Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of VMware Horizon 7.2, the next release of the premier platform for virtual desktops and applications. With the release of Horizon 7.2, customers get:
- An improved Microsoft Skype for Business user experience,
- A new tool to enable generalist IT staff to resolve the majority of end-user issues,
- Greater scalability and
- Updates to Linux virtual desktops.
Skype for Business
With Horizon 7.2, our optimized solution for Skype for Business is now officially supported with Windows clients. Developed in collaboration with Microsoft, this allows you to deliver Skype for Business in a virtual desktop while also delivering a great user experience—securing collaboration, simplifying management and reducing costs.
Note: For those interested in the Skype for Business solution for Linux clients, email [email protected] to request access to the private beta.
Help Desk Tool
Because Horizon 7 is often deployed at very large scales, customers asked us for a tool so frontline or help desk IT staff can quickly troubleshoot and remediate issues—without needing to pull in specialist Horizon administrators. We listened.
Horizon 7.2 introduces a new Help Desk Tool, which provides IT admins with level one and two help desk functionality. Administrators can look up users and find their sessions; initiate Microsoft Remote Assistance; send user messages and, if needed, disconnect, log off and even reset desktops to quickly remediate and get the user up and running.
Scalability
Speaking of scale, it gets even better. Horizon 7.2 increases scalability for Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA) deployments to now support up to 120,000 sessions across 12 View pods and five sites. Additionally, Horizon can now support 4,000 desktops with a single VMware vCenter Server for linked-clone, full-clone and instant-clone deployments.
Instant Clone Technology, a key component of JMP (Just-in-Time Management Platform) and a major initiative for the Horizon team, has been updated to enable reuse of preexisting Active Directory (AD) accounts for instant-clone pools. Additionally, super video graphics array (SVGA) video memory settings can now be configured in the master virtual machine (VM), and the pools will inherit these settings. Instant Clone Technology has also been extended to support local datastores.
Linux Desktops
Last but not least, VMware Horizon 7.2 for Linux provides a plethora of new capabilities that broaden the use case for Linux desktops. This includes key features such as USB redirection, client drive redirection (CDR), HTML access with audio capabilities and support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.9 x64 and CentOS 6.9 x64.
We are very excited about this release as we continue to deliver innovation in our market-leading products. We invite you to see for yourself and take a look at some of our resources below for more information:
- Skype for Business solution page
- Help Desk Tool blog
- Horizon 7 download page
- Horizon Client download page
