Configuring VMware View events database is an important step in the security of your view deployment as it will give you an extra layer of visibility within your environment. To any Citrix admins out there its very similar to configuration logging in that it will display all the changes made within the environment and it also logs virtual desktop states and information. Sadly the events database is not set up during a View installation and requires a few minor steps post installation to get it up and running so its easily forgotten until something drastic happens and you wish you had set it up.
Configuring VMware View events database requires a SQL or Oracle database pre-created and a service account created with DBO rights assigned to the blank database with the gotcha here being that is has to be a SQL login and cannot utilise windows authentication. The supported databases for View 6 are Microsoft SQL 2008 SP3, SQL 2008 R2 SP2, SQL 2012 Express, SQL 2012 SP1, Oracle 10g release 2 and Oracle 11g release 2.
To configure the events database logon to the View administration console and navigate to View Configuration\Event Configuration. 
Now click the Edit button under event configuration and enter the sql server and database details along with the SQL account you have configured previously. You will also need to enter a 3 character prefix for the database tables which allows the database to be shared among the connection servers. There is no specific string required for the table prefix so something like VDI or VI_ would be suitable. Finally click OK and the database connection will be created.
When back at the events configuration page you’ll see a summary of the connection details.
Once you have configured the database connection you can then define how long the events are kept within the events database and also viewable under the Monitoring node of the administration console. Finally you can also configure how long events are flagged as new within the administration console.
Once you have set up the events database to view all captured events navigate to the Monitoring node within the View administration console and select Events. The output is pretty verbose so is very handy when trying to locate any changes before a problem occurs.
As you can see configuring VMware View events database is pretty straightforward and can save you a lot of time in the long run tracking down issues.
Author: Dale Scriven
