Refreshing a linked clone
By carrying out a refresh of the linked clone virtual desktop, you are effectively reverting it to its initial state, when its original snapshot was taken after it had completed the customization phase. This process only applies to the operating system disk and no other disks are affected.
An example use case for refresh operations would be recomposing a non-persistent desktop two hours after logoff, to return it to its original state and make it available for the next user.
The refresh process performs the following tasks:
- The linked clone virtual desktop is switched to maintenance mode.
- View Manager reverts the linked clone virtual desktop to the snapshot taken after customization was completed: - vdm-initial-checkpoint.
- The linked clone virtual desktop starts up, and the View Composer agent detects whether the machine account password needs to be updated. If it doesn't, and the current password on the internal disk is newer than the password currently stored in the registry, then the View Composer agent updates the machine account password using the password that is on the internal disk.
One of the reasons you would perform a refresh operation is if the linked clone OS disk starts to become bloated. As we previously discussed, the OS-linked clone disk could grow to the full size of its parent image. This means it would be taking up more disk space than is necessary, which kind of defeats the objective of linked clones. The refresh operation effectively resets the linked clone back to a small delta between it and its parent image.
The following diagram shows a representation of the refresh operation:
The linked clone disk on the left-hand side of the diagram has started to grow (2). Refreshing the first places the virtual desktop machine in maintenance mode (1). The virtual desktop is then reverted to the original snapshot (3). The new linked clone desktop has now been reset to the same size as when it was first created (4).