Mastering VMware Horizon 7 - Second Edition

Mastering VMware Horizon 7 - Second Edition

by Peter von Oven, Barry Coombs
Released October 2016
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781786466396

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Book description

Learn advanced desktop virtualization techniques and strategies and dive deeper into VMware Horizon 7, take responsibility for optimizing your end user experience

About This Book

  • Build better virtualized services for your users with VMware Horizon 7

  • Take full advantage of Horizon’s range of features for confidence and control in your virtualized solutions

  • Take responsibility for transforming your organization – this guide will get you started!

    • Who This Book Is For

    Admins, architects… whatever your role, if you find virtualization a bit of a headache this book is for you. You’ll go deep into VMware Horizon and see just what its capable of. It will take you to an advanced level, but at a pace that ensures you’re always solving real-world problems. You’ll need some experience in desktop management using Windows and Microsoft Office, and familiarity with Active Directory, SQL, Windows Remote Desktop Session Hosting, and VMware vSphere technology.

    What You Will Learn

  • Successfully configure Horizon 7 for the needs of your users

  • Find out how VMware is perfect for end-user computing delivering virtual desktops, session-based desktops, and hosted applications all from the same platform

  • Learn how to develop, and deploy a complete end-to-end solution

  • Discover how to optimize desktop OS images for virtual desktops

  • Build, optimize, and tune desktop operating systems to deliver a superior end-user experience

  • Explore the Horizon 7 infrastructure, so you can take full advantage of it!

    • In Detail

    Desktop virtualization can be a bit of a headache. But VMware Horizon 7 changes all that. With a rich and adaptive UX, improved security and a range of useful features for storage and networking optimization, there’s plenty to love.

    But to properly fall in love with it, you need to know how to use it. And that means venturing deeper into the software, taking advantage of its extensive range of features, many of which are underused and underpromoted. This guide will take you through everything you need to know to not only successfully virtualize your desktop infrastructure but also to maintain and optimize the infrastructure to keep all your users happy.

    We’ll show you how to assess and analyze your infrastructure, and how to use that analysis to design a solution that meets your organizational and user needs. Once you’ve done that, you’ll find out how to build your virtualized environment, before deploying your virtualized solution. But more than that, we’ll also make sure you know everything you need to know about the full range of features on offer, including mobile cloud, so you can use them to take full control of your virtualized infrastructure.

    Style and approach

    Focusing on an end-user project, this useful, yet comprehensive guide will show you how to take full advantage of VMware’s Horizon 7 solution and how to successfully implement it for your organization.

