VMware released VMware View 5.1.1 yesterday (8/16/2012). The update addresses a few different issues , and applies only to VMware View Connection Servers, not View Security Servers, View Transfer Servers, View Composer, or View Clients.
The first issue resolved in the VMware View 5.1.1 update is a scalability fix for View deployments over 10,000 desktops managed by one group of View Connection Servers. If you are following standard View reference architectures as pictured below, your View Pod should extend beyond 10,000 desktop. If you did scale to near or beyond 10,000 managed entities (desktops, pools, and users/groups combined), View Administrator might intermittently have problems displaying objects. This fix resolves the display issues, but you should still follow good architecture design practices when scaling out your View environment.
The second set of issues resolved by this update pertain to View Persona Management. Persona Management, as well as VMware ThinApp and Horizon Application Manager, are key to achieving a stateless desktop computing environment. The closer to stateless you move, the lower your end user computing operating and capital costs will be.
View 5.1.1 fixes problems with Persona Management that could lead to data loss for your user’s Persona profile data. Persona generally works very well, but if a user were to commit a large file to their View profile and log off their desktop before the file could replicate to the network View profile repository, the file could become corrupt or lost. This problem would be seen most in environments where the ‘Delete or Refresh Desktop at Logoff’ Pool policy was set to ‘Refresh Immediately’ or ’Delete immediately’ options. This would cause View to revert the VM to the pool clean snapshot state or delete and recreate the VM before the profile data had synchronized. View 5.1.1 now waits for the profile replication to complete before allowing Composer to refresh or delete the used desktop.
View 5.1.1 also fixes an issue where a user logged off of one View Desktop and immediately logged into another. Prior to the update this set of actions could result in inconsistent Persona profile data, including loss of data from the first, logged-off desktop.
The release notes for View 5.1.1 detail the fixes included, and also include a slew of Known Issues for View (there are a bunch!). Give it a read and start planning your update.
