Delete or refresh desktop on logoff?

[st84]

Hi all,

I've been playing around with a pool:

Floating

Linked Clone

Persona enabled

Provision on demand

I have tried both options, delete and refresh on logoff. With both I have encountered some issues.

Delete on logoff:

When this setting is selected, I sometimes get VMs with the error state "already used", removing the VMs in View Admin resolves this. But sometimes I also get the "...with input specification already exists" and the only way to resolve this is by deleting the already used VM from the DB. The latter error also disables provisioning on the pool.

Refresh on logoff:

This option doesn't generate any errors but what it does is, with time I get tons of unassigned VMs in the pool, no matter what is set as "number of spare desktops".

Any ideas how to prevent any of this? Or do I have to decide if I want to accept error VMs (delete on logoff) or having to manually delete the excess number of VMs every now and then (refresh on logoff).

Thanks,

[jgravedo]

We prefer using refresh on logoff with a setting of "automatically log off after disconnect: after 240 minutes". This then forces the logoff, which forces the refresh. You can adjust the minutes to what your deployment demands, but we've found that forcing the logoff keeps the .vmdk files smaller, keeps the pools with a smaller amount of "active" desktops, and thus uses fewer VMs in total.

In my experience, users don't log out on their own when they find out they can just leave it up and running all the time.

The delete on logoff also tends to add more overhead to your datastore I/O, as well as host CPU utilization, especially as you get more users logging in/out throughout the day.

[RichDyer]

the solution is described here VMware Horizon View – “Already Used” status and pae-DirtyVMPolicy » ITuDA