Horizon View & vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode

[beutlern]

Is there a migration path for Horizon View yet if you want to implement ELM?

As far as i know its still not supported and thats quite a big showstopper for us.

[Magneet]

What is blocking you? I have several env's with ELM enabled without any issue and they have been running for a few years already. Afaik View doesn't care about ELM at all since it will just talk to it's own vCenter server.

[BenFB]

Seconded, we use ELM between multiple vCenter's. The connection server can only see the vCenter it's connected to.

[beutlern]

Hi Magneet, thanks for replying.

I got told by our infrastructure team that once you put vCenter into ELM the GUIDs of the VMs change and Horizon View would not recognize them anymore.

This got second by VMWare. Did you migrate your View Environment or built it on the ELM environment?

[BenFB]

We had ELM configured before we added any linked clones.

[TechMassey]

I have never heard of this behavior because ELM by nature is simply linking a view to each inventory with a single pane of glass. Each vCenter still maintains its own inventory. The time a change might occur is if you performed an enhanced vmotion from one vCenter to the other.

I recommend going back to VMware to get a second opinion but this time, I'll give you the exact question to help. Please make sure this goes to the Horizon View support team at VMware.

To VMware: I have a Horizon View vCenter instance that I want to enable ELM with our other vCenter in order to view both inventories in a single pane of glass. I would also like to occasionally perform enhanced vmotions between the vCenters. SSO authentication will remain with each vCenter and not be shared.

To VMware: Will Horizon View be impacted by this change?

[beutlern]

Hey TechMassy, thanks for replying.

Ill try and see what they come back with.

I am pretty sure that i've read that vCenter ELM adds something to the UUIDs because they could collide otherwise.

[TechMassey]

Hey Beutlern,

           The key is to get a definite answer from VMware. If this was true, it would affect a vast majority of customers. I know full well the difficulty when a different group controls the path forward. I have been on both sides, your going to get the answer you need. As a final option, contact your VMware account rep.

[sjesse]

I'd check with vmware, but I highly doubt they do anything to the uuid generation that would mess with horizon. The uuid generation from my understanding is based on the installation its self, and not every install generates the same uuids. There of course is a very small chance they collide but its not enough to do anything about. I went from a single install to to cloud pod architecture with two sites with a server pod and a desktop pod in each site, with all four vcenters in elm.

[BenFB]

The UUID and the MAC address of VMs are generated based off the vCenter unique ID.