How to deploy 120 Samsung PCoIP Zero Clients without really trying. (Part 5)

How to deploy 120 Samsung PCoIP Zero Clients without really trying. (Part 5)

It's been awhile since my last post, I appoligize I've had a major bug that made my deployment come to a stand still. I'm on Beta code so this isn't a shot against View, I'm on Beta, Beta is supposed to be buggy. Smiley Happy In any case I think I got my bugged worked out last night, only time will tell.

So far I have terminals deployed in two clinics. It may sound crazy to you but I like to see how a beta runs in a real world situation, especially since I need things in my environment that 4.0 just doesn't have. One thing I can't get over is how much I love recomposing.

I have recomposed our VMs 5 times, if you're not familiar with that term, think of recomposing as reimaging your desktops. I have roughly 30 terminals deployed which would be the equivilant of 30 desktops. Think about how much work you'd have to do to image all of those desktops. Well for me all i have to do is double click my pool. (These are my pools)

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And then select View Composer - Recompose

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I'll be asked which snapshot I want to recompose from, then it starts to roll. Its close to magic how this stuff works. I spend the next 15 minutes twiddling my thumbs as my vCenter Server goes nuts completely rebuilding every desktop in inventory.

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Above is a screen shot of 5 desktops in our Urgent Care clinic. I really like that I can see what Image they are currently running. The way we administer our images is with version numbers. As you can see above this is version 5 of the WINXP-BASE desktop. WINXP-BASE is a workstation that we make changes to then we snapshot it. I can easily revert back to v4 should v5 not work correctly. Most of my version changes are simple things, some of them are application upgrades.

One thing I LOVE is that last night I needed to recompose all of my desktops to put in a bug fix. Well, I told the job to run at 7PM, and believe it or not, I didn't even stay late to watch it run (that's how much I trust this product). I got an email from a doctor at 7:30 saying that everything is running properly. Think about that, I reimaged everything without being present without issue. If that doesn't sell VMWare View I don't know what will.

I'm stuck at 25% completion on this project. I'm heading to VMWorld so it'll be a while before I move beyond that. Right now I'm having fun putting terminals in places I didn't expect to put them, instead of Exam Rooms I've been putting them in people's offices, I'm surprised how much they are liked. In any case give me a few weeks before my next update. Hopefully by then View 4.5 will be officially released and I can start talking about the nitty gritty. It's a great product, I can't wait for everyone to be able to use it.

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