5.2

In addition, using desktop pools provides many conveniences.
Dedicated-assignment
pools
Each user is assigned a particular View desktop and returns to the same virtual
desktop at each login. Users can personalize their desktops, install applications,
and store data.
Floating-assignment
pools
The virtual desktop is optionally deleted and re-created after each use, offering
a highly controlled environment. A floating-assignment desktop is like a
computer lab or kiosk environment where each desktop is loaded with the
necessary applications and all desktops have access to necessary data.
Using floating-assignment pools also allows you to create a pool of desktops
that can be used by shifts of users. For example, a pool of 100 desktops could
be used by 300 users if they worked in shifts of 100 users at a time.
Reducing and Managing Storage Requirements
Using virtual desktops that are managed by vCenter Server provides all the storage efficiencies that were
previously available only for virtualized servers. Using View Composer increases the storage savings because
all desktops in a pool share a virtual disk with a base image.
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Managing Storage with vSphere on page 28
vSphere lets you virtualize disk volumes and file systems so that you can manage and configure storage
without having to consider where the data is physically stored.
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Reducing Storage Requirements with View Composer on page 29
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.
Managing Storage with vSphere
vSphere lets you virtualize disk volumes and file systems so that you can manage and configure storage
without having to consider where the data is physically stored.
Fibre Channel SAN arrays, iSCSI SAN arrays, and NAS arrays are widely used storage technologies supported
by vSphere to meet different datacenter storage needs. The storage arrays are connected to and shared between
groups of servers through storage area networks. This arrangement allows aggregation of the storage resources
and provides more flexibility in provisioning them to virtual machines.
With VMware View 4.5 and later and vSphere 4.1 and later, you can now also use the following features:
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vStorage thin provisioning, which lets you start out with as little disk space as necessary and grow the
disk to add space later
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Tiered storage, which allows you to distribute virtual disks in the Horizon View environment across high-
performance storage and lower-cost storage tiers, to maximize performance and cost savings
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Local storage on the ESX/ESXi host for the virtual machine swap files in the guest operating system
With Horizon View 5.1 and later and vSphere 5.0 and later, you can now also use the following features:
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With the View storage accelerator feature, you can configure ESXi hosts to cache virtual machine disk
data.
Using this content-based read cache (CBRC) can reduce IOPS and improve performance during boot
storms, when many desktops start up and run anti-virus scans at the same time. Instead of reading the
entire OS from the storage system over and over, a host can read common data blocks from cache.
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With Horizon View 5.2 and later, if View desktops use the space-efficient disk format available with
vSphere 5.1 and later, stale or deleted data within a guest operating system is automatically reclaimed
with a wipe and shrink process.
VMware Horizon View Architecture Planning
28 VMware, Inc.