VMware View 4.5 Client Error: This desktop currently has no desktop sources available. Please try connecting to this desktop again later, or contact your system administrator.

While this error can be related to many reasons, I thought I’d share my experience since I ran into it a bit earlier last week while deploying View 4.5 in our demo environment. Before I start, I’d like to write a bit about my View background which is essentially minimal exposure. I’ve worked with ESX since the version 2 days but never really had to opportunity to work with View as I never had the opportunity to work on such a project so being the person that I am, I was anxious to get my hands dirty with our UCS environment. I’ve also documented the installation so I’ll write a post about that at a later time. Now onwards to the error message I received while connecting:

So once I finished configuring a linked clone virtual machine desktop, I proceeded to use the VMware View 4.5 client to connect to the desktop only to receive the following error message:

This desktop currently has no desktop sources available. Please try connecting to this desktop again later, or contact your system administrator.

Being new to View, I wasn’t sure as to why I was receiving this message so after browsing around vCenter to check on the virtual machine, I realized that I got this message because as it says, “…this desktop currently has no desktop sources available.”

To further expand, let’s look at what View actually does when you configure a linked clone virtual machine desktop.

Step #1 - Provisioning

Once you’ve configured a desktop image (in my case it was a Windows XP SP3 where SP3 is the required service pack level you must have) and create a desktop within VMware View Administrator's Desktop, View actually begins to make a copy of of that image.

Within View Administrator’s console, you’ll see the desktop’s status labeled as Provisioning:

When you look at vCenter, you’ll see that the image you created is actually cloned:

As you continue to monitor the status within vCenter, you’ll actually see the copy process:

Step #2 - Customizing

Once the image has been successfully cloned, you’ll notice that the Status within View Administrator changes to Customizing:

This is actually when the virtual machine gets booted up so that View can begin customizing the desktop. If you were to open the console of that virtual machine, you’ll see the boot up process. Note that this is all automated so all you have to do is wait for the process to complete:

You’ll continue to see the virtual machine boot into Windows as it gets customized:

As the customizing of the desktop completes and shuts down, you’ll notice that the Status within View Administrator briefly changes to Agent unreachable:

Don’t worry about this because this status will quickly change as the virtual machine gets booted up and back into Windows which is where the agent is installed. Once the virtual machine powers back up, the Status within View Administrator changes to Available:

Once you see the status change, you can continue and log in via the VMware View client:

There you have it. The problem I had was because the virtual desktop was still getting provisioned and customized. While searching on the internet, I did find posts that people had virtual machines stuck at provisioning or customizing so if you are to ever experience this problem, review the process I described and see if the virtual machine is stuck at a certain point then troubleshoot from there.

Hope this post gives anyone out there searching for the error message an idea of what might be the problem.