Another super niche blog post. No one is ever going to find this…. So I had to dig into System Centre Configuration Manager today, probably Microsoft’s most complex product. I’ve been using this massively scalable and capable scheduling system since SMS1.2. But it still a bit scary to support… Machines cloned by VDI service VMware View were coming up with the same unique ID. The SMS client had been captured in the reference image that was cloned to create desktop pools.
You can repurpose Windows PCs as thin clients in a VMware View VDI environment. Swap the Windows explorer shell (start menu and desktop) with View Client. This also works for Windows Embedded thin clients. This works best with VMware View Client v5.4.0. Newer versions (View Client 2.0 and above, don’t ask me why the version numbers are out of order) VMware changed the View Client behaviour. When you disconnect from your VDI session, the View Client doesn’t close (so Windows doesn’t logoff).
The traders with 6 screens and two machines each needed a more elaborate VDI system (see my rgs post). But for the back office, with a mere two screens each, I deployed VMware Horizon View. I’ve upgraded though View 3, 4 and 5 and expect to upgrade to View 6 soon. We have mixture of HP thin clients and repurposed PCs (Vmware view client as shell). With a little VDI optimisation Windows 7 will work great in a VDI environment.