With View Composer, you can configure OS data and user information on separate disks in linked-clone virtual machines. View Composer preserves the user information on the persistent disk when the OS data is updated, refreshed, or rebalanced.
A View Composer persistent disk contains user settings and other user-generated data. You create persistent disks when you create a linked-clone desktop pool.
You can detach a persistent disk from its linked-clone virtual machine and store the disk on its original datastore or another datastore. After you detach the disk, the linked-clone virtual machine is deleted. A detached persistent disk is no longer associated with any virtual machine.
You can use several methods to attach a detached persistent disk to another linked-clone virtual machine. This flexibility has several uses:
- When a linked clone is deleted, you can preserve the user data.
- When an employee leaves the company, another employee can access the departing employee's user data.
- A user who has multiple remote desktops can consolidate the user data on a single remote desktop.
- If a virtual machine becomes inaccessible in vCenter Server, but the persistent disk is intact, you can import the persistent disk and create a new linked clone using the disk.
