Architecture Planning
Table Of Contents
- View Architecture Planning
- Contents
- View Architecture Planning
- Introduction to View
- Planning a Rich User Experience
- Feature Support Matrix for View Agent
- Choosing a Display Protocol
- Using Hosted Applications
- Using View Persona Management to Retain User Data and Settings
- Using USB Devices with Remote Desktops and Applications
- Using the Real-Time Audio-Video Feature for Webcams and Microphones
- Using 3D Graphics Applications
- Streaming Multimedia to a Remote Desktop
- Printing from a Remote Desktop
- Using Single Sign-On for Logging In to a Remote Desktop
- Using Multiple Monitors
- Managing Desktop and Application Pools from a Central Location
- Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments
- Virtual Machine Requirements for Remote Desktops
- View ESXi Node
- Desktop Pools for Specific Types of Workers
- Desktop Virtual Machine Configuration
- RDS Host Virtual Machine Configuration
- vCenter Server and View Composer Virtual Machine Configuration
- View Connection Server Maximums and Virtual Machine Configuration
- vSphere Clusters
- Storage and Bandwidth Requirements
- View Building Blocks
- View Pods
- Advantages of Using Multiple vCenter Servers in a Pod
- Planning for Security Features
- Understanding Client Connections
- Choosing a User Authentication Method
- Restricting Remote Desktop Access
- Using Group Policy Settings to Secure Remote Desktops and Applications
- Implementing Best Practices to Secure Client Systems
- Assigning Administrator Roles
- Preparing to Use a Security Server
- Understanding View Communications Protocols
- Overview of Steps to Setting Up a View Environment
- Index
Choosing the Appropriate System Disk Size
When allocating disk space, provide only enough space for the operating system, applications, and
additional content that users might install or generate. Usually this amount is smaller than the size of the
disk that is included on a physical PC.
Because datacenter disk space usually costs more per gigabyte than desktop or laptop disk space in a
traditional PC deployment, optimize the operating system image size. The following suggestions might help
optimize image size:
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Remove unnecessary files. For example, reduce the quotas on temporary Internet files.
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Turn off Windows services such as the indexer service, the defragmenter service, and restore points. For
details, see the topics "Optimize Windows Guest Operating System Performance," "Optimize Windows
7 and Windows 8 Guest Operating System Performance," and "Overview of Windows 7 and Windows 8
Services and Tasks That Cause Linked-Clone Growth," in Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in
View.
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Choose a virtual disk size that is sufficient to allow for future growth, but is not unrealistically large.
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Use centralized file shares or a View Composer persistent disk for user-generated content and user-
installed applications.
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If you are using vSphere 5.1 or later, enable space reclamation for vCenter Server and for the linked-
clone desktop pools.
If virtual machine desktops use the space-efficient disk format available with vSphere 5.1 or later, stale
or deleted data within a guest operating system is automatically reclaimed with a wipe and shrink
process.
The amount of storage space required must take into account the following files for each virtual desktop:
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The ESXi suspend file is equivalent to the amount of RAM allocated to the virtual machine.
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By default, the Windows page file is equivalent to 150 percent of RAM.
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Log files can take up as much as 100MB for each virtual machine.
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The virtual disk, or .vmdk file, must accommodate the operating system, applications, and future
applications and software updates. The virtual disk must also accommodate local user data and user-
installed applications if they are located on the virtual desktop rather than on file shares.
If you use View Composer, the .vmdk files grow over time, but you can control the amount of growth by
scheduling View Composer refresh operations, setting a storage over-commit policy for virtual machine
desktop pools, and redirecting Windows page and temporary files to a separate, nonpersistent disk.
You can also add 15 percent to this estimate to be sure that users do not run out of disk space.
View ESXi Node
A node is a single VMware ESXi host that hosts virtual machine desktops in a View deployment.
View is most cost-effective when you maximize the consolidation ratio, which is the number of desktops
hosted on an ESXi host. Although many factors affect server selection, if you are optimizing strictly for
acquisition price, you must find server configurations that have an appropriate balance of processing power
and memory.
View Architecture Planning
48 VMware, Inc.