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Figure 41. Tiered Storage Example for a Large Desktop Pool
From an architectural perspective, View Composer creates desktop images that share a base image, which
can reduce storage requirements by 50 percent or more. You can further reduce storage requirements by
setting a refresh policy that periodically returns the desktop to its original state and reclaims space that is
used to track changes since the last refresh operation.
If you use View Composer with vSphere 5.1 or later virtual machine desktops, you can use the space
reclamation feature. With this feature, stale or deleted data within a guest operating system is automatically
reclaimed with a wipe and shrink process when the amount of unused disk space reaches a certain
threshold. Note that the space reclamation feature is not supported if you use a Virtual SAN datastore.
You can also reduce operating system disk space by using View Composer persistent disks or a shared file
server as the primary repository for the user profile and user documents. Because View Composer lets you
separate user data from the operating system, you might find that only the persistent disk needs to be
backed up or replicated, which further reduces storage requirements. For more information, see “Reducing
Storage Requirements with View Composer,” on page 35.
NOTE Decisions regarding dedicated storage components can best be made during a pilot phase. The main
consideration is I/Os per second (IOPS). You might experiment with a tiered-storage strategy or Virtual
SAN storage to maximize performance and cost savings.
For more information, see the best-practices guide called Storage Considerations for VMware View.
Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments
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