VMware Horizon 6 Desktop Virtualization Solutions

VMware Horizon 6 Desktop Virtualization Solutions

by Ryan Cartwright, Chuck Mills, Jason Langone, Andre Leibovici
Released September 2014
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781782170709

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Book description

Plan, design, and secure your virtual desktop environments with VMware Horizon 6 View

In Detail

VMware Horizon 6 (with View) delivers virtualized desktops and applications through a single platform. It supports users, providing them with access to all of their Windows and online resources through one unified workspace, anywhere, using the device of their choice. The latest VDI release has brought with it various enhancements that will provide a better way to solve the common problems that occur while designing a VDI solution.

This book will guide you through how to produce a solid VDI solution with VMware Horizon 6 View, by combining best practices with actual installation challenges. The book is designed to be used during the design phase, which comes before the implementation phase. It covers all major Horizon 6 components and tips on how to use them to provide a solid VDI solution.

What You Will Learn

  • Learn the strategies and techniques needed to migrate your user population from a traditional physical desktop environment to a successful virtual desktop solution
  • Plan the approach to deliver, protect, and manage Windows desktops and applications to ensure that users can work anytime, anywhere, on any device
  • Decide whether to use persistent or nonpersistent vDesktops and understand the impact of both on the VDI environment
  • Understand the choices around end devices such as thick clients, thin clients, and zero clients
  • Size the VDI environment correctly to avoid slow logons, poor PCoIP performance, authentication problems, and other random failures
  • Analyze all of the potential points of failure within a VDI and provide redundancy for each component
  • Design a backup solution and/or disaster recovery plan to ensure a quick recovery in times of failure

