VMware Horizon Community
linhnguyen
Contributor
Contributor

starting up a View environment, 3 or 4?

I'm about to go ahead and start up a View environment to play around with virtual desktops. Our current VMWare setup is ESXi 3.5u4 and vCenter 2.5u5. I will deploy two ESXi3.5u5 servers for View.

From what I can tell, I don't think I can use View 4 because update 5 is not supported, correct? In which I should have no problem with View 3.1?

The other concern is our desktops are about to switch over to Windows 7 (not all, but moving there), and I wanted to try and keep the same environment. My understanding is this is probably unlikely with View 3.1? Just for reference, the clients would mostly be Wyse V10L's. Maybe a few thick clients running XP.

Just trying to map everything out and see how I should set this all up without wasting any money and time. If anyone has an input, it would be appreciated.

Thanks

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szelinsky
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would upgrade to vCenter 4 and deploy two ESXi4u1 for View 4. You will still be able to manage your ESX3.5 hosts and solve the compatability issues for View.

This is just my opinion, but if you are stuck with VC 2.5, I would look at other brokers for your VDI.

linhnguyen
Contributor
Contributor

Yeah, I'm not sure if we can manage to upgrade vCenter for a while.

Now, if I take windows 7 out of the picture, I shouldn't really have a problem, other than the obvious of losing View 4 features, right? Windows 7 functionality is more of a perk right now, so long as XP continues to be updated by Microsoft.

Otherwise, what broker solution would you suggest?

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szelinsky
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have implemented View3.1 with XP vms with no issues. The use of linked clones in our environment had some limitations, so I decided to leverage rapid and thin provisioning with NAS. Be sure to check out the XP deployment guide for VDI. I POC'd several different brokers for our vSphere4 and ESX 4 VDI enviroment (prior to the release of View 4) and settled on vWorkspace for many reasons including the ability to manage Vmware, MS VMs, physical desktops and TS desktops.

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hmartin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would recommend, if at all possible, to use View 4 with vSphere 4 Update 1 and vCenter Server 4 Update 1. I would recommend a separate vCenter Server instance for your View environment, especially if you plan to install View Composer. This provides you with more flexibility and less (no) impact on your existing server virtualization environment. When you install the updated vCenter Client, it runs the older client when you connect to a 2.x vCenter Server and it runs the v4 client when you connect to a v4.x vCenter Server, and both can be run at the same time. Therefore, administration is not significantly affected. There are many improvements (IMO) that make View 4 a must. Whatever you decide, best of luck.

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linhnguyen
Contributor
Contributor

I hadn't realized our vCenter license had maintenance on it, so I should be free to upgrade to vCenter 4u1. In that case, I may go ahead and install ESX4u1 for our VDI environment.

I cannot likely purchase a 2nd vCenter license dedicated for View at this time. It is only going to be a small ~35 desktop test for now, doing basic MS Office stuff.

I should not have any problem with a mixed ESX environment I take it. This is looking like my best option.

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