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Table Of Contents
RDS Host Virtual Machine Configuration
Use RDS (Remote Desktop Services) hosts for providing hosted applications and session-based remote
desktops to end users.
An RDS host can be a physical machine or a virtual machine. This example uses a virtual machine with the
specifications listed in the following table. The ESXi host for this virtual machine can be part of a VMware
HA cluster to guard against physical server failures.
Table 45. RDS Host Virtual Machine Example
Item Example
Operating system 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, or
Windows Server 2012 R2
RAM 64GB
Virtual CPU 4
System disk capacity 70GB
Virtual SCSI adapter type LSI Logic SAS (the default for Windows Server 2008)
Virtual network adapter VMXNET 3
1 NIC 1 Gigabit
Maximum number of client connections total (including
session-based remote desktop connections and remote
application connections)
50
vCenter Server and View Composer Virtual Machine Configuration
You can install vCenter Server and View Composer on the same virtual machine or on separate servers.
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 vSphere cluster.
n
vSphere 5.1 and later clusters can contain up to 32 hosts.
For clusters that contain more than eight hosts, if you use linked-clone pools, replica disks must be
stored on VMFS5 or later datastores, on NFS datastores, or, if you have vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or later,
on Virtual SAN 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. 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.
View Architecture Planning
52 VMware, Inc.