5.2

Table 4-4. Desktop Virtual Machine Example for Windows 7 or Windows 8
Item Example
Operating system 32-bit Windows 7 or later (with the latest service pack)
RAM 1GB
Virtual CPU 1 (2 if users must play high-definition or full screen video)
System disk capacity 24GB (slightly less than standard)
User data capacity (as a persistent disk) 5GB (starting point)
Virtual SCSI adapter type LSI Logic SAS (the default)
Virtual network adapter VMXNET 3
vCenter Server and View Composer Virtual Machine Configuration
You can install vCenter Server and View Composer on the same virtual machine or on separate hosts. These
servers require much more memory and processing power than a desktop virtual machine.
VMware tested having View Composer create and provision 2,000 desktops per pool using vSphere 5.1 or
later. VMware also tested having View Composer perform a recompose operation on 2,000 desktops at a time.
For these tests, vCenter Server and View Composer were installed on separate virtual machines.
Desktop pool size is limited by the following factors:
n
Each desktop pool can contain only one ESX/ESXi cluster.
n
Horizon View 5.2 supports ESXi clusters that contain up to 32 ESXi hosts when used with vSphere 5.1 and
later. This is an improvement from View 5.1, which had greater restrictions on cluster size.
For clusters that contain more than eight ESXi hosts, if you use linked-clone pools, replica disks must be
stored on VMFS5 or later datastores or on NFS datastores. If you store replicas on a VMFS version earlier
than VMFS5, a cluster can have at most eight hosts. OS disks and persistent disks can be stored on NFS
or VMFS datastores.
n
Each CPU core has compute capacity for 8 to 10 virtual desktops.
n
The number of IP addresses available for the subnet limits the number of desktops in the pool. For example,
if your network is set up so that the subnet for the pool contains only 256 usable IP addresses, the pool
size is limited to 256 desktops. With Horizon View 5.2 you can, however, configure multiple network
labels to greatly expand the number of IP addresses assigned to virtual machines in a pool.
Although you can install vCenter Server and View Composer on a physical machine, this example uses separate
virtual machines with the specifications listed in the following tables. The ESXi host for these virtual machines
can be part of a VMware HA cluster to guard against physical server failures.
This example assumes that you are using Horizon View with vSphere 5.1 or later and vCenter Server 5.1 or
later.
IMPORTANT This example also assumes that View Composer and vCenter Server are installed on separate
virtual machines.
Table 4-5. vCenter Server Virtual Machine Example
Item
Example for a vCenter Server That
Manages 10,000 Desktops
Example for a vCenter Server That
Manages 2,000 Desktops
Operating system 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2
Enterprise
64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
RAM 48GB 4GB
Virtual CPU 16 2
Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines
VMware, Inc. 45