Administration

Desktop recompositions do not affect View Composer persistent disks.
Apply these guidelines to recompositions:
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You can recompose dedicated-assignment and floating-assignment desktop pools.
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You can recompose a desktop pool on demand or as a scheduled event.
You can schedule only one recomposition at a time for a given set of linked clones. Before you can
schedule a new recomposition, you must cancel any previously scheduled task or wait until the
previous operation is completed. Before you can start a new recomposition immediately, you must
cancel any previously scheduled task.
You can schedule multiple recompositions if they affect different linked clones.
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You can recompose selected linked clones or all linked clones in a desktop pool.
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When different linked clones in a desktop pool are derived from different snapshots of the base image
or from different base images, the desktop pool includes more than one replica.
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A recomposition can only occur when users are logged off of their linked-clone desktops.
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You cannot recompose linked clones that use one operating system to a new or updated parent virtual
machine that uses a different operating system.
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You cannot recompose linked clones to a lower hardware version than their current version. For
example, you cannot recompose hardware version 8 clones to a parent virtual machine that is hardware
version 7.
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You can set a minimum number of ready, provisioned desktops that remain available for users to
connect to during the recompose operation. See "Keeping Linked-Clone Desktops Provisioned and
Ready During View Composer Operations" in the Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View
document.
NOTE If you used a Sysprep customization specification to customize the linked clones when you created
the desktop pool, new SIDs might be generated for the recomposed virtual machines. For details, see
"Recomposing Linked Clones Customized with Sysprep" in the Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in
View document.
Correcting an Unsuccessful Recomposition
You can correct a recomposition that failed. You can also take action if you accidentally recompose linked
clones using a different base image than the one you intended to use.
Problem
The virtual machines are in an erroneous or outdated state as a result of an unsuccessful recomposition.
Cause
A system failure or problem might have occurred on the vCenter Server host, in vCenter Server, or on a
datastore during the recomposition.
Alternatively, the recomposition might have used a virtual-machine snapshot with a different operating
system than the operating system of the original parent virtual machine. For example, you might have used
a Windows 8 snapshot to recompose Windows 7 linked clones.
Solution
1 Select the snapshot that was used in the last successful recomposition.
You can also select a new snapshot to update the linked clones to a new state.
The snapshot must use the same operating system as the original parent virtual machine's snapshot.
View Administration
130 VMware, Inc.