[Users] from irc

[Bob Doolittle]

Hi,

I had a question on IRC regarding sysprep/sealing of Windows VMs and use 
in Pools. Basically, if you follow the Quick Start Guide, it says to 
seal the VM and shut it down before making the Template.

My problem with this is that when you start a VM from the Pool, it takes 
forever to unseal - i.e. to repersonalize itself. That's a bad 
experience from a VDI perspective - you want the user to get a desktop 
they can start using ASAP.

Itamar responded to me directly via e-mail:

 > bobdrad: on your question of windows VMs from pool - you can start
 > them once with an admin for the sysprep to happen, then shut them down.
 > admin launch of VMs doesn't create a stateless snapshot and
 > manipulates the VM itself.

This raises some questions. I'd love to understand this better.

He's asked me to cross this conversation onto the Users list now.

1. My understanding is that a Pool clones VMs on demand from a template. 
So how does the admin "launch" the template? I thought the only way to 
exercise a pool is from the User Portal. Is it sufficient to do that as 
Admin? I thought the persistence only came when launching a VM from the 
Admin Portal.

2. My understanding of "sealing" a system is that this depersonalizes it 
- e.g. removes hostname, prepares network for reinitialization, etc. And 
that the next time the system boots up it re-personalizes. So if one 
were to restart it, even as admin, this would reverse the sealing 
process, which would seem to make sealing in the first place pointless.

What am I missing? At the moment I don't see the point of sealing a VM 
before putting it into the Pool (assuming you're using DHCP, anyway). 
What happens if you don't?

Thanks,
     Bob

P.S. I note the behavior of Fedora vs RHEL 6 is quite different in this 
regard. If you follow the "sealing" process on the Quick Start page for 
Fedora it seems to have no visible effect, but on RHEL 6 it puts you 
through a re-personalization dialog which is rather extensive (and 
again, not really suitable for VDI use).