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Table Of Contents
View Composer
You can install this software service on a vCenter Server instance that manages virtual machines or on a
separate server. View Composer can then create a pool of linked clones from a specified parent virtual
machine. This strategy reduces storage costs by up to 90 percent.
Each linked clone acts like an independent desktop, with a unique host name and IP address, yet the linked
clone requires significantly less storage because it shares a base image with the parent. Because linked-clone
desktop pools share a base image, you can quickly deploy updates and patches by updating only the parent
virtual machine. End users' settings, data, and applications are not affected.
You can also use View Composer to create automated farms of linked-clone Microsoft RDS hosts, which
provide hosted applications to end users.
Although you can install View Composer on its own server host, a View Composer service can operate with
only one vCenter Server instance. Similarly, a vCenter Server instance can be associated with only one View
Composer service.
IMPORTANT View Composer is an optional component. If you plan to provision instant clones, you do not
need to install View Composer.
vCenter Server
This service acts as a central administrator for VMware ESXi servers that are connected on a network.
vCenter Server provides the central point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtual machines in
the datacenter.
In addition to using these virtual machines as sources for virtual machine desktop pools, you can use virtual
machines to host the server components of View, including View Connection Server instances, Active
Directory servers, Microsoft RDS hosts, and vCenter Server instances.
You can install View Composer on the same server as vCenter Server or on a different server.
vCenter Server then manages the assignment of the virtual machines to physical servers and storage and
manages the assignment of CPU and memory resources to virtual machines.
You can install vCenter Server either as a VMware virtual appliance or install vCenter Server in a Windows
Server 2008 R2 server or a Windows Server 2012 R2 server, preferably on a VMware virtual machine.
Integrating and Customizing View
To enhance the effectiveness of View in your organization, you can use several interfaces to integrate View
with external applications or to create administration scripts that you can run from the command line or in
batch mode.
Integrating with Other Components
VMware Identity
Manager
You can integrate VMware Identity Manager with View to provide the
following benefits to IT managers and end users:
n
End users have on-demand access to remote desktops and applications
through the same user portal on the Web that they use to access SaaS,
Web, and Windows applications, with the same single sign-on
convenience.
With the True SSO feature, users who authenticate using smart cards or
two-factor authentication can access their remote desktops and
applications without supplying Active Directory credentials.
Chapter 1 Introduction to View
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