Trying to go as simple as possible: One floating VM from vCenter / ESXi. Still stuck.

[jeremym]

Okay:

So far, I've .. :

1. Failed at creating a pool of automatic linked clones with Quickprep: I need a KMS for that. Don't want to do that.

2. Failed at creating a pool of automatic lined clones with Sysprep.

Okay.. I'm ready to take a giant leap BACKWARDS, and just get the following going:

ONE Floating Windows 7 32-bit VM.

And I'm still stuck.

What I'm doing:

1. Put apps, and VMware View Agent on the machine. Joined domain. Shut it down. Took snapshot.

2. Created Manual Pool. Floating. vCenter virtual machines.

3. Pick the ONE VM (from step 1).

4. Pool "creates" and appears to start the VM.

5. Poking my head in via the ESXi console, I see the machine start.. and then.. just sit there. It's waiting for someone to log on, and nothing else at all is happening.

My status is "Waiting for agent" as seen here:  http://screencast.com/t/lhECz2mtlZ

VMware Tools and Agent are (I swear) on the VM as seen here: http://screencast.com/t/qHH34FptXS4

I can manually log on (whoop de doo)... but vCenter's events are not showing anything other than (again) .. "Waiting for agent") and the following: http://screencast.com/t/FDZmCZVc

I must have missed the memo or something, and maybe DIDNT do something to my VM guest.. because all my tests are failing in exactly the same place: all my tests with floating pools all just stop right here and a lot of nothing happens after the guest is started.

By creating a manual pool, my hope was  to avoid all wierd issues.

This should be working.. but .. alas.. I am stuck.. (this is my 5th day at this.)

Thanks in advance.

[jeremym]

I got my Floating Linked Clones (three of them) working .. end to end.. perfectly.

Notes for future astronauts:

- The "Provisioning" stage took a lot longer than I thought for three machines. I didn't realize that a full "clone" occurs first from your source VM.. (long) then it starts up each VM, and configures those. There was a loooooong period of "nothing at all" happening.

- So much so that I thought, okay.. everyone says I need a KMS server for Floating Linked Clones.. so maybe its getting hung up in "Configuring" stage because of that. So.. while I was gathering information on that.. I turned around, and it was all done.

So .. to be clear: I swear I do not have a KMS server, yet Floating Linked Clones (where the key was fed to the source VM as a "MAK / multiple activation" works perfectly, A-OK and all linked clones are working perfectly A-OK. I am using the Quickprep option.. and, again, I swear there's no KMS server in my set up.

- Next,  you'll know it's all done (Mr. Future Astronaut) when *ONE* of the linked clones is started at the ready (as that's the default.. having one VM "spun up" and waiting.)

Lastly.. I am getting this little unhappy dialog when users connect into the floating clones:

http://screencast.com/t/gC9nkN4k3loN

I could fiddle fiddle.. but if anyone knows the quick answer to make that go away (WITHOUT re-provisioning if possible) that would be ideal.

But this closes the official battle of "I cannot get any VMs to work in any pools whatsoever".

[lbourque]

To help with the paging file error, recreate the pool with a disposable disk that is the size of allocated memory (at least) + 100MB. We'll redirect the page file into there and that should address that issue. Glad to hear you got it going.

[jeremym]

Okay...

1. I did that.. and the problem went away. Thanks L. (FYI.. Technically, I was over that number by a margin, now I'm over that number by a WIDE margin and the problem is gone.) My VMs are 512, and I had it configured for 1024. Now the disposable disk is set to 2048 and the problem is gone.

2. Also.. the batch files provided by  Vmware to optimize the desktop.. (turn off services, etc etc) is definitely what's blowing up my ability to provision. Its definitely isolated down to that.

Since this is a test lab setup, I'm not going to use optimizations much anyway.. and I'm basically up and running, and also got HTML access working within the VMs and on the vConnect server as well.

Next up: Persona management.

So that's it for this thread. Thanks again everyone for helping hands.