Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View

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With Virtual Volumes, you can use advanced storage services that include replication, encryption,
deduplication, and compression on individual virtual disks.
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Virtual Volumes supports such vSphere features as vMotion, Storage vMotion, snapshots, linked
clones, Flash Read Cache, and DRS.
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You can use Virtual Volumes with storage arrays that support vSphere APIs for Array Integration
(VAAI).
Requirements and Limitations
The Virtual Volumes feature has the following limitations when used in a View deployment:
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This release does not support using the View space-efficient disk format feature, which reclaims disk
space by wiping and shrinking disks.
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Virtual Volumes does not support using View Composer Array Integration (VAAI).
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Virtual Volumes datastores are not compatible with Virtual SAN datastores for this release.
NOTE Virtual Volumes is compatible with the View Storage Accelerator feature. Virtual SAN provides a
caching layer on SSD disks, and the View Storage Accelerator feature provides a content-based cache that
reduces IOPS and improves performance during boot storms.
The Virtual Volumes feature has the following requirements:
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vSphere 6.0 or a later release.
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Appropriate hardware. Certain storage vendors are responsible for supplying storage providers that
can integrate with vSphere and provide support for Virtual Volumes. Every storage provider must be
certified by VMware and properly deployed.
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All virtual disks that you provision on a virtual datastore must be an even multiple of 1 MB.
Virtual Volumes is a vSphere 6.0 feature. For more information about the requirements, functionality,
background, and setup requirements, see the topics about Virtual Volumes in the vSphere Storage document.
Reducing Storage Requirements with View Composer
Because View Composer creates desktop images that share virtual disks with a base image, you can reduce
the required storage capacity by 50 to 90 percent.
View Composer uses a base image, or parent virtual machine, and creates a pool of up to 2,000 linked-clone
virtual machines. Each linked clone acts like an independent desktop, with a unique host name and IP
address, yet the linked clone requires significantly less storage.
Replica and Linked Clones on the Same Datastore
When you create a linked-clone desktop pool, a full clone is first made from the parent virtual machine. The
full clone, or replica, and the clones linked to it can be placed on the same data store, or LUN (logical unit
number). If necessary, you can use the rebalance feature to move the replica and linked clones from one
LUN to another or to move linked clones to a Virtual SAN datastore or from a Virtual SAN datastore to a
LUN.
Replica and Linked Clones on Different Datastores
Alternatively, you can place View Composer replicas and linked clones on separate datastores with different
performance characteristics. For example, you can store the replica virtual machines on a solid-state drive
(SSD). Solid-state drives have low storage capacity and high read performance, typically supporting tens of
thousands of I/Os per second (IOPS). You can store linked clones on traditional, spinning media-backed
Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View
202 VMware, Inc.