VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure released an update today. In addition to a number of UI and back-end platform enhancements, we have developed several noteworthy updates to existing features.
Schedule Based Power Management
The initial release of Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure introduced power management features that allow you to manage infrastructure costs in your Microsoft Azure environment. Farms can grow or shrink based on usage and pre-configured availability thresholds that you configure with the initial farm deployment. With this release, you can now configure the maximum number of servers available in a farm based on a time schedule, as well.
Simple Upgrades
Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure infrastructure is easy to upgrade from one version to the next. As soon as a platform upgrade is available, you can schedule your update with our support team, and the process begins. Core infrastructure appliances are automatically upgraded using a blue/green methodology like the following:
- New Horizon Cloud Node and Unified Access Gateways deploys from the Horizon Cloud Service.
- Configuration information and system state copies from the running Horizon Cloud Node and Unified Access Gateways to the new ones.
- After the configuration information is copied and checks completed, the new Horizon Cloud Node and Unified Access Gateways become active.
- The old infrastructure is automatically removed from the environment.
Automated User Environment Manager Agent Install and Update
With this release, we are including the User Environment Manager agent with the auto-install feature in Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. This means that the User Environment Manager agent installs as a part of the unified agent installer feature in Horizon Cloud.
Windows Server 2016 Supported for GPU-based RD Session Hosts
With this release, we have added support for Windows Server 2016 for GPU-based workloads. Prior to this release, Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure only supported Windows Server 2012 R2 for NV based VMs on Azure. Windows Server 2016 allows for greater user density than VMs based on Windows Server 2012 R2, due to enhancements in the NVIDIA GPU driver stack. We hope to have updated benchmarks published soon.
Summary
VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure now provides the best of both worlds: the application and desktop delivery capabilities of Horizon Cloud, combined with the application management services and increased flexibility of Microsoft Azure. The resulting benefits include multi-cloud deployment, extended geographical datacenter options, simplified VDI, consumption-based pricing, and much more. To find out more:
