Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Modified for Horizon 7 7.3.2 VMware Horizon 7 7.
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Contents 1 Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 5 2 Introduction to Published Desktops and Applications 6 Farms, RDS Hosts, and Published Desktops and Applications Advantages of RDS Desktop Pools Advantages of Application Pools 6 7 7 3 Setting Up Remote Desktop Services Hosts 9 Remote Desktop Services Hosts 10 Install Remote Desktop Services on Windows Server 2008 R2 11 Install Remote Desktop Services on Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2 Install Desktop Experience on Windows Se
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Adobe Flash Quality and Throttling 51 Configure Adobe Flash Throttling with Internet Explorer for RDS Desktop Pools 52 6 Creating Application Pools 53 Application Pools 53 Worksheet for Creating an Application Pool Manually Create an Application Pool 54 55 7 Managing Application Pools, Farms, and RDS Hosts 57 Managing Application Pools Managing Farms 57 58 Managing RDS Hosts 64 Manage Published Desktop and Application Sessions Config
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 1 Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7describes how to create, and deploy pools of desktops and applications that run on Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) hosts. It includes information about configuring policies, entitling users and groups, and configuring remote application features. Intended Audience This information is intended for anyone who wants to create and provision desktop and application pools.
Introduction to Published Desktops and Applications 2 With Horizon 7, you can create published desktops associated with a farm, which is a group of Windows Remote Desktop Services (RDS) hosts. You can also deliver a published application to many users by creating application pools. The published applications in application pools run on a farm of RDS hosts.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Published Applications Published applications are application pools that run on a farm of RDS hosts. Published applications let you deliver seamless applications to many users. Advantages of RDS Desktop Pools Horizon 7 offers the ability to create RDS desktop pools as its basis of centralized management. You can create an RDS desktop pool from a physical system such as an RDS host.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Depending on software license agreements, hosting applications in a data center can be more costeffective. Other factors, including accelerated deployment and improved manageability, can also reduce the cost of software in an enterprise. VMware, Inc.
Setting Up Remote Desktop Services Hosts 3 Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) hosts provide desktop sessions and applications that users can access from client devices. If you plan to create RDS desktop pools or application pools, you must first set up RDS hosts.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Remote Desktop Services Hosts An RDS host is a server computer that hosts applications and desktop sessions for remote access. An RDS host can be a virtual machine or a physical server. An RDS host has the Microsoft Remote Desktop Services role, the Microsoft Remote Desktop Session Host service, and Horizon Agent installed. Remote Desktop Services was previously known as Terminal Services.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 5 (Optional) Enable time zone redirection for RDS desktop and application sessions. See Enable Time Zone Redirection for RDS Desktop and Application Sessions. Note If smart card authentication is enabled, make sure that the Smart Card service is disabled on RDS hosts. Otherwise, authentication might fail. By default, this service is disabled.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 n Install the Microsoft hotfix rollup that is documented in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2775511. n Install the Microsoft update https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2973201. Procedure 1 Log in to the RDS host as an administrator. 2 Start Server Manager. 3 Select Roles in the navigation tree. 4 Click Add Roles to start the Add Role wizard. 5 Select the role Remote Desktop Services.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 7 On the Select Features page, accept the defaults. 8 On the Select Role Services page, select Remote Desktop Session Host. 9 Follow the prompts and finish the installation. What to do next If you plan to use HTML Access or scanner redirection, install the Desktop Experience feature. The steps for installing Desktop Experience differ on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2. Restrict users to a single desktop session.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 4 On the Select Installation Type page, select Role-based or feature-based installation. 5 On the Select Destination Server page, select a server. 6 On the Select Server Roles page, accept the default selection and click Next. 7 On the Select Features page, under User Interfaces and Infrastructure, select Desktop Experience. 8 Follow the prompts and finish the installation.