VMware has just released the Horizon View 5.2 Feature pack 1 which includes great new functionality for your VMware VDI environment. The Feature Pack comes with a new Remote Experience Agent, the HTML Access Agent for HTML5 desktop access via Horizon Workspace, Unity Touch and the HTML Access Installer.

For installation details see this guide: https://www.vmware.com/pdf/horizon-view/horizon-view-52-feature-pack-document.pdf

These are the new features in detail:

• Remote Experience Agent installer - The Remote Experience Agent installs Feature Pack components on Horizon View desktops, enhancing the remote desktop experience provided by View Agent 5.2. In Feature Pack 1, the installation program installs Unity Touch and the HTML Access Agent on Horizon View desktops. Both components are installed by default when you run the installer.
• HTML Access Agent - HTML Access allows users to connect to virtual desktops from their Web browsers without having to install Horizon View Client software on their client systems. The HTML Access Agent, which runs on Horizon View desktops, is the component that enables users to use HTML Access to connect to their desktops. You must install the Remote Experience Agent with the HTML Access Agent on the desktops that you want to be accessed via HTML Access.
• Unity Touch - Unity Touch enhances the way that mobile client users access a desktop. Instead of trying to manipulate a full desktop image on a small device screen, users can browse between apps and documents in a native mobile user interface without seeing the desktop. The VMware Horizon View Client documents for mobile devices provide more information about end user features provided by Unity Touch.
• HTML Access installer - This installer configures View Connection Server instances to allow users to select HTML Access to connect to desktops. After you run the HTML Access installer, the View Portal displays an HTML Access icon in addition to the View Client icon.
  You must run this installer if you want to use HTML Access to connect to desktops in a Horizon View deployment. Running this installer is also required if your users go through Horizon Workspace and select HTML Access to connect to desktops.

Link: https://www.vmware.com/support/view52/doc/horizon-view-52-feature-pack-1-release-notes.html

VMware View 5.2 is now available for download! Here are the release notes:

What’s New in Horizon View 5.2

VMware Horizon View 5.2 delivers valuable enhancements to end user experience and ease of management, while further driving down the total cost of ownership for VDI.

What’s New with End User Experience

• Support for Windows 8 based desktops¹
• Hardware Accelerated 3D Graphics¹
• Improved video and VOIP communications with Microsoft Lync 2013 support⁴
• Streamlined access to View Desktops from Horizon²
• Easily connect to desktops from any device with HTML Access³
• Enhanced productivity from mobile devices with new ‘Unity Touch’ functionality^{3 and 4}

What’s New with Ease of Management

• Large pool creation with elimination of 8 host limits, and multiple vLAN support
• View Administrator performance improvements with large numbers of desktops
• Accelerated provisioning and recompose operations.
• Tech Preview of a new Integrated Service Console in the vSphere Web Client¹
• Support for vCenter Server Virtual Appliance based deployments

What’s New with Total Cost of Ownership

• Substantial storage capacity savings for persistent desktops with space-efficient (SE sparse) disk technology¹

¹ Requires use of vSphere 5.1 and subsequent patches
² Requires use of VMware Horizon Suite
³ Requires use of additional VMware Horizon View 5.2 Feature Pack
⁴ Requires use of latest VMware Horizon View Clients

Link: https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/view_pubs.html

Don’t wait longer and go to www.vmware.com for downloading the brand new VMware Horizon Suite 1.0. Today VMware has released the new solution which included VMware Horizon Workspace, Horizon View and Horizon Mirage. I’ve already blogged about the details. If you havenT seen my earlier posts, please check these before.

Horizon Suite Overview: http://www.thatsmyview.net/2013/02/23/vmwaretv-horizon-suite-overview/

Horizon Workspace Overview: http://www.thatsmyview.net/2013/02/23/vmwaretv-vmware-horizon-workspace-overview/

Installing Horizon Workspace Part 1 (by Christian Gehring): http://www.thatsmyview.net/2013/02/27/installing-vmware-horizon-workspace-part-1/

Installing Horizon Workspace Part 2 (by Christian Gehring): http://www.thatsmyview.net/2013/02/27/installing-vmware-horizon-workspace-part-2/

Upgrade your VMware EUC products to Horizon Suite: http://www.thatsmyview.net/2013/03/04/horizon-upgrade-path-overview-with-skus/ 

Links:

Download:  https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/evalcenter?p=horizon-suite

Datasheet: https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-Horizon-Suite-Datasheet.pdf

FAQ: https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-Horizon-Suite-FAQ.pdf

Documentation:

Workspace: https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/horizon-workspace-pubs.html

Mirage: https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/mirage_pubs.html

View: https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/view_pubs.html

I’ve put a graphic together with the SKU’s needed to upgrade your VMware EUC products to Horizon. These information is taken from the VMware price list.

No guarantee for completeness or correctness.

As already mentioned in many blog posts out there, the EOA products are not going End of Life! They’re just going off the price list as a standalone SKU. ThinApp will live in View, Mirage and Workspace, Horizon Mobile and Application Manager are going into the Horizon Workspace SKU.

References:

• http://www.vmware.com/de/products/desktop_virtualization/mobile/overview.html
• http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/thinapp/VMware-ThinApp-EOA-FAQ.pdf

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

Great article on storage optimization technologies for VMware from VMware Product Management. Learn more about VMware View Replica Tiering, View Storage Acceleration, View Composer API  for Array Integration (VCAI) and space efficient virtual disks.

Properly designing and sizing storage is key to successfully deploying virtual desktops. Transitioning from pilot to production is completely dependent on getting both the storage design and sizing right. If you get this wrong- you will negatively affect user experience, application responsiveness and your cost per desktop.

So how do you get it right?

Well ultimately you will need to ensure that your VDI environment is designed to support adequate capacity and performance. Translating a physical laptop/desktop environment to a desktop VM typically requires about 40GB of storage capacity and 15 to 200 IOPS . In addition, the IO pattern is made up of steady state events during which it is dominated by small block random writes and highly correlated peak events which can be dominated by either reads or writes. These shifts complicate storage sizing and design for VDI.

Link: http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2013/02/storage-optimization-with-vmware-horizon-view.html

News from Riverbed at PEX. The vendor is expanding their support for virtual desktops combining of it’s Stingray, Cascade und Granite platforms.

Riverbed Technology is filling out its WAN optimisation line for VMware’s virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platform.

The company said the combination of its Stingray, Cascade and Granite platforms will allow companies to deploy hosted desktops at branch offices and other remote locations.

Link: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2250220/riverbed-expands-support-for-virtual-desktops