Horizon View 7 Linked clones and DPM

[myesko]

Hello, We recently upgraded to Horizon View 7.  On the previous version it was recommended not to use Distributed Power Management it you were using linked clones,  has to do with accidently orphaning replicas. 

I was wondering if Version 7 supports DPM with Linked Clones?

Thanks

Mike

[BenFB]

There is no requirement to use Distributed Power Management (DPM) but it is supported. You would only use it if you want to power off idle/unused ESXi hosts during off hours.

This is the only reference I could find in the documentation.

Advantages of Using Multiple vCenter Servers in a Pod

Frequency of Power, Provisioning, and Refit Operations

Certain virtual machine desktop power, provisioning, and refit operations are initiated only by administrator actions, are usually predictable and controllable, and can be confined to established maintenance windows. Other virtual machine desktop power and refit operations are triggered by user behavior, such as using the Refresh on Logoff or Suspend on Logoff settings, or by scripted action, such as using Distributed Power Management (DPM) during windows of user inactivity to power off idle ESXi hosts.

If your Horizon 7 design does not require user-triggered power and refit operations, a single vCenter Server instance can probably suit your needs. Without a high frequency of user-triggered power and refit operations, no long queue of operations can accumulate that might cause Horizon Connection Server to time-out waiting for vCenter Server to complete the requested operations within the defined concurrency setting limits.

Many customers elect to deploy floating pools and use the Refresh on Logoff setting to consistently deliver desktops that are free of stale data from previous sessions. Examples of stale data include unclaimed memory pages in pagefile.sys or Windows temp files. Floating pools can also minimize the impact of malware by frequently resetting desktops to a known clean state.

Some customers are reducing electricity usage by configuring Horizon 7 to power off desktops not in use so that vSphere DRS (Distributed Resources Scheduler) can consolidate the running virtual machines onto a minimum number of ESXi hosts. VMware Distributed Power Management then powers off the idle hosts. In scenarios such as these, multiple vCenter Server instances can better accommodate the higher frequency of power and refit operations required to avoid operations time-outs.

[myesko]

So I would like to use DPM in our VDI env, but it was suggested not use DPM with VDI if you are using Linked Clones, which we are.  The reason has to do with Replicas not being moved properly.

Here is a KB article on the issue.

VMware Knowledge Base

What concerns me is the Resolution in the article, it says to Disable DPM on hosts that are part of the View Cluster.  Basically, its saying don't use DPM if you have linked clones.

Now the article says the related Versions are for Horizon 5 and 6.  We are now on 7, so I was wondering if this is now possible in version 7?

Is anyone using DPM with linked clones on version 7.

We are going to look into instant clone feature with version 7, if DPM ok to use with that if we were to switch from Linked Clones to Instant Clones?

Thanks

Mike

[BenFB]

From what I've seen DRS will move the replica when placing a host in maintenance mode so it should work. I searched through the release notes for all of Horizon 6 & 7 and there is no mention of DPM. If you are unable to test this then I would suggest opening a case with VMware and reference KB 2054824 to see if it still applies to Horizon 7.