We currently have a View environment for up to 1100 users in our primary datacentre, using CISCO hardware content switches to load balance on a single DNS name to assign users.
We are in the process of implementing a second completely independent View environment in our backup datacentre with a capacity of ~300 users. Due to cost it has been stipulated that this environment must be "live", provisioning extra users and not simply a DR site.
This being the case we'd like some way to balance the load across the two View environments. Under the current arrangement we can only balance by number of connections to a DNS name for each site (we couldn't guarantee that users would receive back the same desktop after a disconnect), therefore we'll be limited to using a separate DNS name for each site, running specific desktop user pools on specific sites and then using domain policy to amend the View Client on the user desktop accordingly:
- Far from ideal coming on top of the extra administration required from the desktops team to keep desktop images in both datacentres synchronised in case of a DR scenario.
- Open to error, especially for laptop users - they may not reconnect their laptop to the domain and therefore not receive a group policy update to the View Client if we move their desktop pool to another datacentre
- Will restrict hotdesking - or we'll have to have both datacentres available in the View Client and "educate" the users on which one to use (i.e. lots will go wrong!)
The Network team have advised that they will be moving load balancing to CISCO ACE - I know that F5 products are both View and AD aware and can therefore load balance across instances based on pool entitelment - is there a similar product from CISCO? I couldn't find mcuh documentation dealing with multiple View instances from Cisco on the matter. If not I'm thinking to recommend budget allocation to move to F5 in the future?