You create an automated linked-clone farm as part of the process to give users access to applications or RDS desktops.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that the View Composer service is installed. See the Horizon 7 Installation document.
  • Verify that View Composer settings for vCenter Server are configured in Horizon Administrator. See the Horizon 7 Administration document.

  • Verify that you have a sufficient number of ports on the ESXi virtual switch that is used for the virtual machines that are used as remote desktops. The default value might not be sufficient if you create large desktop pools. The number of virtual switch ports on the ESXi host must equal or exceed the number of virtual machines multiplied by the number of virtual NICs per virtual machine.

  • Verify that you prepared a parent virtual machine. Both Horizon Agent and View Composer Agent must be installed on the parent virtual machine. See Preparing a Parent Virtual Machine for an Automated Farm.
  • Take a snapshot of the parent virtual machine in vCenter Server. You must shut down the parent virtual machine before you take the snapshot. View Composer uses the snapshot as the base image from which the clones are created.
    Note: You cannot create a linked-clone pool from a virtual machine template.
  • Gather the configuration information you must provide to create the farm. See Worksheet for Creating an Automated Linked-Clone Farm.

Procedure

  1. In Horizon Administrator, click Resources > Farms.
  2. Click Add to enter the configuration information that you gathered in the worksheet.
  3. Select Automated Farm and click Next.
  4. Select View Composer linked clones and click Next.
  5. Follow the prompts in the wizard to create the farm.
    Use the configuration information that you gathered in the worksheet. You can go directly back to any wizard page that you completed by clicking the page name in the navigation panel.

Results

In Horizon Administrator, you can now view the farm by clicking Resources > Farms.

What to do next

Create an application pool or an RDS desktop pool. See Creating Application Pools or Creating RDS Desktop Pools.