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 n Restrict users to a single desktop session. See Restrict Users to a Single Session. n Familiarize yourself with the Horizon Agent custom setup options. See Horizon Agent Custom Setup Options for an RDS Host. n If the machine has the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package installed, verify that the version of the package is 2005 SP1 or later. If the package version is 2005 or earlier, you can either upgrade or uninstall the package.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Horizon Agent Custom Setup Options for an RDS Host When you install Horizon Agent on an RDS host, you can select custom setup options. In addition, Horizon Agent installs certain features automatically on all guest operating systems on which they are supported. These features are not optional. To change custom setup options after you install the latest Horizon Agent version, you must uninstall and reinstall Horizon Agent.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 3‑1. Horizon Agent Custom Setup Options for an RDS Host in an IPv4 Environment (Continued) Option Description Scanner Redirection Redirects scanning devices that are connected to the client system so that they can be used on the RDS desktop or application. You must install the Desktop Experience feature in the Windows Server operating system on the RDS hosts to make this option available in the Horizon Agent installer.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 3‑3. MSI Properties for Silently Installing Horizon Agent MSI Property Description Default Value INSTALLDIR The path and folder in which the Horizon Agent software is installed. %ProgramFiles %\VMware\VMware View\Agent For example: INSTALLDIR=""D:\abc\my folder"" The sets of two double quotes that enclose the path permit the MSI installer to ignore the space in the path. This MSI property is optional.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 3‑3. MSI Properties for Silently Installing Horizon Agent (Continued) MSI Property Description Default Value VDM_SERVER_USERNAME The user name of the administrator on the View Connection Server computer. This MSI property applies to unmanaged desktops only. None For example: VDM_SERVER_USERNAME=domain\username This MSI property is required for unmanaged desktops.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 3‑4.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 3‑5. Horizon Agent Silent Installation Features That Are Installed Automatically (Continued) Silent Installation Feature Description VmVideo Virtual video driver UnityTouch Unity Touch PSG This features sets a registry entry that tells Connection Server whether Horizon Agent is using IPv4 or IPv6. You install the Flash URL Redirection feature by using the VDM_FLASH_URL_REDIRECTION=1 property in a silent installation.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Enable Time Zone Redirection for RDS Desktop and Application Sessions If an RDS host is in one time zone and a user is in another time zone, by default, when the user connects to an RDS desktop, the desktop displays time that is in the time zone of the RDS host. You can enable the Time Zone Redirection group policy setting to make the RDS desktop display time in the local time zone. This policy setting applies to application sessions as well.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 The steps for opening the Group Policy Management Console differ in the Windows 2012, Windows 2008, and Windows 2003 Active Directory versions. See "Create GPOs for Horizon 7 Group Policies" in the Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7 document. Procedure 1 On the Active Directory server, open the Group Policy Management Console. 2 Expand your domain and Group Policy Objects.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 3‑6. Performance Options Disabled by Horizon 7 Performance Options Disabled by Horizon 7 Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing Show shadows under mouse pointer Show shadows under windows Use drop shadow for icon labels on the desktop Show windows contents while dragging The five performance options that are disabled by Horizon 7 correspond to four Horizon 7 settings in the registry.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 With vDGA, you allocate an entire GPU to a single machine for maximum performance. The RDS host must be in a manual farm. With AMD Multiuser GPU using vDGA, you can share an AMD GPU between multiple RDS hosts by making it appear as multiple PCI passthrough devices. The RDS host must be in a manual farm. With NVIDIA GRID vGPU, each graphics card can support multiple RDS hosts and the RDS hosts must be in a manual farm.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Configure RDS Per Device Client Access License Storage When a client device connects to a published desktop or application on an RDS host, it receives an RDS Per Device Client Access License (CAL), if the Per Device licensing mode is configured. You can store the CAL on client devices and the Connection Server host, or only on the Connection Server host, by configuring a global setting in Horizon Administrator.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 4 Click OK to save your changes. VMware, Inc.
