Getting Started with the VMware Horizon Service

Horizon Service Overview

The VMware Horizon® Service leverages a multi-tenant, cloud-scale architecture to enable administrators to deploy virtual desktops and applications across public and private clouds. It includes a rich set of management services available in the Horizon Control Plane to efficiently deploy and manage workloads across all deployments. 

Figure 1: Services Available in the Horizon Control Plane

If you are new to the Horizon Service, this guide provides you with useful information resources that will help you get started.

Moving from Perpetual to Subscription Entitlements

If you are an existing VMware Horizon® customer and are moving from perpetual to subscription entitlements, you may need to update your corporate MyVMware account with new administrative permissions. When you receive an entitlement to the Horizon Universal License, all permanent license keys associated with Horizon are removed from your corporate profile and replaced with a single entitlement (SID – subscription ID) for the Horizon Universal License. 

All entitlements are automatically assigned to your organization’s procurement contact by default. If you previously set up other users to be able to administer licenses on the procurement contact’s behalf, you will need to re-add entitlements to your IT administrator’s account to be able to receive technical support for products with Horizon Universal License. 

An IT administrator can request permissions to an asset by following the instructions in the VMware Knowledge Base article How to request folder permissions in My VMware (2016605).

If you are missing an account, contact your organization's IT administrator or procurement contact for more details. Your IT administrator or procurement contact can add you to your organization's account by following the instructions in the VMware Knowledge Base article How to invite new users to an account in My VMware (2070555).

For more information on user permissions with MyVMware accounts, see the VMware Knowledge Base article Understanding user permissions in My VMware (2006977).

Welcome and Entitlement Emails

Your organization will receive several emails from VMware, containing information that you will need to gain access to the Horizon Service and set up Horizon.

First, you receive a Welcome to the VMware Horizon Service email, which provides instructions on how to access and log in to the Horizon Universal Console for the first time. The Horizon Universal Console is a cloud management console that gives you access to the management services of the Horizon Control Plane.

Figure 2: The First Email You Receive Is the Welcome to the VMware Horizon Service Email

Your primary customer contact email is sent to the email address that is entitled to the Horizon Service. You receive a second email, containing the list of entitlements on that address.

Figure 3: The Second Email Lists Product Entitlements for the Subscription ID Associated with the Universal License

The third email that you receive contains the product keys that you need to license foundational VMware products and services.

Action: Review the details of Horizon Cloud Deployments and Onboarding Pods — Horizon Pods on VMware SDDCs and Horizon Cloud Pods on Microsoft Azure.

First Login to the Horizon Universal Console

Once you have received the entitlement emails described above, you are now ready to log in to the Horizon Universal Console and use the management services included in the Horizon Control Plane. You can access the Horizon Universal Console at https://cloud.horizon.vmware.com and log in by using the credentials that are entitled to use the Horizon Service. 

For a quick preview of the Login process, check out the video Demo: First Login to Horizon Service.

Note: You must use the credentials supplied in the Welcome email for the first login to the Horizon Universal Console. The primary contact email address that is in your corporate VMware account is the account that has the primary entitlement to the Horizon Service. You may need to add additional administrators to the account with the assistance of that contact before you can use the Horizon Service.

You may need to add additional administrators to your Horizon Service account, for example, if someone other than the person buying the license for your organization is going to be administrating the Horizon Service on your company’s behalf. For more information, see Give Administrative Roles to Individuals in Your Organization for Logging In To and Performing Actions in Your Horizon Cloud Tenant Environment Using the Horizon Cloud Administration Console.

For a quick preview of adding an administrator to the account, review the video Demo: Add administrator to Horizon Service.

Onboarding Your First Pod to the Horizon Service

From there, you can add capacity to the Horizon Service. You will onboard your first Horizon pods by using the VMware Horizon® Cloud Connector™ (if required for your Horizon deployment). For instructions, see the appropriate topic under Onboarding Your Very First Cloud-Connected Pod to Your Horizon Cloud Tenant Environment. The process differs, as shown in the following screenshot, depending on whether you are using VMware Horizon or VMware Horizon® Cloud Service™ on Microsoft Azure, so make sure to follow the instructions accordingly.

Figure 4: Product Documentation Topics Specific to the Type of Horizon Pod Being Onboarded

Connecting Horizon 7 and Horizon 8 Environments to the Horizon Control Plane

The general procedure for connecting to the Horizon Control Plane is:

1. Download and Deploy the Horizon Cloud Connector into Your Pod's Environment.
2. Configure the Horizon Cloud Connector with details about your Horizon deployment and verify the prerequisites, which are listed in the topic VMware Horizon Pods with Horizon Cloud - Requirements Checklist.
3. Complete Pairing the Horizon Pod with Horizon Cloud Using the Horizon Cloud Connector Configuration Portal.

The Horizon Cloud Connector is a critical component of Horizon deployments. It is used by the Horizon Service to verify entitlements and also to orchestrate operations on behalf of the Horizon Service in your Horizon pod. More detail is available in Horizon Cloud Connector Details, below.

Connecting Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure Environments to the Horizon Control Plane

If you have Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure, you connect to the Horizon Control Plane as a part of your initial setup and configuration of Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. No additional steps are required to connect to the Horizon Control Plane.

Action: Follow the instructions in Onboarding Your Very First Cloud-Connected Pod to Your Horizon Cloud Tenant Environment for the appropriate deployment type.

Other Useful Resources

You will need several other resources to complete onboarding and adding your first Horizon pod to the Horizon Control Plane.

Horizon Cloud Connector Details

To get your Horizon (VMware vSphere®-based) pods to connect to the Horizon Control Plane, you must implement the Horizon Cloud Connector.

The Horizon Cloud Connector is a virtual machine that certifies your entitlement to the Horizon Service and enables you to leverage various cloud services delivered through the control plane for those Horizon pods. For more information, see High-Level Workflow When You are Onboarding an Existing Manually Deployed Horizon Pod as Your First Pod to Your Horizon Cloud Tenant Environment.

For an overview of the steps required to implement a Horizon Cloud Connector, see Horizon Cloud Connector in the “Horizon Architecture” chapter of the VMware Workspace ONE and VMware Horizon Reference Architecture.

The Horizon Cloud Connector engineering team is also writing a series of blog articles that explain what the Horizon Cloud Connector is and how it works. The first article in the Horizon Cloud Connector Know-How Series is a general overview of the Horizon Cloud Connector, and the second article, Onboarding Horizon Cloud Connector, explains how to deploy the Horizon Cloud Connector, including a few demo videos.

Horizon Cloud Service Product Documentation

The VMware Horizon Cloud Service Documentation landing page has a great list of the first things you will need to know to get started with the Horizon Service.

Digital Workspace Tech Zone Content for Horizon Service

Tech Zone has a number of other resources that will help you learn about Horizon, Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure, and the Horizon Service.

Horizon Service EULA

All of the critical details you want to know about the service and the Service Description can be found on the VMware EULA site. 

Changelog

The following updates were made to this guide.

Date	Description of Changes
2021-03‑01	Added the section Moving from Perpetual to Subscription Entitlements.
2021‑02‑03	Initial publication.

About the Author

Rick Terlep, Senior Technical Marketing Architect, End User Computing, VMware, wrote this document. Rick has been on the EUC Technical Marketing team since 2014, and has been at VMware since 2008. He is a regular speaker at VMworld on different topics. Prior to VMware, Rick had different roles at NetIQ, Appetizers And, Inc., and Arthur Andersen.

To comment on this paper, contact VMware End-User-Computing Technical Marketing at euc_tech_content_feedback@vmware.com.