Table of contents

  1. VMware Horizon 6 Desktop Virtualization Solutions
    1. Table of Contents
    2. VMware Horizon 6 Desktop Virtualization Solutions
    3. Credits
    4. Foreword
    5. About the Authors
    6. About the Reviewers
    7. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why subscribe?
        2. Free access for Packt account holders
        3. Instant updates on new Packt books
    8. Preface
      1. The VDI solution
      2. What this book covers
      3. What you need for this book
      4. Who this book is for
      5. Conventions
      6. Reader feedback
      7. Customer support
        1. Errata
        2. Piracy
        3. Questions
    9. 1. Components of VMware Horizon View 6
      1. The core components of VMware Horizon View 6
      2. vCenter Server
      3. View Connection Server
        1. Types of VMware View Connection Servers
      4. View Manager
        1. Precreated Active Directory machine accounts
        2. vCenter and View Composer's advanced settings
        3. The Phone Home option
        4. Feature Pack
      5. View Agent
      6. Horizon Client
        1. Improved end user experience
          1. Real-Time Audio-Video
      7. View Composer (an optional component)
        1. Understanding View Composer
        2. Using SQL Express installation for View Composer
      8. Snapshots and linked clones
        1. Templates
        2. Full provisioning versus linked clones
      9. Types of disks for vDesktops
        1. OS disk
        2. Secondary OS disk
        3. User data disk
        4. Temp data disk
        5. Many options of disk types and redirection
        6. Thin provisioning versus thick provisioning
        7. Actions for linked clones – Reset, Refresh, Recompose, and Rebalance
          1. Reset
          2. Refresh
          3. Recompose
          4. Rebalance
      10. View Composer Array Integration (VCAI)
      11. VMware Horizon editions
      12. Summary
    10. 2. Solution Methodology
      1. Assessment
        1. Questionnaire
        2. Assessment worksheet for VMware View desktops
        3. Metric collection
          1. Processing the data
        4. Discussion
      2. Plan (define use cases)
      3. Design
        1. Storage
          1. Isolation at the data store level
            1. Why is isolation beneficial?
        2. vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)
        3. View Storage Accelerator
        4. Networking
        5. Compute
        6. VMware vSphere and View desktop pool infrastructure
          1. Pod architecture
        7. Application distribution infrastructure
        8. What is a user persona?
        9. User persona management
        10. Connection infrastructure
        11. End devices
        12. People (the end user experience)
      4. Pilot and validate
        1. The VMware View Planner tool (formerly VMware RAWC)
          1. Comparing storage platforms
      5. Implementation
      6. User migration
      7. Hand-off and manage
      8. Summary
    11. 3. Persistent or Nonpersistent vDesktops
      1. Persistent desktops
        1. Example scenario
      2. Nonpersistent desktops
        1. Example scenario
        2. Notes and considerations for nonpersistent vDesktops
      3. Multisite solutions
        1. Why is a nonpersistent vDesktop best for a multisite?
        2. Replication (why distance and size matters)
        3. Profiles in the cloud
      4. A hybrid solution – persistent mixed with nonpersistent
      5. Choosing the right solution
        1. Knowing your end users
        2. A note about applications
        3. The pros and cons of both persistent and nonpersistent desktops
      6. Summary
    12. 4. End Devices
      1. Thick clients
        1. Repurposing thick clients
      2. Thin clients
      3. Changes to thick and thin client solutions
      4. Teradici PCoIP-powered zero clients
      5. Other clients
        1. Unity Touch for iPad and Android-based tablets
      6. Choosing the proper device
        1. A one-cable zero client solution
      7. Summary
    13. 5. The PCoIP Protocol
      1. Why lossless quality is important
      2. PCoIP network fundamentals
        1. Using PCoIP with Server Desktop Mode
          1. Installing the Remote Desktop Services
          2. Installing View Agent on the RDS Host
          3. Creating an RDS farm
        2. PCoIP connections
      3. Multimedia redirection
        1. The MMR perfect storm
          1. Windows 7 support for H.264-encoded Windows Media files
      4. Teradici APEX offload card
        1. The offload process
        2. Defining the offload tiers
        3. Design considerations
      5. PCoIP Secure Gateway
      6. Summary
    14. 6. Sizing the VDI
      1. Network considerations
        1. Sizing the network
          1. Network connection characteristics
        2. DHCP considerations
        3. Virtual switch considerations
          1. Standard versus distributed switches
          2. Port binding
            1. Static binding
            2. Dynamic binding
            3. Ephemeral binding
          3. Port binding and VMware View Composer
          4. Multi-VLAN
      2. Compute considerations
      3. Working with VMware vSphere maximums
        1. Solution example – 25,000 seats of VMware View
          1. Solution design – physical server requirements
          2. Solution design – the pod concept
        2. The VMware View pod design
          1. The View pod
          2. The View block
          3. The Management block
          4. Scaling desktop pool types
        3. The architecture types for pods
          1. Linked vCenter Servers
          2. vCenter Servers
          3. VMware Update Manager Servers
        4. Solution design – pools
          1. View Connection Servers
        5. Solution design – the formulas
      4. Summary
    15. 7. Building Redundancy into the VDI Solution
      1. Physical infrastructure
        1. VMware High Availability
          1. Using VMware HA
          2. Using HA with persistent vDesktops
          3. Solutions with nonpersistent vDesktops
            1. Using local storage
        2. VMware Distributed Resource Scheduling
          1. Anti-affinity
      2. VMware vCenter Server
        1. VMware Data Protection
        2. vSphere High Availability
        3. Database High Availability
        4. Cold/Standby vCenter
      3. View Connection Server
        1. Installing the Replica Connection Server
        2. Load balancing
