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Using VMware vSphere to host virtual desktops and RDS host servers provides the following benefits:
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Administration tasks and management chores are reduced. Administrators can patch and upgrade
applications and operating systems without touching a user's physical PC.
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Integration with VMware Identity Manager means that IT managers can use the Web-based
VMware Identity Manager administration interface to monitor user and group entitlements to remote
desktops.
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Integration with VMware App Volumes, a real-time application delivery system, enables enterprises to
deliver and manage applications at scale. Use App Volumes to attach applications to users, groups, or
target computers, even when users are logged into their desktop. Applications can also be provisioned,
delivered, updated and retired in real time.
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With View Persona Management, physical and virtual desktops can be centrally managed, including
user profiles, application entitlement, policies, performance, and other settings. Deploy View Persona
Management to physical desktop users prior to converting to virtual desktops.
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With VMware User Environment Manager, end users get a personalized Windows desktop that is
adapted to the user's situation, meaning that access to the required IT resources is based on aspects
such as role, device, and location.
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Storage management is simplified. Using VMware vSphere, you can virtualize volumes and file
systems to avoid managing separate storage devices.
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With vSphere 6.0 or a later release, you can use Virtual Volumes (VVols). This feature maps virtual
disks and their derivatives, clones, snapshots, and replicas, directly to objects, called virtual volumes,
on a storage system. This mapping allows vSphere to offload intensive storage operations such as
snapshoting, cloning, and replication to the storage system. The result, for example, is that a cloning
operation that previously took an hour might now take just a few minutes using Virtual Volumes.
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With vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or a later release, you can use Virtual SAN, which virtualizes the local
physical solid-state disks and hard disk drives available on ESXi™ hosts into a single datastore shared
by all hosts in a cluster. You specify only one datastore when creating a desktop pool, and the various
components, such as virtual machine files, replicas, user data, and operating system files, are placed on
either SSD disks or hard drive disks, as appropriate.
You manage virtual machine storage requirements, such as capacity, performance, and availability, in
the form of default storage policy profiles, which get created automatically when you create a desktop
pool.
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With the View storage accelerator, the IOPS storage load is dramatically reduced, supporting end-user
logins at larger scales without requiring any special storage array technology.
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If remote desktops use the space-efficient disk format available with vSphere 5.1 and later, stale or
deleted data within a guest operating system is automatically reclaimed with a wipe and shrink
process.
Hardware Independence
Remote desktops and applications are hardware-independent. For example, because a remote desktop runs
on a server in the data center and is only accessed from a client device, a remote desktop can use an
operating system that might not be compatible with the hardware of the client device.
Remote desktops run on PCs, Macs, thin clients, PCs that have been repurposed as thin clients, tablets, and
phones. Remote applications run on a subset of these devices. New device support is added quarterly.
If you use the HTML Access feature, end users can open a remote desktop or application inside a browser,
without having to install any client application on the client system or device.
Chapter 1 Introduction to View
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