5.2
Table Of Contents
- VMware Horizon View Architecture Planning
- Contents
- VMware Horizon View Architecture Planning
- Introduction to Horizon View
- Planning a Rich User Experience
- Feature Support Matrix
- Choosing a Display Protocol
- Using View Persona Management to Retain User Data and Settings
- Benefits of Using View Desktops in Local Mode
- Accessing USB Devices Connected to a Local Computer
- Printing from a View Desktop
- Streaming Multimedia to a View Desktop
- Using Single Sign-On for Logging In to a View Desktop
- Using Multiple Monitors with a View Desktop
- Managing Desktop Pools from a Central Location
- Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines
- Virtual Machine Requirements
- Horizon View ESX/ESXi Node
- Desktop Pools for Specific Types of Workers
- Desktop Virtual Machine Configuration
- vCenter Server and View Composer Virtual Machine Configuration
- View Connection Server Maximums and Virtual Machine Configuration
- View Transfer Server Virtual Machine Configuration and Storage
- vSphere Clusters
- Storage and Bandwidth Requirements
- Horizon View Building Blocks
- Horizon View Pods
- Advantages of Using Multiple vCenter Servers in a Pod
- Planning for Security Features
- Understanding Client Connections
- Choosing a User Authentication Method
- Restricting View Desktop Access
- Using Group Policy Settings to Secure View Desktops
- Implementing Best Practices to Secure Client Systems
- Assigning Administrator Roles
- Preparing to Use a Security Server
- Understanding Horizon View Communications Protocols
- Overview of Steps to Setting Up a Horizon View Environment
- Index
Table 4-9. View Transfer Server Virtual Machine Example
Item Example
Operating system 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2
RAM 4GB
Virtual CPU 2
System disk capacity 20GB
Virtual SCSI adapter type LSI Logic Parallel or SAS
Virtual network adapter E1000 (the default)
1 NIC 1 Gigabit
Storage and Bandwidth Requirements for View Transfer Server
Several operations use View Transfer Server to send data between the View desktop in vCenter Server and the
corresponding local desktop on the client system. When a user checks in or checks out a desktop, View Transfer
Server transfers the files between the datacenter and the local desktop. View Transfer Server also synchronizes
local desktops with the corresponding desktops in the datacenter by replicating user-generated changes to the
datacenter.
If you use View Composer linked-clones for local desktops, the disk drive on which you configure the Transfer
Server repository must have enough space to store your static image files. Image files are View Composer base
images. The faster your network storage disks are, the better performance will be. For information about
determining the size of base image files, see the VMware Horizon View Administration document.
Each Transfer Server instance can theoretically accommodate 60 concurrent disk operations, although network
bandwidth will likely be saturated at a lower number. VMware tested 20 concurrent disk operations, such as
20 clients downloading a local desktop at the same time, over a 1GB per second network connection.
vSphere Clusters
Horizon View deployments can use VMware HA clusters to guard against physical server failures. With
Horizon View 5.2 and later and vSphere 5.1 and later, if you use View Composer and store replica disks on
NFS datastores or VMFS5 datastores, the cluster can contain up to 32 servers, or nodes.
vSphere and vCenter Server provide a rich set of features for managing clusters of servers that host View
desktops. The cluster configuration is also important because each View desktop pool must be associated with
a vCenter Server resource pool. Therefore, the maximum number of desktops per pool is related to the number
of servers and virtual machines that you plan to run per cluster.
In very large Horizon View deployments, vCenter Server performance and responsiveness can be improved
by having only one cluster object per datacenter object, which is not the default behavior. By default,
vCenter Server creates new clusters within the same datacenter object.
Determining Requirements for High Availability
vSphere, through its efficiency and resource management, lets you achieve industry-leading levels of virtual
machines per server. But achieving a higher density of virtual machines per server means that more users are
affected if a server fails.
Requirements for high availability can differ substantially based on the purpose of the desktop pool. For
example, a stateless desktop image (floating-assignment) pool might have different recovery point objective
(RPO) requirements than a stateful desktop image (dedicated-assignment) pool. For a floating-assignment
pool, an acceptable solution might be to have users log in to a different desktop if the desktop they are using
becomes unavailable.
VMware Horizon View Architecture Planning
48 VMware, Inc.