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VMware View 4.01 Multiple-Monitor issue (using PCoIP)
June 2, 2010
While configuring VMware View to use two monitors from a PCoIP enabled ThinClient I get a weird issue. Firstly I set up a VM linked clone, installed VMware tools and VMware View Agent. From this Virtual Machine template many VM’s are deployed in a non-persistent pool. When connecting to a Virtual Machine, directly after provisioning, the second monitor will not be activated. Only a blank screen appears and the monitor falls in sleep. Even after a guest reboot it is not possible to activate both monitors. But after using the reset button in VMware View Manager multi-monitor is spontaneous working.
At the moment this a temporary workarround but brings me the following two questions:
1) What is VMware View doing within the Virtual Machine (linked clone) after reset from VMware View Manager?
2) If there is some reconfiguration after reset, why is the Virtual Machine not exactly configured after provisioning and needs to be reset?
Topics: VMware | 3 Comments »
June 2nd, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Looks to me like a video memory issue. As a test, try configuring your template with a reasonable amount of video RAM (e.g. 64MB).
It may be that your template has only 4MB of video RAM, composer is then creating linked clones of this and adjusting the video RAM upwards (based on the number of monitors and resolution you set) but this (for whatever reason) isn’t being picked up on first boot.
When you reset the VM it hard-reboots and so will pick up the new BIOS config with upgraded video RAM sufficient for running multi-monitor.
June 3rd, 2010 at 8:31 am
In my case that is not a solution. I am aware of the calculation for video memory and set it earlier to 24MB. For testing I set the video RAM to 64MB as you recommended, created a new snapshot and deployed my VM’s as linked clones. Directly after provisioning there is still a blank screen. Reset the Virtual Machine makes the second screen working.
Besides, although I configured my VM’s with 64MB video memory, the linked clones show 29,31 MB to be configured.
June 9th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Remove the parent VM from any pools (snapshots included). Set that parent desktop up as an individual-vm target in the view manager. Connect to the desktop via PCoIP. If the second monitor doesnt work, reset the desktop and try again. If it works, shut it down, snapshot it, and you now have a working multi-monitor parent
Tested, working, had the same issue.