Creating Farms 4 A farm is a group of RDS hosts that provides a common set of applications or RDS desktops to users.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 When you create an application pool or an RDS desktop pool, you must specify one and only one farm. The RDS hosts in a farm can host RDS desktops, applications, or both. A farm can support at most one RDS desktop pool, but it can support multiple application pools. A farm can support both types of pools simultaneously.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 n Activating Windows on Linked-Clone RDS Hosts To make sure that View Composer properly activates Windows Server operating systems on linkedclone RDS hosts, you must use Microsoft volume activation on the parent virtual machine. The volume-activation technology requires a volume license key. n Disable Windows Hibernation in the Parent Virtual Machine The Windows hibernation feature creates a hidden system file, Hiberfil.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 To update Horizon Agent in a large environment, you can use standard Windows update mechanisms such as Altiris, SMS, LanDesk, BMC, or other systems management software. You can also use the recompose operation to update Horizon Agent. Note Do not change the log on account for the VMware View Composer Guest Agent Server service in a parent virtual machine. By default, this is the Local System account.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 n On Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2 machines, disable the scheduled maintenance task that recovers disk space by removing unused features. For example: Schtasks.exe /change /disable /tn "\Microsoft\Windows\AppxDeploymentClient\Pre-staged app cleanup" If left enabled, this maintenance task can remove the Sysprep customization script after the linked clones are created, which would cause subsequent recompose operations to fail wi
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Disable Windows Hibernation in the Parent Virtual Machine The Windows hibernation feature creates a hidden system file, Hiberfil.sys and uses this file to store information that is needed for hybrid sleep. Disabling hibernation reduces the size of an instant clone's or a View Composer linked clone's virtual disk. Caution When you make hibernation unavailable, hybrid sleep does not work. Users can lose data if a power loss occurs.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑1. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating a Manual Farm (Continued) Setting Description Pre-launch session timeout (applications only) Determines the amount of time that an application configured for pre-launch is kept open. The default is 10 minutes.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑2. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating an Automated Linked-Clone Farm (Continued) Setting Description Access group Access group in which to place all the pools in this farm. Fill in Your Value Here For more information about access groups, see the role-based delegated administration chapter in the View Administration document. Default display protocol Select VMware Blast, PCoIP or RDP. RDP applies to desktop pools only.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑2. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating an Automated Linked-Clone Farm (Continued) Setting Description Naming pattern Specify a prefix or a name format. Horizon 7 will append or insert an automatically generated number starting with 1 to form the machine name. If you want the number at the end, simply specify a prefix. Otherwise, specify {n} anywhere in a character string and {n} will be replaced by the number.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑2. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating an Automated Linked-Clone Farm (Continued) Setting Description Cluster Select the ESXi host or cluster on which the desktop virtual machines run. Fill in Your Value Here With Virtual SAN datastores (a vSphere 5.5 Update 1 feature), you can select a cluster with up to 20 ESXi hosts. With Virtual Volumes datastores (a vSphere 6.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑2. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating an Automated Linked-Clone Farm (Continued) Setting Description Use native NFS snapshots (VAAI) (Available only if you do not use Virtual SAN) If your deployment includes NAS devices that support the vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), you can use native snapshot technology to clone virtual machines.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑2. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating an Automated Linked-Clone Farm (Continued) Setting Description Transparent Page Sharing Scope Select the level at which to allow transparent page sharing (TPS). The choices are Virtual Machine (the default), Farm, Pod, or Global.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Worksheet for Creating an Automated Instant-Clone Farm When you create an automated instant-clone farm, the Add Farm wizard prompts you to configure certain settings. You can print this worksheet and write down the values you want to specify when you run the Add Farm wizard. Table 4‑3.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑3. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating an Automated Instant-Clone Farm (Continued) Setting Description Allow HTML Access to desktops and applications on this farm Determines whether HTML Access to RDS desktops and applications is allowed. Check the Enabled box to allow HTML Access to RDS desktops and applications.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑3. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating an Automated Instant-Clone Farm (Continued) Setting Description Snapshot Select the snapshot of the parent virtual machine to use as the base image for the farm. Fill in Your Value Here Do not delete the snapshot and parent virtual machine from vCenter Server, unless no instant clones in the farm use the default image, and no more instant clones will be created from this default image.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 4‑3. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating an Automated Instant-Clone Farm (Continued) Setting Description Domain Select the Active Directory domain and user name. Fill in Your Value Here Connection Server requires certain user privileges to farm. The domain and user account are used by ClonePrep to customize the instant-clone machines. You specify this user when you configure Connection Server settings for vCenter Server.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Create a Manual Farm You create a manual farm as part of the process to give users access to applications or RDS desktops. Prerequisites n Set up the RDS hosts that belong to the farm. See Chapter 3 Setting Up Remote Desktop Services Hosts. n Verify that all the RDS hosts have the Available status. In View Administrator, select View Configuration > Registered Machines and check the status of each RDS host on the RDS Hosts tab.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 n Verify that you have a sufficient number of ports on the ESXi virtual switch that is used for the virtual machines that are used as remote desktops. The default value might not be sufficient if you create large desktop pools. The number of virtual switch ports on the ESXi host must equal or exceed the number of virtual machines multiplied by the number of virtual NICs per virtual machine. n Verify that you prepared a parent virtual machine.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 n Verify that you have a sufficient number of ports on the ESXi virtual switch that is used for the virtual machines that are used as remote desktops. The default value might not be sufficient if you create large desktop pools. n Verify that you prepared a parent virtual machine. Horizon Agent must be installed on the parent virtual machine. See Preparing a Parent Virtual Machine for an Automated Farm.
