VMware Horizon 8 (2006)

/ August 12, 2020/ VMware Horizon

With the announcement of VMware Horizon 8 (2006) on August 6, 2020 VMware brings some new features and deprecate old features that has been used a lot in combination with Horizon 6 and 7. In this blog you will read my thoughts about it.

The Horizon 8 2006 release is expected to be generally available in VMware’s Fiscal Q3 FY21, ending on October 30, 2020.

Some removed features:

– Persona management

Persona management has been used a lot in combination with the standard license of Horizon. why? The reason for using persona management was that it was included within the License with no extra costs. From my perspective I used persona a lot in combination with Windows 7 and the early releases of Windows 10. Persona management wasn’t the greatest tool to manage your profiles on the Market, but you could manage more settings, optimization, include/exclude instead of using roaming profiles.

Persona management will be replaced by FSLogix, DEM or App Volumes. From my personal perspective DEM is the best tool to manage profiles, applications (predefined) in a user friendly console.

– Flex Admin

I have been working with VMware View from the beginning. One thing that hasn’t changed over time was the console based on flash. Over the time I was quite comfortable with the use of it. It was not the fastest console, especially from version 5 to 6 in order to perform large bulk actions. Starting with Horizon 7 some great features has been added like the Help desk tool. this tool was only accessible in combination with the new HTML 5 client. in the beginning it was not a smooth, nice working interface. Admins would be faced with more errors than information. Therefore the fling “Horizon Helpdesk Utility” was a nice alternative!

With Horizon 8 the old flex admin has been replaced with the new HTML5 Console. The html5 console was already accessible in the latest versions of Horizon 7 (Work in contruction) not all functionality works and a lot of functions was not ready to use. Now the console can be used for all your actions and configuration.

– Security Server

Security server was a Windows based solution that could be installed with the same installer for the connection server. to reduced the footprint of windows licenses VMware development a new security server based on “photon OS” The Unified access gateway has been born and it is more powerful then ever before because this gateway can be used in combination with Workspace One UEM and Horizon.

so is it bad that the Security server has been replaced?
actually not, over time we have been seen that more and more customers was already switched from the security server to the UAG. the unified access gateway has more options like High availability and supports more integration.

– Thinprint

Thinprint will be replaced by The VMware integrated printing that has been development by VMware. Thinprint was a licensed product from Thinprint (what’s in the name) and has been used a lot in the enterprise.

Some differences are:

• Client printer redirection (Universal or native printer driver)
• Location based printing
• Nested mode redirection
• Static printer name (Retain the printer name across sessions)
• Persistent print setting (Save print settings)

Deprecated Features

– linked clones (Composer)

One big disadvantage with linked clones was the limitation of high availability regarding the Composer server. until the last version of Horizon there was no solution to add more the one composer server to a single vCenter server. the must be a one point integration.

Regarding high availability with Horizon, in the past a single Site could be deployed with redundant Connection brokers, Security servers and App volumes servers. Starting at vSphere 6.5, the vCenter high availability feature was introduced to minimize the risk of failures or interruption of services for making new vdi machines or attaching appstacks etc..

The composer server was the last single component until VMware announced the Instant clone technology. With Instant clones there is no need to use a composer server because everything will be managed from the connection servers.

From my opinion there is no need to use linked clones anymore. in the past there where some limitations regarding 3D rendering in combination with instant clones however these limitations no longer apply with newer versions of Horizon. Instant clones are now available across all license types.

– persistent disk

With the release of VMware app volumes writable volumes there is no need to use Persistent disk instead. It’s fit with the vision of the company that this feature has been deprecated

New Features

– Smart provisioning

With smart provisioning, horizon automatically choose the type of desktop to create in combination with the density of vms per host. low density types are created without the need of a parent VM. in case when a parent vm isn’t required this reduces the footprint regarding memory and disk space. For high density vms the traditional way of instant clones will be used in combination with the parent vm’s

Without the need of parent vms in combination with low density desktop type per host reduced the need of resources a lot. From my prospective this is a great thing! for small customers is this a warm welcome!

– Blast Extreme

4K was already supported with Horizon 7. Now with the new version 8K support has been added up to two monitors.

– Horizon agent (Teams, Zoom)

Optimization for webcam usage en video conferencing for Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Also includes the new horizon agent H.265 encode and decode.

– VMware dynamic environment manager (DEM)

two types of licences; Standard and Enterprise. Standard version is included for all customers which has already an Horizon standard license.

Also the new version of DEM brings the new function “Elevated task” whit this new function is it possible to run programs with elevated privileges at Logon, logoff or triggered tasks.