    Table of contents

    1. Mastering VMware Horizon 7 - Second Edition
      1. Mastering VMware Horizon 7 - Second Edition
      2. Credits
      3. Foreword
      4. About the Authors
      5. About the Reviewer
      6. www.PacktPub.com
        1. Why subscribe?
      7. Preface
        1. What this book covers
        2. What you need for this book
        3. Who this book is for
        4. Conventions
        5. Reader feedback
        6. Customer support
          1. Downloading the color images of this book 
          2. Errata
          3. Piracy
          4. Questions
      8. 1. Introduction to VDI and VMware Horizon 7
        1. What is VDI?
        2. The benefits of deploying VDI
        3. A complete history of VMware and VDI
        4. VMware Horizon 7
        5. The VMware Horizon 7 product editions
          1. Horizon for Linux
          2. Horizon Standard Edition
          3. Horizon Advanced Edition
          4. Horizon Enterprise Edition
        6. Summary
      9. 2. An Overview of Horizon View Architecture and Components
        1. Introducing the key Horizon components
        2. High-level architectural overview
          1. Horizon View Connection Server
            1. How does the Connection Server work?
            2. Minimum requirements for the Connection Server
          2. The Horizon View Security Server
            1. How does the Security Server work?
          3. The Horizon View Replica Server
            1. How does the Replica Server work?
          4. The Horizon View Enrollment Server and True SSO
          5. VMware Access Point
        3. Persistent or non-persistent desktops
        4. Horizon View Composer and Linked Clones
          1. Linked Clone technology
          2. Full Clones
          3. Linked Clones
          4. How do Linked Clones work?
          5. What does View Composer build?
            1. Linked Clone disk
            2. Persistent disk or user data disk
            3. Disposable disk
            4. Internal disk
          6. Understanding how the linked clone process works
            1. Creating and provisioning a new desktop
            2. Customizing the desktop
          7. Additional features and functions of Linked Clones
            1. Recomposing a linked clone
            2. Refreshing a linked clone
            3. Rebalancing operations with View Composer
        5. Instant Clones
        6. View Persona Management
          1. Why do we need to manage user profiles differently in VDI?
          2. The benefits of Persona Management
        7. VMware User Environment Manager (UEM)
          1. SmartPolicies
          2. UEM or Persona Management?
        8. Printing from a Virtual Desktop Machine
          1. Installing the virtual printing components
        9. Managing USB devices
          1. USB device support in Horizon View
          2. Filtering supported USB devices
          3. Managing multifunction USB devices
        10. ThinApp application virtualization
          1. How does application virtualization work?
        11. Antivirus software for virtual desktops
          1. VMware vShield Endpoint architecture
        12. PCoIP - delivering the desktop experience
          1. Introducing PCoIP
          2. PCoIP host rendering
          3. Multi-codec support with PCoIP
          4. Controlling the image quality
          5. Dynamic networking capabilities
          6. Other display protocols
          7. Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
          8. Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) protocol
          9. PCoIP offloading with the Teradici Apex 2800
          10. Teradici host card for physical PCs
        13. Blast Extreme
        14. Which Protocol - Blast Extreme, PCoIP, or RDP?
        15. Hardware-accelerated graphics for Horizon View
          1. Virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration (vSGA)
            1. vSGA supported configurations
            2. How many virtual desktops are supported with vSGA?
          2. Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration (vDGA)
            1. How many virtual desktops are supported with vDGA?
            2. The vDGA-supported configurations
          3. Virtual GPU (vGPU)
            1. How many virtual desktops are supported with vGPU?
        16. Unified communications support
          1. How do unified communications work now?
          2. Support for Microsoft Lync 2013 (Skype for Business)
        17. Real-Time Audio Video (RTAV)
          1. The issue
          2. How does RTAV fix this issue?
        18. URL Content Redirection
        19. View Clients
        20. Summary
      10. 3. Design and Deployment Considerations
        1. Phase I - Project Definition
          1. Identifying business drivers - understanding your needs and requirements
          2. Build business case
          3. Desktop assessments
            1. Assessment tools
            2. What do your users actually do?
            3. Applications
            4. Performance
            5. User experience
            6. Floor walks, interviews, and department champions
            7. What are department champions?
          4. Defining the success criteria
        2. Phase II - Proving the Technology
          1. Proof of concept (POC)
          2. Proof of technology (POT)
          3. Pilot
            1. Step 1 - pilot design
            2. Step 2 - deploy the pilot
            3. Step 3 - test the pilot
            4. Step 4 - review the pilot
        3. Phase III - designing a production environment
