VMware Horizon 7: Instant Clone Pools Delete VMs on Restart
One of the observed features of Instant clone pools is that when you logoff a VM it gets deleted so that any changes are gone. This makes troubleshooting tricky and you cannot set the do not delete at refresh like you can with Full VM and Linked Clones.
What is a View admin to do? Thanks to the folks at GSS we have an option, with a caveat.
You can go into the Adam Database through ADSIEDIT and change a setting so that the VM’s do not delete, allowing you to logoff and reboot them while retaining the VM’s settings.
The caveat * is that when you change this setting you cannot edit the provisioning details or other attributes of this pool. You will have to change it back to ‘deleteonuse’ in the ADAM ADSIEDIT before you can make changes.
How to do this:
Login with a Domain Admin account to a View Connection server and launch ADSIEDIT and enter these details exactly. Well the name can be different but copy the rest verbatim
Connection point: dc=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int
Computer: localhost
Click ok and select Server Group. You will see your Pools there. Right click the pool you want and select properties.
Scroll down until you find pae-VMDeletePolicy (Default = deleteonuse)
Change this to ‘never’ and click ok.
You can leave ADSIEDIT open or come back at a later time to revert your changes after testing is complete.
*- When you change the pae-VmDeletePolicy setting to ‘never’ you will not be able to edit the pool settings. If you try a popup will let you know. If you want/need to edit the pool revert the setting to ‘deleteonuse’
