I'm hoping someone can help point to the documentation and functions I'm missing, because thus far trying to set up a VD pool in 2012 is a constant disaster.  Honestly, the system seems incredibly buggy and unfinished.

First of all, there are apparently a LOT of requirements that it does not make you aware of up front, nor have I found any mention of.  Any information on the real and complete technical, environmental, and infrastructure requirements to use this system would be great.

Issues at this point include:
When you set the distinguished name of the OU you want your VDs to be created in in the AD settings of your deployment or collection, it's simply erased after you click OK.  It's not saved, there is no error, it's just not there when you go back in.  This seems like a crippling bug, because you apparently can't have machines that are NOT bound to an AD.  Any advice how to get this setting to actually work, and/or create pools that are not bound to AD would be great.
If you try to create a collection and it fails for any reason, the collection is listed with Status of Not Valid.  Ok, and now what?  There seems no way to recover from this and re-try the setup, pick up where it left off, or in any other way repair the collection.  The only option appears to be delete the collection, then manually hunt down all the things it created and delete those, and then go through the wizard again.  Is there a "repair" or "continue" or some other option I'm missing?  Or some way to manually do this that isn't documented?
Where is the log to tell you what REALLY failed?  I'm doing a lot of Google guesswork trying to figure out what has gone wrong each time it fails and gives me a completely false error message.  For example, saying there is no virtual switch when the issue is actually the ethernet cable is unplugged.  Or saying it couldn't start a machine when it's totally started, and the issue might possibly be it wanted to do something with the VD that it couldn't because the VD had no IP?
Pursuant to that, and the above, it seems DHCP may be a requirement of VDI??  Please tell me that's not true as that isn't possible in our setting.  How does one use static IPs?  How can you complete a pool setup without DHCP if that's the issue rather than having it fail?

Again, any help getting pasts these deficiencies is greatly appreciated.  I'm a bit stunned it's this problematic and limited.

Hi,

I understand the frustration when encountering issues like this, lets take this slow.

Firstly, I suggest you check whether the system is heathy by checking event logs, check file system and file system metadata using chkdsk, also remember to fully patch the system.

Chkdsk

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc730714.aspx

In addition, ensure the server fits system requirements described below:

RDS Hardware Sizing and Capacity Planning Guidance.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/iftekhar/archive/2010/02/10/rds-hardware-sizing-and-capacity-planning-guidance.aspx

Microsoft Virtual Desktop 101 making sense of VDI, RDS, App-V, MED-V and desktop virtualisation

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ianm/archive/2010/06/11/microsoft-virtual-desktop-101-making-sense-of-vdi-rds-app-v-med-v-and-desktop-virtualisation.aspx

After ensure the system is heathy, lets disable third party software if any installed and proceed with the configuration process.

Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012: Pooled Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2012/10/31/windows-8-windows-server-2012-pooled-virtual-desktop-infrastructure.aspx

it seems DHCP may be a requirement of VDI

I dont think that dynamic IP addresses are required by VDI.

Best Regards,

Thanks for the reply.  The build is brand new with the singular purpose of doing VDI, it's in perfect health (other than any unknown under the hood stuff within RDS at this point due to the failed collection creations) and of specification.

The problem with the walk through you link, and every other one like it that I've seen, is none of them cover troubleshooting when the process fails, and it fails a lot as I outlined.  As to DHCP, networking of the VDs is again is something none of these cover in any way.  From what I can see, DHCP is required because without it the provisioning of the client systems fails because they can not get on the network to complete the AD binding part of the setup.  Ergo, the first client fails, so the rest of the process fails, so you have a partially created collection that doesn't even show up in the nav panel so that you can't edit it, and there seems to be no way to retry, continue, or in any other way deal with such a situation other than scrub and start over.

So again, what I need, and I would suspect a lot of people doing this need, is a guide that addresses the networking configuration of the VMs in this setup process, especially id DHCP is somehow not required, and a guide that addresses how you recover from a failed collection creation since it's such a common occurrence.  Thus far without those it's a lot of trial and error, and doing your best to find all the under the hood stuff not covered by the UI walk throughs to try to best clean up a failed collection and try the process again.  So far I haven't seen evidence of issues with any bits left behind like that, but I've also dug around pretty good to delete things like the user disk and botched template and whatnot before trying again.  It's entirely possible all that would be cleanly replaced by doing the setup again, I'm just trying to be thorough given a lack of documentation on the issue.

Hi,

I apologize for all the inconvenience caused by lack of documentation, and I will try to report this.

Best Regards,

Amy