VMware Horizon Desktops

A Sneak-peek at App Volumes 2.14

App Volumes 2.14

In App Volumes 2.14, we are delivering innovation in three key areas:

  1. Improved security
  2. Volume attachment performance for improved user experience
  3. User data management

In addition, starting with this current release, App Volumes will support Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) releases on a regular cadence with VMware Horizon.

Custom Roles and Privileges with Role-based Access Controls

Now you can easily scale your organization and deployment by delegating fine-tuned control over AppStack creation, application assignment and various other end-user support and environmental monitoring tasks. With App Volumes 2.14, you can create custom admin roles and align the privileges for these administrators to your business.

App-Volumes-2.14-Create-Custom-Rules

Writable Volumes on Shared Datastores

Writable Volumes are no longer pinned to a vCenter and play nicely with Shared Datastores. With App Volumes 2.14, you can create Writable Volumes either manually or at login on one vCenter and access from another in a future session while using Shared Datastores. Users can now move from desktop-to-desktop across vCenters and bring along their user settings and applications in their Writable Volume.

Move, Copy and Restore Writable Volumes

Whether preserving user data while off-boarding users or migrating users to newly added storage, utilize new UI options to help manage VMDK files. Administrators can now move volumes to rebalance storage, keep backup copies of their user’s data and even restore a volume copy back into production.

AppVolumes2.14-Writable-Volumes-Backups

 

Microsoft Outlook and Windows Search with OST Redirection

Turn on Outlook’s Cached Exchange Mode to store the user’s large OST files on Writable Volumes. No more offline mode or complex configurations for Microsoft Outlook—with App Volumes alone, it just works.

Asynchronous Communication with vSphere Throttling

Admin functions and volume agility aren’t the only things improving in App Volumes. The core engine for attaching VMDKs is more streamlined. Now the App Volumes Manager works together more effectively with vCenter and the Agent. The App Volumes Manager now also automatically leverages more efficient volume protection when using vSphere 6.5 and above. These improvements mean fewer infrastructure resources and greater vSphere performance.

Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel Alignment

Starting with App Volumes 2.14 Windows 10 versions 1709 and 1803 will now be supported. Every six months Microsoft plans to release a new version of Windows and App Volumes plans to align with Windows 10 Guest OS Support FAQ (KB51663).