by Greg Shields

Creating a pool from your existing desktops happens back in the Remote Desktop Connection Manager. You’ve already completed the initial setup for the four different RDS role services. All that’s left is to create the Virtual Desktop Pool and test the configuration.

Creating a pool from your existing desktops happens back in the Remote Desktop Connection Manager. You’ve already completed the initial setup for the four different RDS role services. All that’s left is to create the Virtual Desktop Pool and test the configuration.

In Remote Desktop Connection Manager, click the link for Create Virtual Desktop Pool. In this wizard, you’ll be asked to select the machines that will participate in the pool as well as a name and Pool ID. The display name is what will be seen by users in RD Web Access, while the pool ID is used for internal purposes only. Click Finish and your pool is ready for use. Users can connect to the pool by navigating to the RD Web Access Web site  and double-clicking the pool name.

Viola! You now have a single-server VDI solution that’s ready for your problem applications and other uses. At this point, you probably have a few thoughts about the manual steps that have been and will be required to keep this pool of desktops running. I mentioned earlier in this article that although this solution might be effectively zero-cost, it isn’t the most-automated of solutions. To that end, you might find that the following tips help with managing your virtual desktop pools.

Patching and Updating Options

Remember that virtual desktops that use differencing disks are indeed independent entities. The two virtual machines created become fully-independent computers once they’ve been renamed and added back into your domain. I also mentioned that once linked to child differencing disks, you can never modify your parent disk.

This realization presents a set of options for how you can keep these virtual desktops updated over time. For example, monthly patches still need to be applied to each virtual desktop. You can accomplish this task by updating each virtual desktop independently, just like a set of physical machines. Or, if you have a substantial amount of updating and reconfiguration to do, you can throw away your differencing disks, update the parent disk, reset it back to read only, and finally re-create a brand new set of differencing disks once complete. Depending on the amount of work that needs to be accomplished, one of these two methods will generally be better than the other.

Roaming Profiles

Another extremely important configuration that you’ll likely want to set up is RD roaming profiles. The most efficient way to accomplish this task is through Group Policy with the GP setting Set path for Remote Desktop Services Roaming User Profile, which can be found in Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Remote Desktop Services | Profiles. A comprehensive set of other Group Policy settings are available in and around this location for further controlling your configuration.

Configuring roaming profiles through Group Policy is particularly handy in this situation because it allows you to configure a separate storage location (if you so desire) for the roaming profiles that are used for this VDI environment. Depending on how you intend to use this environment, it may be beneficial to use a wholly-different RD roaming profile or the same one used elsewhere when users connect to their virtual desktops.

Rollback Mode

Finally is the determination of whether to use rollback mode on your virtual desktops. A virtual desktop in rollback mode reverts all changes that are made by a user when they log off. This mode positively ensures that each user always sees the same pristine environment when they connect to a virtual desktop.

Rollback mode is enabled by first creating a snapshot of each virtual desktop within Hyper-V Manager. Once created, rename the snapshot to RDV_Rollback. This exact naming for the snapshot will instruct RDV to roll back the virtual machine every time a user logs off.

One key administrative point to remember with rollback is that this configuration will also roll back any changes that you make. So, prior to starting any updates or modifications that you want to remain permanent, be sure to remove the snapshot.

Although there are other optimizations that you can add to your Hyper-V VDI environment, these suggestions offer an excellent set to get you started. With them and powerful-enough hardware, you can create a fully-functional VDI environment for your most painful of applications.

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About the Author

Greg Shields is an independent author, speaker, and IT consultant, as well as a Partner and Principal Technologist with Concentrated Technology. With 15 years in information technology, Greg has developed extensive experience in systems administration, engineering, and architecture specializing in Microsoft OS, remote application, systems management, and virtualization technologies. He is a Contributing Editor and columnist for TechNet Magazine and Redmond Magazine, and serves as the Series Editor for Realtime Publishers, the world’s leading provider of high-quality content for the IT market. Greg is a highly sought-after and top-ranked speaker for both live and recorded events, and is seen regularly at conferences like TechMentor Events, Microsoft Tech Ed, VMworld, and more. He is a multiple recipient of Microsoft “Most Valuable Professional” award.