Creating RDS Desktop Pools 5 One of the tasks that you perform to give users remote access to session-based desktops is to create a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktop pool. An RDS desktop pool has properties that can satisfy some specific needs of a remote desktop deployment.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 n View provides load balancing of the RDS hosts in a farm by directing connection requests to the RDS host that has the least number of active sessions. n Because an RDS desktop pool provides session-based desktops, it does not support operations that are specific to a linked-clone desktop pool, such as refresh, recompose, and rebalance.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 What to do next Entitle users to access the pool. See Add Entitlements to a Desktop or Application Pool. Make sure that your end users have access to Horizon Client 3.0 or later software, which is required to support RDS desktop pools. Desktop Pool Settings for RDS Desktop Pools You can specify certain pool settings when you create an RDS desktop pool. Not all pool settings apply to all types of desktop pools.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 5‑1. Settings for an RDS Desktop Pool (Continued) Setting Description Default Value Adobe Flash quality Determines the quality of Adobe Flash content that is displayed on Web pages. Do not control n Do not control. Quality is determined by Web page settings. n Low. This setting results in the most bandwidth savings. If no quality level is specified, the system defaults to Low. n Medium.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 2 In the Configuration Parameters window, search for the cloneprep.debug.mode parameter. If the master VM does not have the cloneprep.debug.mode parameter, you must add cloneprep.debug.mode as the parameter name and add a value of ON or OFF. If the master VM has the cloneprep.debug.mode parameter, you can change the value of the parameter to ON or OFF. 3 Enable or disable the internal VM debug mode for internal VMs.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 5‑3. Adobe Flash Throttling Settings Throttling Setting Description Disabled No throttling is performed. The timer interval is not modified. Conservative Timer interval is 100 milliseconds. This setting results in the lowest number of dropped frames. Moderate Timer interval is 500 milliseconds. Aggressive Timer interval is 2500 milliseconds. This setting results in the highest number of dropped frames.
Creating Application Pools 6 One of the tasks that you perform to give users remote access to an application is to create an application pool. Users who are entitled to an application pool can access the application remotely from a variety of client devices. This section includes the following topics: n Application Pools n Worksheet for Creating an Application Pool Manually n Create an Application Pool Application Pools With application pools, you can deliver a single application to many users.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Worksheet for Creating an Application Pool Manually When you create an application pool and manually specify an application, the Add Application Pools wizard prompts you for information about the application. It is not a requirement that the application is already installed on any RDS host. You can print this worksheet and write down the properties of an application when you specify the application manually. Table 6‑1.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 6‑1. Worksheet: Application Properties for Creating an Application Pool Manually (Continued) Property Description Connection Server Restrictions You can restrict access to the application pool to certain Connection Servers by clicking Browse and selecting one or more Connection Servers.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 In Horizon Administrator, you can now view the application pool by clicking Catalog > Application Pools. What to do next Entitle users to access the pool. See Chapter 8 Entitling Users and Groups. Make sure that your end users have access to Horizon Client 3.0 or later software, which is required to support RDS applications.
Managing Application Pools, Farms, and RDS Hosts 7 In Horizon Administrator, you can perform management operations such as configuring or deleting desktop pools, farms, or RDS hosts.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 3 Make changes to the pool settings. 4 Click OK. Delete an Application Pool When you delete an application pool, users can no longer launch the application in the pool. You can delete an application pool even if users are currently accessing the application. After the users close the application, they can no longer access the application. Procedure 1 In Horizon Administrator, select Catalog > Application Pools.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Procedure 1 In Horizon Administrator, select Resources > Farms. 2 Select one or more farms and click Delete. 3 Click OK to confirm. Disable or Enable a Farm When you disable a farm, users can no longer launch RDS desktops or applications from the RDS desktop pools and the application pools that are associated with the farm. Users can continue to use RDS desktops and applications that are currently open.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Prerequisites n Verify that you have a snapshot of a parent virtual machine. You must specify a snapshot when you recompose. The snapshot can be on the current parent virtual machine or a different one. n Decide when to schedule the recompose operation. By default, View Composer starts the operation immediately. You can schedule only one recompose operation at a time for a farm. You can recompose multiple farms concurrently.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 10 (Optional) Specify whether to stop provisioning at first error. This option is selected by default. 11 Click Next. The Ready to Complete page is displayed. 12 (Optional) Click Show Details to display details of the recompose operation. 13 Click Finish. In vCenter Server, you can monitor the progress of the recompose operation on the linked-clone virtual machines.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 n Decide the minimum farm size. The minimum farm size is the number of RDS hosts that are kept available at all times to allow users to continue to use the farm. For example, if the farm size is ten and the minimum farm size is two, then maintenance will be performed on eight RDS hosts. As each RDS host becomes available again then the remaining hosts will go through maintenance.