4.6

The new heartbeat interval takes effect the next time a client computer that hosts a local desktop sends a
heartbeat message to View Connection Server. You do not need to restart the View Connection Server service
or the client computer.
If the heartbeat interval is set to a lesser value on a client computer, View uses the client computer value instead
of the View Connection Server value. By default, the heartbeat interval is not set on client computers.
Set the Heartbeat Interval for a Specific Local Desktop Client Computer
To set the heartbeat interval for a specific client computer that hosts a local desktop, you use the Windows
Registry Editor to edit the system registry on that computer.
View does not use the heartbeat interval set on the client computer if the value is greater than the heartbeat
interval set on the View Connection Server host. View always uses the lesser of the two values. The default
View Connection Server heartbeat interval is five minutes.
Prerequisites
See the Microsoft TechNet Web site for information on how to use the Windows Registry Editor on the local
mode client system's Windows operating system version.
Procedure
1 Start the Windows Registry Editor on the local desktop client computer.
2 Add a new registry key called policyUpdateFrequency.
The system registry location depends on client computer's processor type.
Option Action
64-bit
Add policyUpdateFrequency to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE,
Wow6432Node, VMware Inc., VMware VDM.
32-bit
Add policyUpdateFrequency to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE,
VMware Inc., VMware VDM.
3 Set the policyUpdateFrequency key value to the new heartbeat interval in milliseconds.
You must type a positive integer.
Manually Downloading a Local Desktop to a Location with Poor Network
Connections
For users on a network that has extremely low bandwidth, checking out a desktop can be prohibitive because
you must download several gigabytes of data. To serve these users, you can download the desktop files
manually and copy the files to the client computers.
For example, a user might work at home in a rural location with a dial-up network connection. The user might
never go to the main office, where the desktop could be checked out to the user's laptop over the LAN.
In this case, you can manually download the desktop files to a portable device such as a USB device or DVD.
After you deliver the device to the user, the user can copy the files onto a specified directory on the client
computer and check out the desktop from the View datacenter.
You can take this approach only with View Composer linked-clone desktops.
n
You manually download the View Composer base-image files.
n
When the user checks out the desktop, the linked-clone OS-disk and persistent-disk files still must be
downloaded over the network.
However, the base image contains the largest files. For example, a Windows 7 base image might be 6-10GB.
The OS disk and persistent disk are a fraction of that size.
Chapter 13 Managing Local Desktops
VMware, Inc. 251