After you create a desktop pool, you can change certain configuration settings.
| Configuration Tab | Description |
|---|---|
| General | Edit desktop pool-naming options and storage policy management settings. Storage policy management settings determine whether to use a vSAN datastore. If you do not use vSAN, you can select separate datastores for replica and OS disks.
Note: For Horizon Composer linked clones, if you change to using
vSAN, you must use a rebalance operation to migrate all virtual machines in the desktop pool to the
vSAN datastore.
|
| Desktop Pool Settings | Edit machine settings such as the power policy and display protocol. Power policy is not available for instant clones. Instant clones are always powered on. |
| Provisioning Settings | Edit desktop pool provisioning options and add machines to the desktop pool. This tab is available for automated desktop pools only. |
| vCenter Settings | Edit the virtual machine template or default base image. Add or change the vCenter Server instance, ESXi host or cluster, datastores, and other vCenter features. The new values only affect virtual machines that are created after the settings are changed. The new settings do not affect existing virtual machines. This tab is available for automated desktop pools only. |
| Guest Customization | If Sysprep was selected, you can change the customization specification. In Horizon 7.0, Sysprep is not available to instant clones. If QuickPrep was selected, you can change the Active Directory domain and container and specify the power-off and post-synchronization scripts. If ClonePrep was selected, you can change the Active Directory container and specify the power-off and post-synchronization scripts. You cannot change the domain.
Note: For instant clones, if you change the power-off or post-synchronization script name, or their parameters, and the new script exists in the current image, the new script is executed and the new parameters are used when a new clone is created. If the new script does not exist in the current image, you must select or create an image that has the new script and do a push image.
For Horizon Composer linked clones, if you change the power-off or post-synchronization script name, the change applies at the next recompose operation. However, changes to the power-off script parameters or the post-synchronization script parameters do apply to the clones that are created with the current snapshot. This tab is available for automated desktop pools only. |
| If you select or deselect Use View Storage Accelerator, or reschedule when the View Storage Accelerator digest files are regenerated, the settings do affect existing virtual machines. If you modify View Storage Accelerator settings for an existing desktop pool, the changes do not take effect until the virtual machines in the desktop pool are powered off. See Configure View Storage Accelerator for Linked Clones.
Note: If you select
Use View Storage Accelerator on an existing linked-clone desktop pool, and the replica was not previously enabled for View Storage Accelerator, this feature might not take effect right away. View Storage Accelerator cannot be enabled while the replica is in use. You can force View Storage Accelerator to be enabled by recomposing the desktop pool to a new golden image virtual machine.
This option is automatically enabled on instant clones. |
|
| If you select or deselect Reclaim VM disk space, or reschedule when the virtual machine disk space reclamation occurs, the new settings do affect existing virtual machines if they were created with space-efficient disks. See Reclaim Disk Space on Linked Clones, Instant Clones, and Automated Farms that Use Non-vSAN Datastores. This option does not apply to instant clones. |
|
| If you select or deselect Use native NFS snapshots (VAAI), the new setting only affects virtual machines that are created after the settings are changed. You can change existing virtual machines to become native NFS snapshot clones by recomposing and, if needed, rebalancing the desktop pool. See Using VAAI Storage for Linked Clones. This option is not supported for instant clones. |
|
| If you change the Transparent Page Sharing Scope setting, the new setting takes effect the next time the virtual machine is powered on. Select the level at which to allow transparent page sharing (TPS). The choices are Virtual Machine (the default), Pool, Pod, or Global. If you turn on TPS for all the machines in the pool, pod, or globally, the ESXi host eliminates redundant copies of memory pages that result if the machines use the same guest operating system or applications. Page sharing happens on the ESXi host. For example, if you enable TPS at the pool level but the pool is spread across multiple ESXi hosts, only virtual machines on the same host and within the same pool will share pages. At the global level, all machines managed by Horizon 7 on the same ESXi host can share memory pages, regardless of which pool the machines reside in.
Note: The default setting is not to share memory pages among machines because TPS can pose a security risk. Research indicates that TPS could possibly be abused to gain unauthorized access to data in very limited configuration scenarios.
This option is automatically enabled on instant clones. |
If you edit a instant-clone desktop pool to add or remove datastores, rebalancing of the VMs happens automatically when a new clone must be created, for example, when a user logs off or when you increase the size of the pool. If you want rebalancing to happen faster, take the following actions:
- If you remove a datastore, manually remove the desktops on that datastore so that the new desktops will be created on the remaining datastores.
- If you add a datastore, manually remove some desktops from the original datastores so that the new desktops will be created on the new datastore. You can also remove all desktops so that when they are recreated, they will be evenly distributed across the datastores.