        4. Technology choices
          1. Example scenario 1
            1. Recommendation
          2. Scenario 2
            1. Recommendation
          3. Scenario 3
            1. Recommendation
          4. Scenario 4
            1. Recommendation
          5. Conclusions
          6. Preparing for production
        5. Horizon View Pod and Block Architecture
        6. Cloud Pod Architecture
        7. vSphere design for Horizon View
          1. vSphere design
          2. Configuration maximums
          3. ESXi host servers
          4. CPU and memory
            1. Overcommitting CPU and memory resources
            2. CPU and memory sizing
            3. Network
            4. Graphics
          5. Storage
            1. Capacity
            2. Performance
        8. Horizon View design specifics
          1. The View Connection Server
          2. The View replica server
          3. The View security server
          4. The View enrollment server
          5. The View Composer
          6. vCenter Servers
          7. VMware Access Point
          8. Configuration maximums
          9. Networking
            1. Bandwidth considerations
            2. Load balancing
          10. Remote Desktop Session Server Design considerations
        9. Supporting infrastructure design
          1. Database requirements
          2. File servers
          3. IP addressing
          4. Antivirus
          5. Group policy
            1. Functionality
            2. Lockdown
            3. Performance and management
          6. Key Management Server
          7. Thin clients
        10. Desktop design considerations
          1. Pool design
          2. Desktop sizing
            1. Sizing the desktop host servers
              1. Light user
              2. Medium user
              3. Heavy user
            2. Memory sizing considerations
          3. Linked clone versus full clone
          4. Persistent versus non-persistent
          5. Offline desktops
          6. Building a composite desktop
            1. Base layer
            2. Applications
            3. User profiles and environment management
        11. Disaster recovery and backup
          1. Backup and recovery options
          2. Disaster recovery options
        12. Example solution scenario
          1. End-user requirements
            1. Application developers
            2. Office workers
            3. Contractors
            4. Engineering
            5. Sales
          2. The pool design
          3. Sizing the desktop blocks
          4. Sizing the storage requirements
          5. Sizing the management blocks
          6. The network requirements
        13. Summary
      11. 4. Installing and Configuring Horizon View
        1. Welcome to the lab environment
          1. What you need for the example lab
        2. Preparing Active Directory
          1. Active Directory user accounts
          2. vCenter user account
          3. View Composer user account
          4. View Desktop Organizational Units (OUs)
          5. IP addressing and DNS requirements
        3. Installing View Composer
          1. Configuring SQL for View Composer
          2. View Composer installation process
        4. Installing the View Connection Server
        5. Initial configuration of the View Connection Server
          1. Configuring licensing
          2. Adding the vCenter Server to View Administrator
          3. Configuring the viewevents database
        6. Installing the View Replica Server
        7. Installing the View Security Server
          1. Preparing View Administrator for the Security Server
          2. Security Server installation process
        8. Installing the View Enrollment Server
        9. Configuring View for GPU-enabled Virtual Desktops
          1. Configuring the ESXi hosts
        10. Configuring the Cloud Pod Architecture
          1. Initializing the Cloud Pod
          2. Connecting the second pod to the Cloud Pod
          3. Entitling users to the Cloud Pod
        11. Summary
      12. 5. Securing Horizon View with SSL Certificates and True SSO
        1. Horizon View and SSL certificates
          1. What is a Certificate Authority?
          2. Why do I need SSL for Horizon View?
        2. SSL certificates for Horizon View
          1. Installing a Root CA
          2. Installing a certificate on the Connection Server
          3. Post-certificate enrollment configuration tasks
        3. Horizon View True SSO
          1. Preparing AD for True SSO
          2. Creating a Certificate Template for True SSO
          3. Issuing the TrueSSO certificate template
          4. Certificate deployment
          5. Configuring True SSO on the Connection Server
        4. Summary
      13. 6. Building and Optimizing the Virtual Desktop OS
        1. Virtual desktop hardware requirements
        2. Creating a Windows 7 virtual desktop machine
          1. Creating the virtual desktop machine container
          2. Updating the virtual desktop machine BIOS
          3. Operating system installation options
          4. Installing the guest operating system
          5. Installing VMware Tools
          6. Installing applications for the parent image
          7. Installing the Horizon View Agent
          8. Optimizing the guest operating system
          9. Post-optimization tasks
        3. Creating a Windows 10 virtual desktop machine
          1. Creating the virtual desktop machine container
          2. Updating the virtual desktop machine BIOS
          3. Installing the guest operating system
