There are limited tools for getting VMs into pools with VDM 2.1. While it's possible to bring VMs in and out of manual pools, there's nothing official for adding VMs into persistent and non-persistent pools. We did publish a whitepaper some time ago with details for importing VMs through adding ldap entries (see the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Documentation), but that does require you to get pretty stuck in. This is something we plan to improve upon in future releases. I found that same thing, but had to make a choice between going down that path or just cutting my losses now and start with a new pool. I chose neither and just joined the vms to individual VDM connections. Then we ran into a problem where we ran out of workstations that used to be in defunct nonpersistent pool, so I decided going with enough workstations in a persistent pool would actually server our students better.
And combine this with the inability for clones to automatically join the domain
Ah, sysprep... it's a fickle beast. VC 2.5 will use the standard Microsoft sysprep process on your VMs, there are various posts in the VI forums about problems here but here are a couple of quick tips:
Make sure DHCP and DNS are functioning correctly in the subnet
Use the fully qualified domain name in the customization spec.
Make sure the template is not a member of a domain
These are good tips, I'll double check our template and ensure the answer file is populated correctly.
And now I have 16 out of 19 users successfully logged in. 3 users are being directed to VDI workstations already in use - while I have twenty machines ready and unassigned in the pool.
This I'm very interested in, any chance you can give some more details of your environment. Are you able to turn trace logging on in the broker (warning: this will adversly affect performance of the machine) and one of the agents that more than one user is connecting to and give me a support bundle from each?
This was information from an instructor which turned out to be incorrect. Come to find out that a few of the vm's in the pool were not joined to the domain correctly. I think I may have uncovered a AD gremlin in our network. Disjoining and rejoining the machines fixed the problem. According to the VDM - it assumed everything was great because it was able to put a new user in touch with a new workstation and pass along the authentication information. After visiting the class room and seeing the problem for myself it was obvious the only problem was with the workstation itself.
I'll check sysprep more closely and see if we can get this darn thing working better. ![]()
Thanks for following up with my ranting with useful information, I greatly appreciate it... it's been an interesting week to say the least. I still say VDI/VDM is not ready for production and won't be recommending its expansion beyond our existing deployment until I see some significant improvements in workstation management and storage utilization. You guys are on the right track, but I think the software needs to bake a little longer in the development oven. ![]()