4.6

Prepare a Parent Virtual Machine
The View Composer service requires a parent virtual machine from which you generate a base image for
creating and managing linked-clone desktops.
Prerequisites
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Verify that you prepared a virtual machine to use for deploying View desktops. See “Creating Virtual
Machines for View Desktop Deployment,” on page 45.
You do not have to join the parent virtual machine to the Active Directory domain in which the linked-
clone desktops will reside. The parent virtual machine can be a member of the local WORKGROUP.
IMPORTANT To use features that are supported in View Manager 4.5 or later, such as redirecting disposable
data to a separate disk and customizing linked-clone desktops with Sysprep, you must deploy the desktops
from a parent virtual machine on which View Agent 4.5 or later is installed.
You cannot use View Composer to deploy desktops that run Windows Vista Ultimate Edition or Windows
XP Professional SP1.
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If the parent virtual machine runs Windows XP, and your Active Directory runs on Windows Server 2008,
apply an update patch on the Windows XP virtual machine. See the Microsoft Support Article 944043 at
the following location: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944043/en-us.
If you do not install the Windows Server 2008 read-only domain controller (RODC) compatibility pack
for Windows XP, linked clones that are deployed from this parent virtual machine fail to join the domain.
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When you install View Agent on the parent virtual machine, select the View Composer Agent option. See
“Install View Agent on a Virtual Machine,” on page 49.
To update View Agent in a large environment, you can use standard Windows update mechanisms such
as Altiris, SMS, LanDesk, BMC, or other systems management software. You can also use the recompose
operation to update View Agent.
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To deploy desktops that run Windows 7 or Windows Vista, configure a volume license key and activate
the parent virtual machine's operating system with volume activation. See “Activating Windows 7 and
Windows Vista on Linked-Clone Desktops,” on page 66.
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If the parent virtual machine runs Windows 7, verify that you followed the best practices for optimizing
the operating system. See “Optimizing Windows 7 for Linked-Clone Desktops,” on page 58.
Procedure
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Remove the DHCP lease on the parent virtual machine to avoid copying a leased IP address to the linked
clones in the pool.
a On the parent virtual machine, open a command prompt.
b Type the ipconfig /release command.
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Verify that the system disk contains a single volume.
You cannot deploy linked clones from a parent virtual machine that contains more than one volume. The
View Composer service does not support multiple disk partitions. Multiple virtual disks are supported.
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Disable the hibernation option to reduce the size of linked-clone OS disks that are created from the parent
virtual machine.
Chapter 4 Creating and Preparing Virtual Machines
VMware, Inc. 65