Written in partnership with Henry Robinson and Angela Ge.
This week at VMworld Europe, VMware announced vSphere 6.5 and VSAN 6.5 with an eye on:
- Simplifying the customer experience;
- Providing built-in security; and
- Extending support for traditional and next-gen apps.
This great news extends to VMware Horizon customers, as we integrate, support and bundle VSAN and vSphere into our offerings. So, what features in this new release benefit VMware’s virtual desktop and application users? Well, the short answer is: a lot!
Let’s take a look at some of the key features and advancements our Horizon customers can enjoy with vSphere 6.5 and VMware Horizon 7.
VSAN 6.5 Drives Better Horizon Performance
VSAN 6.5 Includes Expanded Caching Sizes
Horizon desktops will benefit from VSAN 6.5 improvements, which now support 33% larger caching sizes (up to 800 GB per node) and improved write latency support.
vSphere 6.5 Supports Better Automation, Security, Availability & More!
Higher Availability & Better SLAs with vCenter HA
With a new HA facility built into the vCenter Server Appliance, Horizon customers can now enjoy higher availability across enterprise environments. The vCenter Server Appliance HA feature removes a single point of failure in managing Horizon desktops and applications. In the case of any vCenter failure, service is automatically restored within five minutes or less. It is also worth noting that most desktop users will never notice this anyway, as vCenter failover will not affect any currently logged in desktops.
Greater Automation
One of the key components for the VMware PowerCLI 6.5 is integration of the Horizon module. Now, desktop administrators can automate all aspects of Horizon management, including creating new desktop pools, updating a master image and entitling new users. Tasks, which in the past required manual steps from the Horizon Admin Console, can now be updated with simple Powershell scripts.
Because the Horizon module is part of the VMware PowerCLI infrastructure, administrators can also easily write scripts that integrate all aspects of the VMware SDDC infrastructure, including vSphere, vSAN, NSX and vRealize Automation, to mention a few.
Better Logging & Insight
LogInsight made its way into vSphere Desktop (the version of vSphere we include in all of our Horizon bundles). This capability ensures IT administrators get better insight into the data center and create better alerting to more quickly remediate issues. With this release, the vSphere team made much more data available with more detailed messages, so admins can create more prescriptive alerts in the process.
Integrated Offering with Cloud Foundation
The next generation in hyper-convergence, Cloud Foundation is a unified software defined data center (SDDC) platform that brings together vSphere, VSAN and NSX into a natively integrated stack. This integration delivers enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure across public and private clouds. Today, Horizon 6.2 can take advantage of this newly announced Cloud Foundation offering, and we are working hard to be able to support Horizon 7, as well.
AND… Also Worth Noting…
Agentless Anti-Virus Now Included with NSX
When NSX steps up to support vSphere 6.5, organizations can now take advantage of NSX for agentless anti-virus—effectively replacing vShield Endpoint. This is another added benefit for customers turning to NSX for micro-segmentation, ensuring they achieve even more value with their Horizon deployments.
vSphere 6.5 and VSAN 6.5 are two big releases, bringing Horizon customers a slew of new and improved capabilities. Be sure to download Horizon 7 and take a test drive today.
More exciting news from VMworld Europe:
- Introducing VMware Workspace ONE Essentials
- Single Sign-On (SSO) to Legacy Apps Using BIG-IP & Workspace ONE
- Enable Consumer Simple, Secure Access to Office 365 with New Workspace ONE Enhancements
- VMware + Microsoft: Delivering an Even Better Skype for Business Experience
- Can’t Decide between Cloud & On-Premises Virtual Desktops & Apps? Go Hybrid!
