Adding a VMware Pool

Pools can be assigned to tenants either at the time of tenant creation or after. After the pool is assigned, users must be assigned to the pool. Once this is done, VMware will assign machines to the users in that pool.

Notes

• At this time, you can only assign pools (and not individual VMs) to VMware tenants. VMware will create and assign new VMs to users in the pool. Existing VMs cannot be added this way.

• Only VM templates from the vCenter Content Library are supported. OVA templates are not supported.

Info

Only Organization Administrators and Tenant Administrators can perform this operation.

To add a pool at the time of tenant creation:

• Follow the instructions described in Adding a VMware tenant. Pool creation is described in step 10.

To add a pool after a tenant is created:

1. Log in to Anyware Manager Enterprise.

2. Click the tenant you want to add a pool to, and click the Pools tab.

3. Click + Add Pool.

4. On the Select Site pop-up, select a site, and click Next. The Add Pool page containing a wizard interface for pool creation opens.

5. On step 1 of the wizard, enter a suitable name for the pool, and click Next.

6. On step 2, provide the following template details, and click Next:

   • Template: Select a virtual machine template.

   • Template admin username: Enter the username of the administrator account for this template.

   • Template admin password: Enter the password for the template administrator account.

   • Join domain: Indicate whether your identity management service is domain joined.

   • Directory service: Select the type of directory service, Entra ID or Active Directory.

7. On step 3 of the wizard, select an assignment policy, and click Next:

   • Persistent - Automated

     Users are persistently assigned to a workstation automatically at first login.

   • Persistent - Manual

     Administrators manually assign workstations (from the pool) to users. This assignment is persistent.

   • Floating

     Users are dynamically allocated to workstations based on availability. Once assigned to a workstation, the assignment is ephemeral. However, when the user disconnects, the assigned workstation is released and becomes available for other users.

8. Select the Entra groups to assign to this pool.

   Info

   Entra groups can be assigned only if you select Floating or Persistent - Automated policy.

9. Select additional users to assign to this pool.

10. Enter the pool holding time, and click Next. The pool holding time represents the duration for which a workstation will remain assigned to a user after they log out. Pool holding time represents the duration for which a workstation will remain assigned to a user after they log out. Once the holding period expires, the user is unassigned from the workstation, and the workstation becomes available for other users. The default value is 5 minutes.

11. On step 4, select the provisioning method, and click Next:

    • Full clone

      This creates a full clone of the virtual machines, including all files and settings.

12. On step 5, select either Anyware standard agents or Anyware graphics agents, based on what best suits your workload. Standard agents are recommended for standard workloads, while Graphics agents are suitable for graphic-intensive workloads.

13. On step 6, select the number of virtual machines to be provisioned, and click Next. Anyware Manager Enterprise creates the specified number of virtual machines using the selected template.

14. On step 7, define the machine naming pattern:

    • Prefix: Specify a unique prefix for the VMs. The virtual machines will be named using this prefix.

    • Suffix Length: The length of the suffix that will be appended to the name of the VM. The suffix is a numerical value that is added to avoid duplicate file names.

    • Select whether machine suffixes will be sequential or randomly-generated, and click Submit.

15. Click Submit.

The pool will be created and added to the list of pools available under the tenant.