      4. Parent vDesktop and templates
        1. Templates
        2. Parent vDesktops with snapshots
      5. User personas
      6. Summary
    16. 8. Sizing the Storage
      1. VMware View Composer
        1. Snapshots
        2. Snapshot and replica usage
        3. Linked clone disk
      2. VMware vSphere files
      3. VMware View specific files
      4. Tiered storage
        1. Replica disk
        2. Internal disk
        3. Delta/differential disk
        4. Disposable disk
          1. Windows paging files
          2. Temporary Internet files
        5. Persistent disk
      5. Storage overcommit
        1. Storage overcommit level options
      6. Storage protocols
      7. Maximums and limits
        1. Linked clones per datastore
        2. Full clone desktops per datastore
        3. 32 hosts per vSphere cluster with View Composer
        4. 1,000 clones per replica
      8. Storage I/O profile
      9. Read/write I/O ratio
      10. Storage tiering and I/O distribution
      11. Disk types
      12. VMware Virtual SAN
      13. Capacity-sizing exercises
        1. Sizing full clones
          1. Scenario 1
            1. Parent VM
            2. Overhead
          2. Scenario 2
        2. Sizing linked clones
          1. Parent VM
          2. Replica
          3. Scenario 1
          4. Scenario 2
      14. vSphere 5.0 video swap
      15. Summary
    17. 9. Security
      1. The inherent security of VDI
      2. Firewalls, zones, and antivirus
        1. Firewall rules
      3. Virtual enclaves
        1. The jailbreak scenario
      4. USB redirection and filtering
        1. USB filtering on the end device
        2. USB filtering via View Connection Server
        3. USB filtering via the Windows operating system
      5. Smart card authentication
        1. Configuring smart card authentication for VMware View Connection Servers
          1. Preparing the environment for smart card authentication
        2. Configuring smart card authentication for VMware View Security Servers
        3. RADIUS and two-factor authentication
        4. Configuring the U.S. Department of Defense Common Access Card authentication
        5. Certificate revocation configuration
          1. Configuring the use of CRL
          2. Configuring the use of OCSP
          3. Configuring the use of both CRL and OCSP
        6. SSL protocols and ciphers
      6. Prohibiting the use of copy and paste functions
      7. View Connection Server tags
      8. Forensics
      9. Summary
    18. 10. Migrating User Personas
      1. Migration of the user persona
      2. Separating a persona from the operating environment
        1. Folder redirection
        2. Profiles
          1. How a profile is built – the first login
          2. How a profile is built – subsequent logins
          3. Roaming profiles
          4. Using roaming profiles with folder redirection for increased performance
          5. Other third-party solutions – Liquidware Labs ProfileUnity
        3. View Persona Management
        4. Horizon Mirage
        5. Cutting over from a physical to a virtual desktop
      3. Using VMware View user data disks
      4. Operational considerations with user data
      5. Summary
    19. 11. Backing Up the VMware View Infrastructure
      1. VMware View Connection Server – ADAM Database backup
        1. Performing a manual backup of the View database
        2. The View Administrator console
        3. Using the command prompt
      2. Security Server considerations
      3. The View Composer database
      4. Remote Desktop Service host servers
      5. RDS Server host templates and virtual machines
      6. Virtual desktop templates and parent VMs
      7. Virtual desktops
        1. Linked clone desktops
        2. Stateful desktops
        3. Stateless desktops
      8. The ThinApp repository
      9. Persona Management
      10. VMware vCenter
      11. Restoring the VMware View environment
        1. Reconciliation after recovery
      12. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
      13. Summary
    20. 12. Exciting New Features in Horizon View 6
      1. Cloud Pod Architecture
        1. Global entitlement
        2. Scale limits and maximums
        3. Architectural assumptions
      2. Overview for the setup of Cloud Pod Architecture
        1. Setting up Cloud Pod Architecture
          1. Step 1 – The first pod and Connection Server
          2. Step 2 – Joining the second pod to the first pod
          3. Step 3 – Validating the initial pod and Connection Server settings
          4. Step 4 – Creating the first site
          5. Step 5 – Creating the second site
          6. Step 6 – Validating both sites
          7. Step 7 – Adding the first pod to the first site
          8. Step 8 – Adding the second pod to the second site
          9. Step 9 – Validating pods in the sites
          10. Step 10 – Creating a global pool for the local desktop pools
          11. Step 11 – Repeating step 10 for additional global desktop entitlements
          12. Step 12 – Validating the global pools
          13. Step 13 – Associating Local Connection Server desktop pools with global pools
          14. Step 14 – Repeating step 13 for additional global desktop entitlements that were created in step 11
          15. Step 15 – Repeating step 13 for each secondary site created in step 5
          16. Step 16 – Repeating step 15 once for each secondary site created in step 5
          17. Step 17 – Verifying global pool membership using the first Connection Server
          18. Step 18 – Repeating step 17 for the additional global pool defined in step 11
          19. Step 19 – Entitling users/groups to the global pools
          20. Step 20 – Validating your Cloud Pod Architecture configurations
      3. Application publishing
      4. A unified workspace
      5. Horizon View 6 integration with Virtual SAN
        1. VSAN requirements
        2. View and VSAN together
        3. How VSAN helps Horizon View
      6. Other new features
      7. Summary
    21. A. Additional Tools
      1. VMware View Planner
      2. Workspace Assessment
      3. The VDI calculator
      4. VMware Hands-on Labs
        1. VMware TV
      5. Websites and social media
    22. Index

Product information

  • Title: VMware Horizon 6 Desktop Virtualization Solutions
  • Author(s): Ryan Cartwright, Chuck Mills, Jason Langone, Andre Leibovici
  • Release date: September 2014
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781782170709