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 4 In the Schedule Recurring Maintenance wizard, choose a maintenance mode. u Option Action Recurring Schedules periodic maintenance of all the RDS host servers in a farm. n Select a date and time from which the maintenance is effective. n Select a maintenance period. You can select daily, monthly, or weekly maintenance periods. n Select a repeat interval in days for the maintenance operation to recur.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 13 Click Finish. Managing RDS Hosts You can manage RDS hosts that you set up manually and RDS hosts that are created automatically when you add an automated farm. When you manually set up an RDS host, it automatically registers with Horizon Connection Server. You cannot manually register an RDS host with Connection Server. See Remote Desktop Services Hosts.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 2 Double-click the pool ID of the farm. 3 Select the RDS Hosts tab. 4 Select one or more RDS hosts. 5 Click OK. Remove an RDS Host from a Farm You can remove an RDS host from a manual farm to reduce the scale of the farm, to perform maintenance on the RDS host, or for other reasons. As a best practice, disable the RDS host and ensure that users are logged off from active sessions before you remove a host from a farm.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Disable or Enable an RDS Host When you disable an RDS host, View no longer uses it to host new RDS desktops or applications. Users can continue to use RDS desktops and applications that are currently open. Procedure 1 In View Administrator, select Resources > Farms. 2 Double-click the pool ID of a farm. 3 Select the RDS Hosts tab. 4 Select an RDS host and click More Commands. 5 Click Enable or Disable. 6 Click OK.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Property Description Type Version of Windows Server that runs on the RDS host. RDS Farm Farm to which the RDS host belongs. Max Number of Connections Maximum number of connections that the RDS host can support. Enabled Whether the RDS host is enabled. Status State of the RDS host. See Status of RDS Hosts for a description of the possible states.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 7‑1. Status of an RDS Host (Continued) Status Description Provisioning (For linked-clone RDS hosts only) Provisioning of the virtual machine is in progress. Customizing (For linked-clone RDS hosts only) Customization of the virtual machine is in progress. Deleting (For linked-clone RDS hosts only) Deletion of the virtual machine is in progress.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 2 Select a session. To send a message to users, you can select multiple sessions. You can perform the other operations on only one session at a time. 3 4 Choose whether to disconnect, log off, or send a message, or reset a virtual machine. Option Description Disconnect Session Disconnects the user from the session. Logoff Session Logs the user off the session. Data that is not saved is lost.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Load Balancing Feature Constraints The RDS host load balancing feature has certain constraints. n Anti-infinity rules can prevent an application from being placed on an RDS host, regardless of the reported load preference. For more information, see Configure an Anti-Affinity Rule for an Application Pool. n Load balancing affects new application sessions only.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Sample Load Balancing Scripts for RDS Hosts When you install Horizon Agent on an RDS host, the installer places sample load balancing scripts in the Horizon Agent scripts directory (C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Agent\scripts). Table 7‑3. Sample Load Balancing Scripts Name Description cpuutilisation.vbs Reads the percentage of CPU that has been utilized from the registry and returns the following load values: memoryutilisation.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 The VMware Horizon View Script Host service restarts automatically each time the RDS host starts. What to do next Configure your load balancing script on each RDS host in the farm. See Configure a Load Balancing Script on an RDS Host. Configure a Load Balancing Script on an RDS Host You must configure the same load balancing script on every RDS host in the farm. Configuring a load balancing script involves setting a registry key on the RDS host.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 8 In the Value data text box, type the command line that invokes your load balancing script and click OK. Type the full path to your load balancing script. For example: cscript.exe "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View Agent\scripts\cpuutilisation.vbs" 9 Restart the Horizon Agent service on the RDS host to make your changes take effect. Your load balancing script begins to run on the RDS host.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Load Balancing Session Placement Examples These examples illustrate two load balancing session placement scenarios. Example 1: No Existing User Session This example illustrates how session placement might occur for a farm that contains six RDS hosts when a user session does not currently exist on any of the RDS hosts. 1 2 3 Horizon Agent reports the following load preferences for each RDS host in the farm.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 4 View randomizes the bucket order. Bucket Load Preference RDS Host 1 MED 4 HIGH 3 MED 1 LOW 6 LOW 2 2 5 View Connection Server attempts to place a new application session on RDS host 4 first, followed by RDS host 3, and so on. RDS Host Session Placement Order 4 3 1 6 2 Note Anti-infinity rules can prevent an application from being placed on an RDS host, regardless of the reported load preference.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 2 View sorts the RDS hosts in the spare list into two buckets according to load preference. View discards RDS host 6 because Horizon Agent reported a load preference of BLOCK. Bucket Load Preference RDS Host 1 HIGH 4 MED 1 LOW 2 LOW 5 2 3 View randomizes the bucket order.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Procedure 1 In Horizon Administrator, select Catalog > Application Pools. 2 Select the pool to modify and click Edit. 3 In the Anti-Affinity Patterns text box, type a comma-separated list of patterns to match against the process names of other applications running on RDS hosts. The pattern string can include the asterisk (*) and question mark (?) wildcard characters.
