September 23, 2019

VMware Horizon Console: An Overview

The VMware Horizon Console is based on the latest HTML5 technology, which allows for complete management of your Horizon deployments. The Horizon Console replaces the flash-based Flex console referred to as Horizon Administrator. Find out more by reading this blog post! VMware End-User Computing (EUC) solutions empower the digital workspace by simplifying app & access management, unifying endpoint management & transforming Windows delivery. To learn more visit Digital Workspace Tech Zone at https://techzone.vmware.com

VMware Horizon Console: An Overview

The VMware Horizon Console is based on the latest HTML5 technology, which allows for complete management of your Horizon deployments. The Horizon Console replaces the flash-based Flex console referred to as Horizon Administrator.

Using the Horizon Console, you can manage your desktop and application pools and farms, segment the type of access given to end-users based on an enhanced role-based access mechanism, and do cross-Pod management using the Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA) from any browser. You are provided with a rich feature set and an enhanced user experience, including:

  • Standard and customer role-based access
  • Desktop and application pools and farm creation
  • Restyled dashboard
  • Smart card authentication
  • RDSH load balancing
  • VM Hosted Apps
  • Image scale-out
  • Cloud pod architecture

This blog provides details on Horizon Console capabilities.

Currently, you can access the Horizon Console via a link in the Horizon Administrator. In a subsequent release, the Horizon Console will become the default Console. To begin, log in to the flash-based UI using the administrator credentials. This launches the (old) Admin Console.

On the top right navigation bar, click on the Horizon Console link. This opens the new HTML5-based console in a new tab (this is SSO enabled and therefore does not require the user to log in a second time). The default landing page is the Dashboard.

Dashboard – The dashboard provides a comprehensive view of current issues, resource utilization, as well as current sessions summary. Clicking on the desired section will provide a further drilldown into each category.

Search Sessions – You can search for and view desktop and application sessions across the pod federation. The search can be by user, pod, or brokering pod.

Users and Groups – Entitlements are configured to control which remote desktops and applications your users can access. You can also set up remote or unauthenticated access, and assign home sites. In a Cloud Pod Architecture, you create Global Entitlements to entitle users or groups to multiple desktops across multiple pods.

Desktops – You can create automated, manual, or RDS desktop pools, duplicate pools, add or remove entitlements, and activate or deactivate pools.

Applications – You can add, edit, duplicate, delete, or entitle application pools, either manually or from installed applications. You can also associate icons to applications.

Farms – A farm is a group of Windows Remote Desktop Services (RDS) hosts. You can create both automated or manual RDS farms to serve groups of users that vary in size or have different desktop or application requirements. The RDS hosts in a farm can host published desktops, applications, or both.

Persistent Disks – Persistent disks can be imported from a vCenter server with the ability to attach or detach them from linked-clone virtual machines.

Cloud Pod Architecture – Multiple pods can be joined together using the cloud pod architecture feature to provide a single large desktop and application brokering and management environment. A pod federation can span across multiple sites and datacenters and simplifies administration across the Horizon deployment. 

Global Entitlements – You can use global entitlements to entitle users and groups to desktops and applications in a Cloud Pod Architecture environment, regardless of where those desktops and applications reside in the pod federation.

Role-based access – Users and groups can be provided role-based access by utilizing either the pre-defined Administrator roles or creating custom roles based on privileges. Pre-defined Administrator roles, which cannot be modified, combine all of the individual privileges required to perform common administration tasks. By assigning users a combination of pre-defined and custom roles, they will be able to perform operations that are best suited within their organizations.

 

 

I hope this write-up gives you a preview of the capabilities of the new Horizon Console. For further information, refer to the Administration Guide. We would love to get your questions, comments, or feedback. Please post them to our community page. The Horizon 7.10 Overview video is on TechZone.

 

Filter Tags

Horizon Horizon Horizon Apps Horizon Cloud Service Blog Announcement Overview