Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View

Procedure
1 In View Administrator, display the Advanced Storage Options page.
Option Description
New desktop pool (recommended)
Start the Add Desktop Pool wizard to begin creating an automated
desktop pool. Follow the wizard configuration prompts until you reach the
Advanced Storage page.
Existing desktop pool
Select the existing pool, click Edit, and click the Advanced Storage tab.
In an existing pool, View Storage Accelerator digest files are not
configured for virtual machines until they are powered off.
2 To enable View Storage Accelerator for the pool, make sure that the Use View Storage Accelerator
check box is selected.
This setting is selected by default. To disable the setting, uncheck the Use View Storage Accelerator
box.
3 (Optional) Specify which disk types to cache by selecting OS disks only or OS and persistent disks
from the Disk Types menu.
OS disks is selected by default.
If you configure View Storage Accelerator for full virtual machines, you cannot select a disk type. View
Storage Accelerator is performed on the whole virtual machine.
4 (Optional) In the Regenerate storage accelerator after text box, specify the interval, in days, after which
the regeneration for View Storage Accelerator digest files take place.
The default regeneration interval is seven days.
What to do next
You can configure blackout days and times during which disk space reclamation and View Storage
Accelerator regeneration do not take place. See “Set Blackout Times for ESXi Operations on View Virtual
Machines,” on page 216.
If you enable View Storage Accelerator by editing an existing pool, recompose the desktop pool to a new
snapshot or rebalance the pool to a new datastore before linked clones are provisioned.
Reclaim Disk Space on Linked-Clone Virtual Machines
In vSphere 5.1 and later, you can configure the disk space reclamation feature for linked-clone desktop
pools. Starting in vSphere 5.1, View creates linked-clone virtual machines in an efficient disk format that
allows ESXi hosts to reclaim unused disk space on the linked clones, reducing the total storage space
required for linked clones.
As users interact with their desktops, the linked clones' OS disks grow and can eventually use almost as
much disk space as full-clone virtual machines. Disk space reclamation reduces the size of the OS disks
without requiring you to refresh or recompose the linked clones. Space can be reclaimed while the virtual
machines are powered on and users are interacting with their desktops.
In View Administrator, you cannot directly initiate disk space reclamation for a pool. You determine when
View initiates disk space reclamation by specifying the minimum amount of unused disk space that must
accumulate on a linked-clone OS disk to trigger the operation. When the unused disk space exceeds the
specified threshold, View directs the ESXi host to reclaim space on that OS disk. View applies the threshold
to each virtual machine in the pool.
You can use the vdmadmin -M option to initiate disk space reclamation on a particular virtual machine for
demonstration or troubleshooting purposes. See the View Administration document.
Chapter 15 Reducing and Managing Storage Requirements
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