Static assignment of computers to a shared pool

[hagedorn]

The problem is as follows...

I have students for different courses all using the same user accounts, like student1,2 etc. they connect from thinclients named student 1, 2 etc. to a static VDM assigned VM student1,2 etc made specific for the course.

Ideal would be to have a set of class VM's set up permanantly and just power on the right ones for a course.

This does not work as when a cloned course student1 VM gets cloned and becomes becomes course 2 student 2 it is still a student 1 VM as seen from VDM.

So i ask can this be solved ?

happy thinking

Thomas

[Troy_Clavell]

taking VDM out of the picture, what we do for our classrooms is make snapshots of each VM before the class starts. Once the class is over we revert back to the before snap and therefore leaving the VM as it is.

Hope this helps.

[hagedorn]

for a static set of VM's thats fine but if you want to have multiple different setups with the same computer names student 1, 2 etc it wont work with VDM.

apparently the VDM writes information into the VM with its name as seen from the VDM, so even with a cloned one with new name (also new in VirtualCenter) it still has its old name in relations to VDM.

For it to work i would have to build a complete set of static VM's for each class making the storage overhead kind of large.

optimal would be to have just one of each and then deploy a class from that with names that would get passed to the VDM.

still hope it makes sense :smileylaugh:

[Troy_Clavell]

We do this all the time, deploy VM's with the same computer names. VDM doesn't talk with active directory, it only cares obout VCMS. So, if you are deploying the same computer names over and over again, don't use VDM to set them up. Don't use persistant pools, the best bet would be to setup indivdual desktops within VDM and import the VM's from VCMS. The only downfall to this is you have to do it one at a time.

The problem with VDM is that when you deploy VM's from a pool, it doesn't always use the same unique name. Say if you deploy student1, then delete that VM from the pool and VDM continues the deployment, it may take the next suquential number in order, like student2.

[mittim12]

VDM does edit the VMX of the VM to add a machine id line as seen below for one of my VDM machines and a clone of that VM. Maybe it would help to clone before the VDM agent is installed or try to create it from a template. If you want and if you are running VDM 2.1 you can export the config and try to match up the ID's below with some of your machines to see if that is the problem.

VM1

machine.id = "vdi.broker.itemDn=cn=e20c36a0-a3c4-4f9b-a2c4-47bf3aeb08aa,ou=servers,dc=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int;vdi.broker.disconnecttimeout=0;vdi.broker.poolDn=cn=******,ou=server groups,dc=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int;vdi.broker.brokers="brokername";vdi.broker.singleuse=0"

Clone of VM1

machine.id = "vdi.broker.itemDn=cn=e20c36a0-a3c4-4f9b-a2c4-47bf3aeb08aa,ou=servers,dc=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int;vdi.broker.disconnecttimeout=0;vdi.broker.poolDn=cn=******,ou=server groups,dc=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int;vdi.broker.brokers="brokername";vdi.broker.singleuse=0"

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