          4. Installing VMware Tools
          5. Installing applications for the parent image
          6. Installing the Horizon View Agent
          7. Optimizing the guest operating system
          8. Post-optimization tasks
        4. Creating a GPU-enabled virtual desktop machine
          1. Creating the virtual desktop machine container
          2. Installing the operating system for GPU-enabled desktops
          3. Completing the GPU-enabled desktop build
        5. Linux virtual desktop machines
          1. Creating the virtual desktop machine container
          2. Updating the virtual desktop machine BIOS
          3. Installing the guest operating system
          4. Installing VMware Tools
          5. Installing the Horizon View Agent
          6. Optimizing the guest operating system
          7. Post-optimization tasks
        6. Preparing virtual desktops for delivery
          1. Pool design - a quick recap
          2. Creating a snapshot for Linked Clones
          3. Creating a snapshot for Instant Clones
          4. Creating a template for Full Clones
        7. Summary
      14. 7. Managing and Configuring Desktop Pools
        1. Automated desktop pools
          1. Creating dedicated, Linked Clone desktop pools
          2. Creating dedicated, Full Clone desktop pools
          3. Creating floating, Linked Clone desktop pools
          4. Creating floating, Full Clone desktop pools
          5. Creating floating, Instant Clone desktop pools
        2. Creating a manual desktop pool
        3. Entitling users
        4. Managing desktop pools
          1. Recomposing a desktop pool
        5. Managing persistent disks
        6. Creating a GPU-enabled desktop pool
        7. Reviewing the infrastructure post-deployment
        8. Summary
      15. 8. Delivering Remote Applications with View Hosted Apps
        1. Architectural overview
          1. Application connection sequence
        2. RDSH sizing guidelines
        3. Installing and configuring View hosted apps
          1. Configuring the RDS server role
          2. Testing with the standard remote applications
          3. Installing additional applications
          4. Configuring the licensing role
          5. Activating the licensing role
        4. Installing the Horizon View agent for RDSH
        5. Configuring hosted apps in the View Administrator
          1. Creating an application pool for hosted apps
          2. Entitling users to application pools
        6. Load balancing hosted apps in View
        7. Summary
      16. 9. Delivering Session-Based Desktops with Horizon View
        1. Architectural overview
        2. RDSH sizing guidelines
          1. Load balancing desktop sessions in View
        3. Installing and configuring desktop sessions in View
          1. Configuring the RDSH role
          2. Configuring RDSH to deliver desktop sessions
        4. Installing the Horizon View Agent for RDSH
        5. Configuring View to deliver desktop sessions
          1. Creating a farm for desktop sessions
          2. Creating a desktop pool for session-based desktops
          3. Entitling users to desktop sessions
        6. Enhancing the end-user experience
          1. Configuring the Desktop Experience feature
          2. Configuring the Server Manager
        7. Summary
      17. 10. Horizon View Client Options
        1. Software clients
          1. Horizon Client for Windows
          2. VMware Horizon Client for Android
          3. VMware Horizon Client for iOS
          4. Horizon View Client for Linux
          5. Horizon View Client for Mac OS X
          6. Horizon View Client for Chrome OS
        2. Hardware clients
          1. Thin clients
          2. Zero clients
          3. Repurposed PCs (thick clients)
        3. HTML5 browser desktop access
        4. Summary
      18. 11. Upgrading to a New Version of Horizon View
        1. Upgrade compatibility
        2. Upgrading View Composer
          1. Before you begin the upgrade
          2. Completing the View Composer upgrade
          3. Verifying the upgrade
        3. Upgrading the View Connection Server
          1. Before you begin the upgrade
          2. Completing the Connection Server upgrade
          3. Alternative View Connection Server upgrade method
        4. Upgrading the View Security Server
          1. Before you begin the upgrade
          2. Completing the View Security Server upgrade
        5. Upgrading Group Policy templates
        6. Upgrading the VMware Horizon agent
        7. Upgrading the Horizon client
        8. Summary
      19. 12. Troubleshooting Tips
        1. General troubleshooting tips
          1. Looking at the bigger picture
          2. Is the issue affecting more than one user?
          3. Performance issues
            1. User-reported performance issues
          4. Non-VDI-related issues
          5. Bandwidth, connectivity, and networking
          6. Compute
          7. Disk
        2. Troubleshooting Horizon View issues
          1. View general infrastructure issues
          2. View infrastructure component issues
            1. Fixing View Composer issues with the ViewDBChk tool
        3. vRealize Operations for Horizon
        4. Third-party management tools
        5. Getting further help
        6. Summary

    Product information

    • Title: Mastering VMware Horizon 7 - Second Edition
    • Author(s): Peter von Oven, Barry Coombs
    • Release date: October 2016
    • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
    • ISBN: 9781786466396