Horizon View 6.2 was release one day ago and definitely I didn’t expect to see any updates like this during this time in the year. This is the third update of the VMware’s VDI solution for this year after Horizon 6.1 and Horizon 6.1.1 As a VDI engineer responsible for design and engineer the Horizon View VDI of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world I am impressed that the platform is getting updated so often with adding so many, great and valuable features and capabilities.
Let’s go through one of the main new features which impressed me.
Full Windows 10 Support
I expected this support but honestly I didn’t believe that we will have it in next couple of months. Windows 10 was released a month (or so) ago and it is already added as a supported OS in Horizon View. Well Done VMware EUC! Windows 10 Support means that you can install Horizon View Client on it, you can use it as a source for your desktop pools and also the user profile migration tool provided by VMware in the previous versions is now officially supported for Win10 profiles.
Hosted Apps and Terminal Sessions over PCoIP or Blast
Now you can use View Composer to compose the creation of RDS Servers either if they will be used for Applications or Sessions provisioning. Nice, isn’t it? Also support for 3D vDGA and GRID vGPU were added similar to the support for virtual desktops.
Cloud Pod Architecture Enhancements
If you are not aware of the Cloud Pod Architecture you can check my previous post for this topic. With Horizon 6.2 we can provide Hosted Applications in the same way as we could provide virtual desktops in the previous release. HTML5 access to applications and virtual desktops could be used also CPA, which wasn’t possible in Horizon 6.1.1.
Virtual SAN 6.1
Once of the best features of VMware VSAN 6.1 is the stretch cluster support. This new enchantment could introduce some changes in your design and provide a great level of availability even if entire site is down.
Access Point Integration
Access Point is an alternative of View Security Servers which could allow access to corporate’s virtual desktop from internet without having a VPN. In my experience I had some cases where putting View Security Servers in the DMZ were a serious concern for the ITSEC teams. Now we have an alternative with putting hardened Linux appliance.
View Administrator Enhancements
This is something I will check and review in a separate article. In my opinion the View Administrator could be much powerful than it is now. This is a step forward by adding some new information and actions – pool cloning for example.
Horizon 6 for Linux Desktop Enhancements
As I wrote a month ago, you can now provide a Linux based virtual desktop. Now the support of OSes is extended and also you can use high graphical applications because of the support of NVIDIA GRID vGPU and vSGA.
As any software release it provide not only new features but also a bunch of improvements and fixed bugs. Here is the complete list with them.
Nikolay Nikolov
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So in the past running View Connection servers in a “stretched cluster” was not supported. Now that VSAN stretched cluster is supported can View Connection servers run in both “datacenters” at the same time in a single View pod? This change is support definitely changes some designs I have been looking at. Thanks.
This is a very good point.I think the answer is ‘no’, since the ADAM syncing will be done over the network and the requirement for locating all CS in the same data center is still on place. Personally I would not try it in production, but placing the VDs’ files on strached VSAN I definetly would.
That makes sense. On possible option would be DRS rules for the CS since that would keep them in the same physical datacenter (separate cluster than the VDs). There would be an outage if that site went down but it would be small.
Is Mac OSX a supported virtual desktop?
Managed by Horizon View – No. But you can have non-managed Mac OS instances if you run them on ESX installed on top of compatible Apple hardware.
I installed it, but there is somethings weird happened !
In Farms, when I want to add a new farm, at the last part, Guest Customization, the Next button is disabled and I can’t finish it.
I checked everything but I do not know what to do…
I added some Desktop Pools, and they are working correctly…
Hi Mehdi,
Farm, you mean you are trying to create an RDHS server farm, right? If so, the best way to troubleshoot is to check all components in the setup, starting from the Agent install on the Windows Server template or snapshot, Customizaion Specification is for Windows Server, not for Desktop OS. Check also if you have enough resources and your connection to the AD exists and working. Hope this will help.
Thanks for your comment and good luck!
Dear Nikolay,
I checked all details and options but there is no way to finish add Farm (RDS farm).
Even I reinstall both vConnect and vComposer from scratch, but again no response.
My version is 6.2, I’m thinking about start it from previous version, such as 6.1.1 or 6.0.1…
What’s your idea?
Hi Mehdi,
in which phase are you stucked? Is the agent on the Windowse server, which you are using as a source, installed correctly? It should work pretty smoothly. I recommend you to check the pre requisites for RDS farm.
Thank you for your commend and good luck.
That was my fault, I forgot to create a Customization Specification, after creating it, the problem solved and process finished.
Thanks.
Have you gotten CDR to work? I reinstalled agent to allow but on client it does not give Share Folder option (once connected to vm).