Horizon 7.1: Instant Clone, Deploy and Configure Part 2 of 2

/ June 26, 2017/ VMware Horizon

Part 2 configuring the desktop and creating an Instant Clone pool.

Creating a Master Image

While installing the Horizon Agent in the desktop, you can choose between;

VMware Horizon View Composer
VMware Horizon Instant Clone

In this case we need the Instant Clone feature, it’s important that the View Composer feature is deselected. You cannot install both features

# Test environment is based on Windows 10
# For best performance, I highly recommended to use VMware OS Optimization Tool

View Storage Accelerator

For using Instant Clone, you must enable View Storage Accelerator. you can do this at the vCenter settings in the Horizon administration console;

– View Configuration
– Servers
– Edit vCenter Server
– Switch tab to Storage
– Select Enable View Storage Accelerator

Add Instant Clone Domain Admins

A Instant Clone Domain Admin is used for adding the Template VM and desktop to the Active Directory.
The following domain permissions are required for the user;

-List Contents
-Read All Properties
-Write All Properties
-Read Permissions
-Reset Password
-Create Computer Objects
-Delete Computer Objects

Create Desktop Pool

Creating a Instant Clone desktop Pool is almost similar while creating a linked clone pool

Select Automated Desktop Pool, Other types are note supported.

Select Floathing, Dedicated assignment is not needed

Select Instant Clone, and the vCenter server

3D Rendering without NVIDIA GRID VGPU is not possible, setting is default disabled.
You can also choose one of the following protocols;

VMware Blast
PCoIP
RDP

With Horizon 7.1, you can select a different Network when creating an instant-clone desktop pool. In my case I selected “Use network from current parent VM image”
Note that only a static port group is supported.