Specifications

Managing Desktop Pools from a
Central Location 3
You can create pools that include one or hundreds of virtual desktops. As a desktop source, you can use virtual
machines, physical machines, and Windows Terminal Services servers. Create one virtual machine as a base
image, and VMware View can generate a pool of virtual desktops from that image. You can easily install or
stream applications to pools with VMware ThinApp.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Advantages of Desktop Pools,” on page 23
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“Reducing and Managing Storage Requirements,” on page 24
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“Application Provisioning,” on page 25
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“Using Active Directory GPOs to Manage Users and Desktops,” on page 27
Advantages of Desktop Pools
VMware View offers the ability to create and provision pools of desktops as its basis of centralized
management.
You create a virtual desktop pool from one of the following sources:
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A physical system such as a physical desktop PC or a Windows Terminal Services server
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A virtual machine that is hosted on an ESX server and managed by vCenter Server
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A virtual machine that runs on VMware Server or some other virtualization platform that supports View
Agent
If you use a vSphere virtual machine as a desktop source, you can automate the process of making as many
identical virtual desktops as you need. You can set a minimum and maximum number of virtual desktops to
be generated for the pool. Setting these parameters ensures that you always have enough View desktops
available for immediate use but not so many that you overuse available resources.
Using pools to manage desktops allows you to apply settings or deploy applications to all virtual desktops in
a pool. The following examples show some of the settings available:
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Specify which remote display protocol to use as the default for the View desktop and whether to let end
users override the default.
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Configure the display quality and bandwidth throttling of Adobe Flash animations.
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If using a virtual machine, specify whether to power off the virtual machine when it is not in use and
whether to delete it altogether.
VMware, Inc.
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