Bourke Street hey - They'd need something powerful for the amount of sales going through there :P

Essendon

for sure!