How to move a VMware View desktop from one Pool to Another

First, I doubt this procedure is supported. Second, if you follow these steps, you do so at your own risk. It worked for me, but your mileage may vary.

Ok, so let’s say that you have a pool of full desktops – no linked clones – using dedicated assignment. It has become necessary to split the desktops in the pool into two smaller pools for some reason. We don’t want to actually change the desktop VM itself in any way, just move it to a new pool.

Prerequisites:

• Source and Destination Pools – full desktops, dedicated assignment
• The names from View administrator of the desktops you want to move
• Administrative rights on a View Connection Server

Steps:

1. Logon to a View Connection Server as an administrator
2. Follow the steps here to open the View ADAM database in ADSIEdit
3. Get the GUID for the Desktop VM
   1. Right-click the Connection View ADAM Database [localhost:389], and click New > Query.
   2. Under Root of Search, click Browse.. and select the Servers organizational unit.
   3. Click OK.
   4. In the Query String, paste this search string:(&(objectClass=pae-VM)(pae-displayname=VirtualMachineName))Where VirtualMachineName is the name of the virtual machine for which you are trying to locate the GUID. You may use * or ? as wildcards to match multiple desktops.
   5. Click OK to create the query.
   6. Click the query in the left pane. The virtual machines that match the search are displayed in the right pane.
   7. Record the GUID in cn=<GUID>.
4. Expand View ADAM Database [localhost]
5. Expand DC=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int
6. Click on OU=Server Groups.  Confirm that all your Desktop Pools appear on the right.
7. Right-click the Server Group Object corresponding to your source desktop pool and choose Properties.
8. In the Attribute Editor, scroll down to the “pae-memberDN” attribute.  Double-click to open it.
9. This is the list of VMs currently in the pool.  Locate the GUID(s) matching the distinguished named and click “remove” to remove them from the pool.  I strongly suggest copying the removed value to notepad so you can paste it back it accurately in the coming steps.
10. When finished removing the appropriate objects from the pae-memberDN attribute, click OK twice to close the attribute and the Server Group object
11. Right-click the Server Group Object corresponding to your destination desktop pool and choose Properties.
12. In the Attribute Editor, scroll down to the “pae-memberDN” attribute.  Double-click to open it.
13. Paste the distinguished name value for the desktop GUID int the “Value to add” text box and click “Add”.  Repeat for additional desktops
14. When finished adding records to the pae-memberDN attribute, click OK twice to close the attribute and the Server Group object
15. Close ADSIEdit and launch View Administrator to see the results.

Good Luck, please let me know if you try this.
References:
VMware KB 1008658
VMware KB 2012377

Advertisement

vSphere 5 Licensing impact on VDI

Very quietly, VMware released some information about vSphere for Desktop. This is the licensing model you’re going to want… especially for VDI.

Here’s a link to the details:vSphere Desktop FAQ

There are a number of caveats explained in this FAQ, but the licensing strategy is beginning to make sense.

In short, if you run VMware View, you can get an unlimited vRAM entitlement.  You cannot upgrade to vSphere 5 for Desktop and if you’re running a third-party VDI solution on vSphere, you will have to use the “non-Desktop” editions and be subjected to vRAM license limits.

This is just my humble opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer or partners or anyone else for that matter