At the beginning of March VMware has released their new Horizon Suite which includes the End User Computing products Horizon View, Horizon Mirage and Horizon Workspace. The suite is a full solution for the complete end user computing stack, from physical to virtual. With this release VMware also has announced to discontinue the VMware View Enterprise licensing and they changed the name for the View Premier product to VMware Horizon View. View Premier, now Horizon View includes the superior functionality needed for a highly optimized VDI infrastructure i.e. View Composer. Customer who are using View Enterprise will still receive Support & Maintenance until September 2018 for the versions 5.x. There is also an upgrade path for the customers to Horizon View.

This and more information can be found in the VMware Knowledge Base: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2044197 

There is also a FAQ covering several questions: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/View-Enterprise-EOA-FAQ.pdf

VMware has changed the compatibility notes for VMware Horizon View 5.2 recently. The product is now supported with Oracle 11.2.0.3 databases in addition to the compatible databases listed in the installation documentation.

You can find this information on the VMware website. Please follow this link.

Link: http://www.vmware.com/support/view52/doc/horizon-view-52-release-notes.html#compatibility

In Horizon View version 5.2 + View Feature Pack 1 VMware introduced the new Unity Touch feature formally known as Project AppShift. Unity Touch is a very cool integration of Windows apps and documents in the VMware Horizon View Client for iOS and Android devices. In the screenshots you can see the Unity Touch tab which gives the user direct access to their documents or installed applications on the virtual Windows desktop. This is cool as the user doesn’t need to touch on the screen, go to the start menu etc. If you go back to the screenshot, you can see a description “Favorite applications.” At this point the user can define his favorite apps so he doesn’t need to choose “All programs” first to find an application.

So it would also make sense if IT could preconfigure this favorite apps with the most common applications, like Outlook, Word or other productivity tools. In a nutshell it is only editing the Windows Registry on the virtual desktop.

If you want to learn how it works please check this document: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/horizon-view/horizon-view-52-feature-pack-document.pdf

Thanks to Eric Sloof for linking to the new free Fling available at the VMware Labs website. The tool called View Pool Manager is a development from Andre Leibovici who’s well known for his blog myvirtualcloud.net. The tools allows you to manage a few tasks around the VMware View Pool management. The View Pool Manager can help you to save time, maybe a few hours a week. Try it!

Image Source: http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/Screen-Shot-2013-03-25-at-10.49.41-AM.png

Link: http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2317-Latest-Fling-from-VMware-Labs-View-Pool-Manager.html

Download: http://labs.vmware.com/flings/view-pool-manager

Today I received a new SSD drive for my home lab. It was time to get some new IOPS in my vSphere environment for testing VMware Horizon View 5.2. I haven’t installed View for a while so I was really surprised about the changes I’ve seen in the product. After the general View installation I’ve deployed a Windows 7 desktop pool first as I wanted to test the new HTML access today. Of course I’ve seen it before and I’ve already played with it but didn’t install it by myself yet. The HTML access option comes as a separate installer for both, the server and the agent side. The remote experience agent which is installed on the virtual desktop also brings the necessary software pieces for the Unity Touch feature. From the VMware website you can download the HTML access for the connection server as well as the user experience agent. Just login to your MyVMware account and check the downloads section. The modules are available under the Horizon View downloads. Starting the installation is easy as usual, just click on the installer.

I was surprised when I did the installation as their was nothing to configure. Only click Next, Next and Finish and all its set.

After installing the HTML access option (Feature Pack 1for View 5.2) the website at https://viewserver/ changes. Before the installation the website offered only the option to download the View Client for accessing the virtual desktops. After installing the Feature Pack you can see the “VMware Horizon View HTML Access” icon.

But before using the new feature you’ve to install the client components on the virtual desktop. Again take the installer, this time copy it to the virtual desktop or desktop template and start the installation.

The only difference to the server installation part is that you have one additional wizard dialog. It gives you the chance to decide if you want to install HTML access only or also install the Unity Touch features. But of course you want it so just click on Install and start the installation.

After the installation and proper configuration of a desktop pool you can go back to the View Connection Server web interface. Click on the HTML access and enjoy!

Ha! There is another trap which you should be aware of! HTML access requires HTML5 support but this is not offered by Internet Explorer 9 i.e. which I’ve used to access my virtual desktop. Lessons learned! I’ve installed IE9 afterwards.

Using a supported web browser gives you this! A fully functional Windows 7 desktop running in a web browser. Great! I love it.

I hope this gives you a quick overview of the HTML Access which comes with the VMware View 5.2 Feature Pack 1. Of course the HTML access doesn’t give you the full functionality of a VMware View Client which is connected via PCoIP but it is great to use on a mobile device for a few use cases.

Eric Sloof published an article on his blog today which like to a video taken by Gunnar Berger from Gartner. In this video Gunnar compares HTML Access via PCoIP. It’s definitely worth to watch it!

Did you ever want to know more about the USB Device Redirection in VMware View? This is your chance! Peter Brown, Senior R&D manager at VMware’s London development facilities gives you a deep insight on the VMware blogs. This is really great information.

The article gives you information about these topics:

• What is USB Device Redirection?
• USB Redirection Changes in View 5.1
• Horizon View Clients to support new USB Redirection Features
• USB Device Support in virtual environments
• USB Device Filtering
• USB Device Splitting
• Does the protocol matter?
• USB1/2/3 Compatibility
• USB Redirection performance in a LAN compared to WAN
• USB Storage device performance
• Data Encryption
• Is it possible to disable redirection
• What’s new with USB redirection in Horizon View 5.2

Link: http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2013/03/usb-device-redirection-in-vmware-horizon-view-5-1-and-5-2.html

Cortado has published an interesting news article about ThinPrint, integrated in View 5.2.

Cortado´s ThinPrint technology is integrated with the recently announced VMware® Horizon View™ 5.2. New important printing features include: VMware Horizon View 5.2 has the ability to support printer finishing options, such as hole punching, stapling, and binding on Windows 8, with the use of the ThinPrint Output Gateway virtual printer driver. Other features include driver-free printing, print data compression, and optimized printing for PCoIP.

Please visit the Cortado website for more information.

Link: http://www.thinprint.com/News/News/ArticleDetails/tabid/392/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/217/Default.aspx

VMware has published a new website with the Hardware Compatibility List for the virtual shared graphics acceleration.

Link: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/vcl/vsga.php

For those of you running a test or demo lab with a dynamically changed external IP address, I’ve created a PowerShell Script to update the View Connection Broker with external IP Address.

Save the Script as an .PS1 file and execute or trigger the script after your external IP address change occurred.

# Getting DynDns IP Address 
# Created 2013 Christian Gehring
# Parsing external dyndns IP Adress String using checkip.dyndns.org
#
$webclient=New-Object net.webclient
$ext_ip = $webclient.downloadstring("http://checkip.dyndns.com") -replace "[^\d\.]"

#Set VMWare View Broker's external PCoIPURL on Default Port 4172
$brokername = Get-ConnectionBroker | select -expand broker_id
Update-ConnectionBroker -broker_id $brokername -externalPCoIPURL $ext_ip