VMware’s new release is out with VMware Horizon 7.5. This platform is known for taking virtualization to the next level from data centers to devices- thus simplifying desktops and application management. Users these days are a lot more mobile and thus expect a lot of productivity from their personal or business devices. But why should IT staff expect this new update?
Here we go!
The new features in this release are expected to address core business challenges through a streamlined approach to IT delivery with easy management that contains costs. Most importantly it takes the current significant concern data security head-on. Now, you can work at lightning speed on your sensitive apps with advanced security anywhere, anytime and on any device.
This blog will throw light on the list of enhancements that VMware announced with respect to both the on-premises Horizon Suite and the Horizon cloud product sets.
Feature Highlights:
Here’s a list of the long-awaited features that were unveiled in Horizon 7.5 that will excite most virtual desktop administrators.
Horizon on VMC
This functionality has had a very warm reception among IT admins. Fully cloned desktops are currently supported in this release and users can actually benefit from VMC for an efficient DR scenario and can even run virtual desktops in AWS by enabling this feature. However, support for instant clones will be made available in future releases.
Enabling support to instant clones requires a lot of development work as the VMware Horizon does not have the same access to the vCenters in VMC as it has in the on-premises workloads. Additionally, VMC will also not extend support to linked clones and Horizon Composer.
Users will get use Horizon 7.5 only on the Unified Access Gateway, core Horizon, and the VMware Identity Manager.
Horizon Extended Service Branches(ESB)
According to the support policy of VMware, users can continue to receive support to Horizon with the new bug fixes and patches when there is no new release made available for a minimum period of about 60 days. VMware with this new release looks forward to extending a long-term support to the Horizon Suite.
This active support termed the Extended Service Branch will be available for a period of about 2 years from the release date containing App Volumes, Unified Access Gateway, Horizon 7 and the User Environment Manager.
Some good news coming along for enterprise businesses with robust IT workloadS!
Organizations of such types may or may not require software upgrades every year since upgrading or switching away from the existing version can be very grueling for it will impact the support and might cause huge costs on critical applications. VMware has put an end to this hassle with this release.
The Horizon Suite comes up with an unlimited support bundle with this functionality that will extend 2 years of active support from the official release date that consists of quick updates and bug fixes addressing security vulnerabilities. Also, users can expect a new ESB that will go live every 12 months.
Healthcare units and other organizations can gain the most out of this as it doesn’t include any additional licensing cost and they have the choice on whether to go ahead with the ESB service or the current release for their production setup.
Instant Clones
With the release of VMware vSphere 6.7, there are new APIs that are brought for the Instant Clones. However, they were made available to the Horizon Suite like the vMotion. While Horizon 7.4 does not extend support to vSphere 6.7, the new Horizon is compatible to Instant Clone APIs of v6.7 and backward versions 6.5 and 6.0 as well.
Instant clones will now support vSGA and Soft3D. Users working with NVIDIA vGPU on their environment can now use more than one vGPU profile per cluster while turning on the vGPU consolidation.
Before understanding the next new addition to Instant Clones, let’s get a clear picture of how the Instant clone technology and the VMFork technology work. To overcome the disadvantage of the first generation technology, Horizon rather than utilizing the VMFork- it adds its own layers of management on top of it. Thus even when standard VMFork could not support Instant Clone vMotion, Horizon was still compatible.
This new layer of management helps customers with VMware’s software-defined storage- vSAN to utilize Instant clones of Horizon across different cluster boundaries. With the old design, users will not be able to share the vSAN datastores across different vSphere. IT admins with large EUC base will be forced to use multiple clusters to meet the requirements. Since the datastores can’t be shared, a copy of the parent image should be retained in each cluster making Horizon management on vSAN cumbersome. But with new version 7.5, Instant clones can be shared across multiple vSAN without having the need to retain a copy on each cluster.
Just-In-Time Management Server
This capability simplifies the way IT admins define workspace to facilitate assignments. You can actually manage desktop workspaces for a group of users through a single console that ensures complete desktop management experience from a single pane of glass.
But, how to get things done? It is very simple!
Any user can create a desktop workspace by defining a JMP assignment that will include information about the VMware App Volumes AppStacks, Horizon desktops pools, and VMware User Environment Manager. Yes, all these under a single portal! Thus IT setups get to define how a user’s desktop workspace should look like, based on the desired state.
Most importantly it becomes the tool that helps IT streamline their operations and provides various benefits like automating virtual desktops and applications.
The new Blast Extreme Protocol
A new addition to the Blast Extreme called the Blast Extreme Adaptive Transport(BEAT) now provides advanced remoting experience. For users who keep shifting between good and bad network connectivity, Horizon 7.5 will delight you with its advanced Network Intelligence(Blast Extreme Network Intelligence) and automation.
Users’ network conditions are evaluated on the client side to choose the right Blast Extreme transport mode. Users will not have to manually choose among the Extreme, Typical and Poor options and they will eventually be removed in upcoming versions.
Horizon Performance Tracker
This tracker will turn out to be an efficient tracker for determining the overall user experience as well as the details of the display protocol. It monitors the performance of Blast Extreme/PCoIP and the system resources to present them as information to the users in the form of metrics. Few of them are Blast Extreme transport type, session latency, frames per second and also helps with troubleshooting issues between the Horizon agent and the client.
This is how the performance tracker window will look like.
Concluding Thoughts
This blog would have given you a brief insight into the major feature announcements with Horizon 7.5. There’s no stopping VMware and this release is one of the few happenings that’s helping it gain momentum making it the clear market leader. Another welcome addition is its flexibility to support the latest VMware vSphere 6.7. With many exciting features and enhancements, this ain’t just another release and is definitely expected to bring about a crucial change in IT setups.
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