VMware View 4 Now Available. Overview of Features, PCoIP, and Architecture
November 21st, 2009 | 
Author: As promised a few weeks ago, you can now download the latest version of VMware’s VDI solution, VMware View 4. The download can be found here, and the Release Notes explain What’s New and other helpful information about Getting Started. View 4 is available for trial with a 60 day license – plenty of time to work out the deployment and pilot a group of users. Be sure to upgrade to vSphere 4 Update 1 to take full advantage of View 4.
I thought I’d be a little different and offer a quick overview of View 4’s Features, the new PCoIP protocol, some key deployment requirements, and a high level architecture diagram for those about to implement. I’m pasting information found in the View Architecture Planning Guide and the View Administrator’s Guide, so get a copy of those documents to prepare as completely as possible. Check out all the available literature on the VMware View documentation page.
View 4 Features
It helps to stop and remember what VMware’s VDI can do for the enterprise and not just focus on what’s new from in the latest release. This is more sales than engineering, but the list summarizes the whole package of benefits and shows that the VDI solution covers a lot of desktop and user management concerns:
The following features provide a familiar experience for the end user:
- Print from a virtual desktop to any local or networked printer that is defined on the client device. The virtual printer feature solves compatibility issues and does not require you to install additional print drivers in a virtual machine.
- Use multiple monitors. With VMware PCoIP multiple-monitor support, you can adjust the display resolution and rotation separately for each monitor.
- Access USB devices and other peripherals that are connected to the local device that displays your virtual desktop.
VMware View offers the following security features, among others:
- Use RSA SecurID two-factor authentication or smart cards to log in.
- Use SSL tunneling to ensure that all connections are completely encrypted.
- Use VMware High Availability to host desktops and to ensure automatic failover.
The following features provide centralized administration and management:
- Use Microsoft Active Directory to manage access to virtual desktops and to manage policies.
- Use the Web-based administrative console to manage virtual desktops from any location.
- Use a template, or master image, to quickly create and provision pools of desktops.
- Send updates and patches to virtual desktops without affecting user settings, data, or preferences.
Scalability features depend on the VMware virtualization platform to manage both desktops and servers:
- Integrate with VMware vSphere to achieve cost-effective densities, high levels of availability, and advanced resource allocation control for your virtual desktops.
- Configure View Connection Server to broker connections between end users and the virtual desktops that they are authorized to access.
- Use View Composer to quickly create desktop images that share virtual disks with a master image. Using
- linked clones in this way conserves disk space and simplifies the management of patches and updates to the operating system.
PCoIP
Everybody wants to know how well the VMware and Teradici development partnership announced at VMworld 2008 has improved the WAN connectivity and user experience for View 4 virtual desktop users. It’s one of those things that we won’t fully appreciate until “touch and feel” is possible, but here is what it looks like on paper:
Key features and restrictions include the following:
- Remote connections using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are supported.
- Connections to Windows XP and Windows Vista desktops are supported.
- Connections from Windows XP and Windows Vista clients are supported.
- View clients that use PCoIP can connect to View security servers, but PCoIP sessions with the desktop ignore the security server. PCoIP uses UDP for streaming audio and video. Security servers support only TCP.
- Smart cards are not supported.
- Virtual Printing is not supported.
- MMR redirection is supported for Windows clients.
- Offline Desktop is not supported with vSphere 4. To use the Offline Desktop experimental feature, VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Update 3 or Update 4 is required.
- USB redirection is supported.
- Adobe Flash bandwidth reduction is supported.
- Audio redirection, with dynamic audio quality adjustment for LAN and WAN, is supported.
- Recommended guest operating system settings include the following: 768MG RAM or more, Single CPU
- You can use up to four monitors and adjust the resolution for each monitor separately, with a resolution of up to 1920×1200 per display. Pivot display and autofit are supported.
- 32?bit color is supported for virtual displays.
- ClearType fonts are supported.
- You can copy and paste text between the local system and the desktop, but you cannot copy and paste system objects such as folders and files between systems.
View Architecture
To create virtual desktops you have to build some servers. The Desktop Manager and Security servers, along with a load balancer for larger environments, and View Composer all need to be provisioned before users can start connecting to desktops.
Note that View Composer is installed on vCenter and requires a database. It can use the locally installed instance of SQL 2005 Express if it was installed with vCenter, or it can utilize a remote database instance on a dedicated server.
Yes, View Manager can broker connections to Microsoft Terminal Server desktop sessions, blade PCs, or sessions to physical desktops too.
Installed Client Requirements
This is for the desktop or thin client the virtual desktop will be accessed from. Note that Windows XP is the only listed OS for Offline Desktop. Hopefully a VMware client hypervisor or netbook alternative OS will be added in the near future!
Web Client Requirements
You can access View desktops and the View Administrator from a web browser too. Here’s a table of supported OSes and their dependencies. I forgot why exactly, but even though the VDM and View Security servers run on Windows 2003, accessing their web management from a browser on Server 2003 is limited / unsupported.
This post just scratches the surface on View 4 setup requirements and capabilities. I’m just trying to “wet your whistle” for VMware VDI.
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