This morning I had an issue related to a full VM that required a uninstall/reinstall of the Horizon View Agent 5.2, we have been evaluating Persona Management and Folder Redirection on some View Pools. I typically follow these steps when performing a uninstall/reinstall of the View Agent:

1. Put VM in Maintenance Mode from View Administrator Console
2. Log in as Domain Admin (or elevated user above normal) to VM
3. Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Horizon View Experience Agent > Uninstall
4. Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > VMware View Agent > Uninstall
5. Shutdown VM
6. Power On VM
7. Install Horizon View Experience Agent
8. Reboot
9. Install VMware Horizon View Agent
10. Reboot
11. Exit Maintenance Mode from View Administrator Console
12. Confirm Agent is “Available”

So I began going through my 12 step process to repair a bad instance of the View Agent and came across an error I hadn’t seen before:

I thought it strange that it wouldn’t let me uninstall the Agent when I wasn’t logged into the VM from a Persona Management enabled user. Upon further inspection I discovered that the Persona Management Windows Service was enabled and running. So now I have added a few steps to my uninstall/reinstall process as follows:

1. Put VM in Maintenance Mode from View Administrator Console
2. Log in as Domain Admin (or elevated user above normal) to VM
3. Access services.msc – Stop VMware Persona Management Service and Disable Service
4. Reboot VM and Log in as Domain Admin
5. Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Horizon View Experience Agent > Uninstall
6. Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > VMware View Agent > Uninstall
7. Shutdown VM
8. Power On VM
9. Install Horizon View Experience Agent
10. Reboot
11. Install VMware Horizon View Agent
12. Reboot
13. Confirm that VMware Persona Management Service is set to “Automatic” and running
14. Exit Maintenance Mode from View Administrator Console
15. Confirm Agent is “Available”

Persona Management is a great tool to protect user data across floating pools for an even better end user experience. Hope this helps someone out, it made me scratch my head for a few minutes before I figured out what needed to be addressed.