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Table Of Contents
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Using Existing Processes or VMware Mirage for Application Provisioning on page 46
With View, you can continue to use the application provisioning techniques that your company
currently uses, and you can use Mirage. Two additional considerations include managing server CPU
usage and storage I/O and determining whether users are permitted to install applications.
Deploying Individual Applications Using an RDS Host
You might choose to provide end users with remote applications rather than remote desktops. Individual
remote applications might be easier to navigate on a small mobile device.
End users can access remote Windows-based applications by using the same Horizon Client that they
previously used for accessing remote desktops, and they use the same Blast Extreme or PCoIP display
protocol.
To provide a remote application, you install the application on a Microsoft Remote Desktop Session (RDS)
host. One or more RDS hosts make up a farm, and from that farm administrators create application pools in
a similar manner to creating desktop pools. A farm can contain up to 200 RDS hosts. A View pod can
support up to 200 farms.
Using this strategy simplifies adding, removing, and updating applications; adding or removing user
entitlements to applications; and providing access from any device or network to centrally or distributed
application farms.
Deploying Applications and System Updates with View Composer
Because linked-clone desktop pools share a base image, you can quickly deploy updates and patches by
updating the parent virtual machine.
The recompose feature allows you to make changes to the parent virtual machine, take a snapshot of the
new state, and push the new version of the image to all, or a subset of, users and desktops. You can use this
feature for the following tasks:
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Applying operating system and software patches and upgrades
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Applying service packs
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Adding applications
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Adding virtual devices
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Changing other virtual machine settings, such as available memory
NOTE Because you can also use View Composer to create farms of linked-clone Microsoft RDS hosts, the
recompose feature lets you update the guest operating system and applications on RDS hosts.
You can create a View Composer persistent disk that contains user settings and other user-generated data.
This persistent disk is not affected by a recompose operation. When a linked clone is deleted, you can
preserve the user data. When an employee leaves the company, another employee can access the departing
employee's user data. A user who has multiple desktops can consolidate the user data on a single desktop.
If you want to disallow users from adding or removing software or changing settings, you can use the
refresh feature to bring the desktop back to its default values. This feature also reduces the size of linked
clones, which tend to grow over time.
View Architecture Planning
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