With contributions from Justin Venezia and Jerrid Cunniff.
The recently released Horizon Cloud Service added several significant new features that enable customers to deploy desktops and applications in the cloud, on-premises, or in a combination of the two. This release focused on integrations with Workspace ONE and delivering the technologies that support VMware’s Just-in-Time Management Platform (JMP).
The features mentioned below cover the cloud-based implementation called Horizon Cloud with Hosted Infrastructure.
Instant Clones
Horizon Cloud with Hosted Infrastructure customers can now leverage Instant Clones for their user’s cloud-based desktops. Instant Clones allow for faster deployment and use less storage than traditional full clones. Instant Clones, when used with User Environment Manager and native applications supplied by App Volumes technology, make up the Just-in-Time Management Platform, which helps you deliver a stateless Windows desktop experience to your users.
For more detail on Instant Clones see Instant Clone View Desktops in Horizon 7.
Workspace ONE Integration
With this release, we are supporting an integration to VMware Workspace ONE. Workspace ONE is an Identity as a Service (IDaaS) offering that provides application provisioning, self-service catalog, and conditional access controls to your users. It allows your users to access SaaS, web, native mobile and virtualized applications through a single user interface. For more information on VMware Workspace ONE, please see the product page.
User Environment Manager
Customers can also leverage the standalone version of User Environment Manager as a part of their Horizon Cloud deployment to manage your users’ profile personalization and dynamic policy configuration across Horizon Cloud’s Windows desktop environment. User Environment Manager is installed as a separate Utility Virtual Server inside the Horizon Cloud Tenant and leverages a network file share to store user settings and system configurations.
Customers will only need to purchase of additional storage capacity in Horizon Cloud based on usage and demand. For more information on User Environment Manager, see the User Environment Manager. For guidance on how to leverage User Environment Manager in your Horizon Cloud environment consult with your VMware sales team or partner.
Horizon Agent 7.0.3
Many of the features in the latest version of the Horizon Client and Agent are now available in Horizon Cloud, including updated Windows 10 support, multi-monitor with Blast Extreme and RTAV enhancements. For a list of features that are supported with this release, see VMware KB2148647.
Notification Page
A new notification page is now available in the UI. This page is your one-stop place to manage all events and alerts from your Horizon Cloud instance.
Demo-Administrator Role
We have added the ability to have read-only administrator access to the Horizon Cloud UI. This is a useful feature for support, training and demonstration purposes as it gives a user full access to all screens in the UI without giving them the ability to make any changes to the environment.
App Volumes Integration (Beta)
Horizon Cloud now supports containerized application delivery using App Volumes technology. Using a separately downloadable app capture application, you can create containerized application bundles which are then imported and delivered to Horizon Cloud Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (“VDI”) desktops. Windows 7 and Windows 10 applications are supported by App Volumes. You can now separate the management of applications from the OS image, allowing for greater flexibility in how applications are delivered to users. This feature also saves on storage costs (per VM) since a single bundle of applications or an AppStack, can be shared among many users.
Add-On storage is required to use AppStacks. If you are a customer of Horizon Cloud and would like to use App Volumes, please consult with your VMware sales team or partner to be considered for the private beta.
For an overview of how App Volumes works, see App Volumes AppStacks vs. Writable Volumes by Dale Carter.
Horizon Cloud Monitoring (Beta)
Horizon Cloud Monitoring is a new feature built to provide customers a dashboard to monitor, troubleshoot and manage their Horizon Cloud environment. It leverages the same user-interface in the Horizon Cloud Administration Console. This feature is offered on an invitation-only basis and is used to capture and display guest VM performance and usage statistics.
Contact your VMware sales team or partner to see if you are eligible for use of this feature within Horizon Cloud.
New Capacity Service Model
With Horizon Cloud, we introduced capacity units to allow customers flexibility in the types of desktops that are deployed in their environment. With this enhancement, you can change your desktop build configuration based on user need instead of being locked into a “one size fits all” model. Horizon cloud offers different capacity measurements of Standard and Workstation class desktops. You can find details on the Capacity Service Model on the Horizon Cloud product page.
vGPU (Beta)
VMware has been working with NVIDIA to deliver vGPU-accelerated desktops through Horizon for some time, and with this release of Horizon Cloud, we are providing limited access to some customers for the new Horizon Cloud Graphical Workstations. This feature allows you to use high performance 3D applications from a cloud-based virtual desktop. Customers can purchase Graphical Workstation Capacity “units” (GWC) for the provisioning of desktop VMs with virtual graphics processor (vGPU). The GWC unit contains 4 vCPU, 16 GB vRAM,120GB Hard Disk, 2GB vGPU Memory, and 80 storage IOPS.
All Graphic Workstation desktop models operate in similar fashion to Standard desktop models as described in the Horizon Cloud Service Description.
These new features make it easier for you to deliver cloud-based virtual desktops and applications to your users. Find out more details by reviewing the Horizon Cloud Service information on our website, or reach out to your VMware or VMware Partner EUC technical specialist.
