VMware View: Direct Connections or Funneled through the Broker?

When using the Broker in View, you basically have 2 options for connecting to your desktops : Direct Connections or Tunneled SLL through the Broker itself.
You can verify the setting you are using in the View Administrator –> Servers –> View Servers.

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The Setting is modified on each VMware View Broker Server individually.  Highlight the server and select Edit.

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Some basic Pros and Cons to Direct Connections vs. SSL Tunnels.

Direct Connection PROs:

  1. Performance should be better since the View client will now be connecting from the Client PC directly to the Agent running in the desktop.  No middle man.
  2. Ability to reboot brokers without affecting View Client or Sessions.  In environments with multiple Brokers load balanced, even incoming sessions will remain unaffected as long as the outages are staggered.
  3. Potentially less brokers are need to ‘load balance’ the solution since client connections are handed off direct after being brokered freeing up resources.

Broker SSL tunneling:

  1. For external solutions, the broker can facilitate secure connections of HTTPS (443) ports without the need for a separate VPN solution.

My recommendation is to go with direct connections for the majority of the implementations.  If external access is required, I tend to prefer 3rd party SSL solutions and use the Broker tunneling only when these solutions are not available.

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