Entitling Users and Groups 8 You configure entitlements to control which remote desktops and applications your users can access. You can configure the restricted entitlements feature to control desktop access based on the View Connection Server instance that users connect to when they select remote desktops. You can also restrict access to a set of users outside the network from connecting to remote desktops and applications within the network.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Procedure 1 Select the desktop or application pool. Option Action Add an entitlement for a desktop pool In Horizon Administrator, select Catalog > Desktop Pools and click the name of the desktop pool. Add an entitlement for an application pool In Horizon Administrator, select Catalog > Application Pools and click the name of the application pool. 2 Select Add entitlement from the Entitlements drop-down menu.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 2 Click the Entitlements tab and review the desktop or application pools to which the user or group is entitled. Option Action List the desktop pools to which the user or group is entitled Click Desktop Pools. List the application pools to which the user or group is entitled Click Application Pools.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Create Start Menu Shortcuts for Desktop Pools You can create Windows Start menu shortcuts for entitled desktop pools in Horizon Administrator so that the desktop pools appear in the Start menu on the user's Windows client device. You can create Start menu shortcuts when you create a desktop pool. You can also create Start menu shortcuts when you edit the desktop pool.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Create Start Menu Shortcuts for Application Pools You can create Windows Start menu shortcuts for entitled applications in Horizon Administrator so that the shortcuts appear in the Start menu on the user's Windows client device. You can create Start menu shortcuts when you create an application pool. You can also create Start menu shortcuts when you edit the application pool. Prerequisites n Set up RDS hosts.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 What to do next Connection Server places these shortcuts in the Start menu on the user's Windows client device. Log in to Horizon Client for Windows to view the applications shortcuts in the Start menu. Implementing Client Restrictions for Desktop and Application Pools You can restrict access to entitled published desktop and application pools to specific client computers.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 When users log in to a tagged Connection Server instance, they can access only those desktop or application pools that have at least one matching tag or no tags. For information about using tags to restrict access to global entitlements in a Cloud Pod Architecture environment, see the Administering Cloud Pod Architecture in Horizon 7 document.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 External users cannot see the desktop pools tagged as Internal because they log in through the Connection Server instance that is tagged as External, and internal users cannot see the desktop pools tagged as External because they log in through the Connection Server instance that is tagged as Internal. Figure 8‑1 illustrates this configuration. Figure 8‑1.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Table 8‑1. Tag Matching Rules View Connection Server Desktop Pool Access Permitted? No tags No tags Yes No tags One or more tags No One or more tags No tags Yes One or more tags One or more tags Only when tags match The restricted entitlements feature only enforces tag matching. You must design your network topology to force certain clients to connect through a particular Connection Server instance.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 2 Click the Connection Servers tab, select the Connection Server instance, and click Edit. 3 Type one or more tags in the Tags text box. Separate multiple tags with a comma or semicolon. 4 Click OK to save your changes. What to do next Assign the tag to desktop pools. See Assign a Tag to a Desktop Pool. Assign the tag to application pools. See Assign a Tag to an Application Pool.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Assign a Tag to an Application Pool When you assign a tag to an application pool, only users who connect to a Connection Server instance that has a matching tag can access the applications in that pool. You can assign a tag when you add or edit an application pool. Prerequisites Assign tags to one or more Connection Server instances. Procedure 1 In Horizon Administrator, select Catalog > Application Pools. 2 Select the application pool.
Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7 Restrict Users Outside the Network You can allow access to the View Connection Server instance from outside the network to users and groups while restricting access for other users and groups. Prerequisites n An Access Point appliance, security server, or load balancer must be deployed outside the network as a gateway to the View Connection Server instance to which the user is entitled.
