This week is VMworld, and the excitement is palpable at VMware. This premier multi-cloud event provides the product teams the opportunity to share all the great work they have done to create and enhance solutions that help customers on their digital transformation journey.
For the VMware Horizon team, the excitement is no different. The team has been hard at work to deliver new cloud management and monitoring services that enhance our Horizon virtual desktop and application solution.
In case you missed it, in August we announced SaaS innovations on the Horizon platform including making the services available on more cloud environments as well as adding the ability for IT to use Workspace ONE Assist to remote into a Horizon session and remotely assist employees.
Now we have several new services to introduce in the Horizon Control Plane, available to those with a Horizon SaaS subscription. The Horizon Control Plane services efficiently deploy, manage and scale desktops and apps across Horizon pods and cloud environments, including private, hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.
Horizon App Management: Deliver Personalized Applications in Windows 10 Multi-Session
App Management, powered by App Volumes, provides the required flexibility and control to application management by packaging, assigning and deploying applications in real-time across Horizon environments – on-premises and in the cloud.
Now available on App Volumes is Win 10 Multi-session support, bringing additional value to your Horizon deployments on Microsoft Azure. This new capability allows admins to create unique application assignments for each end user on a shared Windows virtual machine (VM) that is running a Win 10 multi-session.
This is big news for application management, assignment and personalization. Instead of sharing all apps with all end users, admins can specify which apps an end user can access, allowing the apps to follow the end user regardless of the VM they log into or location. End users get their own apps per session that are delivered in real-time when the end-user clicks it. This provides a personalized user experience with a clean desktop that only contains what the user needs on demand. This also prevents application conflict since the apps are completely isolated from one another and only the assigned apps are visible to the end user. This functionality gives admins a whole new level of control and flexibility when assigning applications.
To learn more about app delivery with Win 10 Multi-session and the exciting upcoming Apps On Demand, attend The App Management Crusher: The Modern Approach For Faster VDI App Delivery [EUS2468].
Horizon Universal Broker and Multi-Cloud Assignments: Providing More Connection Options
With Universal Broker and Multi-Cloud assignments admins can easily entitle end users to virtual desktop and application assignments that span multiple sites. Universal Broker and Multi-cloud assignments is available today on VMware Horizon on Azure VMware Solution (AVS) environments. Coming soon, support will be available for VMware Horizon on Google Cloud VMware Engine. Running Horizon on Google Cloud VMware Engine will enable IT to easily add and extend desktop services to Google Cloud without investing time or capital in additional data center resources.
Another key feature coming is the removal of Single-pod broker option for new customers on Azure that subscribe to the Horizon Control Plane Services. The Single-pod broker will only view one pod at a time, limiting the ability to entitle users across pods and clouds. With the removal of this option, IT admins will have the benefit of using the Universal Broker service to entitle resources from multiple pods.
Additionally, there will be new features to help IT admins enhance the end-user experience including visibility into log-ins to help troubleshoot any issues as well as support for Dynamic Environment Manager smart policies. Now admins can apply policies to user by session creating a more personalized experience.
Image Management Service: Extending Support
The Image Management Service (IMS) simplifies the management, replication and distribution of Horizon and Horizon Cloud images across individual Pods.
Coming soon, IMS will provide Microsoft Windows multi-session farm support. IMS will do image replication and pool update improvements via markers for farms with Windows multi-client sessions, allowing customers using Windows 10 multi-session to have the same simplicity of image management available with VDI images.
Additionally, IMS will offer replication of App Packages for customers using VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS deployments. This feature will allow these customers to replicate their app packages and allow them to be moved to the different VMC on AWS pods, which will be especially useful for customers that are running multiple VMC on AWS instances. The ability to replicate the app package and apply it across pods will save IT admins countless hours and reduce errors.
Cloud Monitoring Service: Horizon Integration into Workspace ONE Intelligence
The Horizon Control Plane Cloud Monitoring Service offers IT admins insights into their virtual desktop and app deployments along with report and troubleshooting across Horizon Pods, sessions and users across clouds in a single view. However, for customers using Workspace ONE Intelligence to manage physical devices, they had to use a different console for Horizon.
Coming soon, VMware will be integrating Horizon into Workspace ONE Intelligence. Adding Horizon to Workspace ONE Intelligence will marry the ability to view and manage both physical and virtual desktops in one single intelligence platform. Admins will have insights across end users, whether on a physical or virtual machine, providing invaluable insights and troubleshooting capabilities.
To learn more about how Workspace ONE and Horizon are innovating to streamline operations, watch the Workspace ONE and Horizon – Better Together [EUS2680] on demand session.
Learn more
Stay tuned as VMware continues to enhance its Horizon Control Services since there will be more great features to help IT admins manage and monitor their virtual desktop and app deployments.
And if you’re at VMworld 2021, you can engage with the Horizon product management team and learn more about where they are taking the Horizon Control Plane services by attending VMware Horizon: Cloud Services Update and Sneak Peek at the Next Evolution [EUS2640].
Learn more about VMware Horizon announcements at VMworld
- Introducing VMware Workspace ONE Intelligence for VMware Horizon – Insights and Analytics for Your Horizon Environment
- It’s time to reveal the future of VMware Horizon
