VMware View Planner 4.0 How To Guide

VMware View Planner is the first comprehensive standard methodology for comparing virtual desktop deployment platforms. Using patented technology, View Planner generates a realistic measure of the client and server-side performance for all desktops being measured on the virtual desktop platform. View Planner uses a rich set of commonly used applications as the desktop workload.

View Planner provides a consistent methodology that captures the overall scalability of the deployment platform as well as the performance of each individual application operation within a given desktop. The number of virtual desktops for which workloads have met a defined performance threshold determines the overall benchmark score.

The benchmark uses VDI and the hardware infrastructure of your choice and is scalable from a few virtual machines running on one host up to hundreds of virtual machines distributed across a cluster of hosts.

View Planner Port Requirements

View Planner uses a specific list of ports. Ensure you adhere to the port requirements.

How to install VMware View Planner 4.0 or 4.1

Download VMware View Planner 4.0 here (viewplanner-harness-4.0.0.0-11719887_OVF10.ova) and deploy it like any other VMware OVA deployment. The manual for View Planner can be found here. The appliance takes 8 vCPU, 8GB of ram, 64GB of storage and runs on VMware’s Photon OS.

I am currently running VMware vSphere 6.7 U1 on the LAB and was unable to deploy it via the HTML5 client. Somehow the OVA does not allow you to set up with a static IP. Using the FlexClient a.k.a Flash client this is not an issue. (This is fixed in Viewplanner 4.1!)

Look here that I choose Static – Manual and in the next screen I’m only able to fill in an IP address.
The other values like the gateway or DNS are not possible to enter. But it does work in the flash client when you deploy it there…

When deployed power it on and wait for it to boot. When booted the console will show you the web address to connect to.

Access the User Interface using the URL http://Your_Harness_IP:3307/vp-ui.
Use default user name vmware and password viewplanner.

How to Configure VMware View Planner 4.0

Configuring the harness includes adding a vCenter Server, Active Directory, and the VDI server.
This can be done under Servers in the left menu bar.

For vCenter you need to fill in the asked information. Then save it.

For Active Directory you need to add your AD server information. This only works when you have LDAPS setup with proper certificates. If not and you run the test, it will only say: FAILED.
And for VMware Horizon you need to add your Horizon server information. You can test the connections with the green arrow/test button.

Setting Up the View Planner Desktop Virtual Machines

Setting up a desktop virtual machine requires installing components such as VMware Horizon View Desktop agent, View Planner agent and test applications.

Procedure:

1. Create a base Windows 10 / 7 VM.
2. Shut down the VM.
3. Open the .vmx file of the VM and add the monitor_control.pseudo_perfctr = “1” entry to the file. This entry provides access of the host timer, which is more accurate than the VM timer.
4. Install all required software for the test, such as Vmware Horizon View Agent, Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF reader, and Chrome.
5. Install View Planner agent on the VM using viewplanner-agent-version.msi.
6. Enter the harness IP when prompted. The view planner agent process should have access to read and write registry without windows UAC prompts. Disable windows UAC, if necessary.
7. If this is an RDSH server, set RDSH_SERVER_MODE to 1 and AUTOLOGIN_USER_ACCOUNT to windows user name that is configured for auto login in C:\viewplanner\config\agent.config.
8. Shut down the VM and take a snapshot.
9. Create a desktop Sysprep / QuickPrep customization script using vCenter Server. This script is used while creating clones from golden desktop VM. The customization script should enable auto-login using an admin account. For remote mode test, configure customization script to join Microsoft active directory domain.

Setting Up the View Planner Client Virtual Machines

Setting up the client virtual machine requires installing components such as VMware Horizon View Client and View Planner agent.

Procedure:

1. Create a base Windows 10 / 7 VM.
2. Shut down the VM.
3. Open the .vmx file of the VM and add the monitor_control.pseudo_perfctr = “1” entry to the file . This entry provides access of the host timer, which is more accurate than the VM timer.
4. Install the VMware Horizon View Client. VMware View Planner User Guide VMware, Inc.
5. Install View Planner agent on the VM using viewplanner-agent-version.msi.
6. Enter the harness IP when prompted. The view planner agent process should have access to read and write registry without windows UAC prompts. Disable windows UAC, if necessary.
7. Shut down the VM and take a snapshot.
8. Create a desktop Sysprep/QuickPrep customization script using vCenter Server. This script is used while creating clones from golden client VM. Customization script should enable auto-login using an admin account.

Things to be aware of

• Office 2016 is supported but not Outlook 2016… So install outlook 2013 for the test or create a workload without outlook.
• You can use Instant Clone pools but add “vm_force_reboot 0” To the View Planner Harness configuration.
• Do not call your Horizon pool “viewplanner” This name is already reserved by default for RDHS pool.

Reports

The UI of ViewPlanner is pretty basic and will not show you any data of the runs you did with it. I attached 2 samples of reports so you can see how those look. These are reports from local runs. So not via a Horizon client VM.

test1_local
test2_local