This was from http://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/The-basics-of-VMware-Composer-and-Linked-Clones and I thought it might be a way around the GUID reset, have you tried it?
Jason
- In the Desktop/Pool Settings, shown in Figure 6, you should notice that the page has change slightly giving you an new option to control the Refresh OS disk on logoff feature.
Figure 6
As you might remember from the explanation of the linked clones feature – changes in the user's desktop environment are merely "deltas" which are held in a separate virtual disk, in a very similar way to the VMware Snapshot feature. This setting controls what happens to those changes. The options are quite simple. The option "Never" means that the changes accrue over time with the delta files growing gradually larger day by day. This means the user's environment is never reset, and you run the risk of eventually running out of disk space. The option "Always" means every time the user logs off their virtual desktop is reset back to a clean state as if they just logged in for the first time. The option "Every…" allows you to trigger a reset of the user virtual desktop at interval measured in days. Finally the At… option allows you to specify using a percentage a reset based on the size of the delta – so once the users delta drive is at 90% utilization it triggers a reset. VMware currently recommend a reset at every log off for virtual desktops that are persistent pools using the linked clone technology.
This refresh at log off causes the user virtual desktop to shutdown, and the delta virtual disks to be discard – then new delta virtual disks are created. The entire process can take some time and if user attempts log out and log in quickly they can find the virtual desktop not yet ready. If the user attempt to reconnect while this process is still ongoing they will receive a message in their client indicating their virtual desktop may not be available, as in Figure 7.
Figure 7
Personally, I've found users find this annoying especially as log out and log in sometime used a cure all for fixing problems in Windows. Personally, I would consider using of Never, and instead use Connection servers manual "Refresh" option which allows to you refresh the desktops at given date and time. This would allow us to refresh the virtual desktops during the evening of weekend – in such away to minimize the impact on end users.
Hello!
I know this is an old post, but I want to share my impressions
I'm in a new project implementing VMware Horizon View in a customer. This customer have a system to deploy images to phyisical desktops, most of this procedure is SCCM based.
And now I must to implement View Desktops with Persona Mgmt and Linked Clones with this system.
I found (but I must to test it before) a procedure to maintain the same GUIDs in the machines with recompose process. Is based in tranguid tool, available in SCCM Tools if I remember correctly, and this application saves the GUID in a file for later import in the "new" recomposed desktop.
Like I said, I must test it in production, but If somebody is interested, or if somebody have tested this procedure, feel free to share your knowledge!
I'll update this post with my results 