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VMware Horizon 7 7.2

This document supports the version of each product listed and
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You can find the most up-to-date technical documentation on the VMware Web site at:
http://www.vmware.com/support/
The VMware Web site also provides the latest product updates.
If you have comments about this documentation, submit your feedback to:
docfeedback@vmware.com

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Contents

Horizon 7 Architecture Planning

1 Introduction to Horizon 7 7

Advantages of Using Horizon 7 7
Horizon 7 Features 10
How the Components Fit Together 11
Integrating and Customizing Horizon 7

2 Planning a Rich User Experience 21

Feature Support Matrix for Horizon Agent 21
Choosing a Display Protocol 22
Using Published Applications 26
Using Horizon Persona Management to Retain User Data and Settings 27
Using USB Devices with Remote Desktops and Applications 28
Using the Real-Time Audio-Video Feature for Webcams and Microphones 29
Using 3D Graphics Applications 29
Streaming Multimedia to a Remote Desktop 30
Printing from a Remote Desktop 30
Using Single Sign-On for Logging In 31
Monitors and Screen Resolution 31

3 Managing Desktop and Application Pools from a Central Location 33
Advantages of Desktop Pools 33
Advantages of Application Pools 34
Reducing and Managing Storage Requirements 35
Application Provisioning 42
Using Active Directory GPOs to Manage Users and Desktops 45

4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop
Deployments

Virtual Machine Requirements for Remote Desktops 48
Horizon 7 ESXi Node 52
Desktop Pools for Specific Types of Workers 53
Desktop Virtual Machine Configuration 57
RDS Host Virtual Machine Configuration 57
vCenter Server and View Composer Virtual Machine Configuration 58
Horizon Connection Server Maximums and Virtual Machine Configuration
vSphere Clusters 61
Storage and Bandwidth Requirements 63
Horizon 7 Building Blocks 71
Horizon 7 Pods 72

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Advantages of Using Multiple vCenter Servers in a Pod

5 Planning for Security Features 77

Understanding Client Connections 77
Choosing a User Authentication Method 80
Restricting Remote Desktop Access 82
Using Group Policy Settings to Secure Remote Desktops and Applications 84
Using Smart Policies 84
Implementing Best Practices to Secure Client Systems 84
Assigning Administrator Roles 85
Preparing to Use a Security Server 85
Understanding Horizon 7 Communications Protocols 90

6 Overview of Steps to Setting Up a Horizon 7 Environment 97
Index

VMware, Inc.

Horizon 7 Architecture Planning

Horizon 7 Architecture Planning provides an introduction to VMware Horizon™ 7, including a description of
its major features and deployment options and an overview of how the components are typically set up in a
production environment.
This guide answers the following questions:
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Does the product solve the problems you need it to solve?

Would it be feasible and cost-effective to implement this solution in your enterprise?

Not all features and capabilities of VMware Horizon 7 are available in all editions. For a comparison of
feature sets in each edition, see
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/horizon-view/VMware-Horizon-View-Pricing-LicensingFAQ.pdf.
To help you protect your installation, this guide also provides a discussion of security features.

Intended Audience
This information is intended for IT decision makers, architects, administrators, and others who need to
familiarize themselves with the components and capabilities of this product. With this information,
architects and planners can determine whether Horizon 7 satisfies the requirements of their enterprise for
efficiently and securely delivering Windows desktops and applications to their end users. The example
architecture helps planners understand the hardware requirements and setup effort required for a largescale deployment.

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Introduction to Horizon 7

With Horizon 7, IT departments can run remote desktops and applications in the datacenter and deliver
these desktops and applications to employees as a managed service. End users gain a familiar, personalized
environment that they can access from any number of devices anywhere throughout the enterprise or from
home. Administrators gain centralized control, efficiency, and security by having desktop data in the
datacenter.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n

“Advantages of Using Horizon 7,” on page 7

“Horizon 7 Features,” on page 10

“How the Components Fit Together,” on page 11

“Integrating and Customizing Horizon 7,” on page 15

Advantages of Using Horizon 7
When you manage enterprise desktops with Horizon 7, the benefits include increased reliability, security,
hardware independence, and convenience.

Reliability and Security
®

Desktops and applications can be centralized by integrating with VMware vSphere and virtualizing server,
storage, and networking resources. Placing desktop operating systems and applications on a server in the
data center provides the following advantages:
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Access to data can easily be restricted. Sensitive data can be prevented from being copied onto a remote
employee's home computer.

RADIUS support provides flexibility when choosing among two-factor authentication vendors.
Supported vendors include RSA SecureID, VASCO DIGIPASS, SMS Passcode, and SafeNet, among
others.

Integration with VMware Identity Manager means that end users have on-demand access to remote
desktops through the same Web-based application catalog they use to access SaaS, Web, and Windows
applications. Inside a remote desktop, users can also use this custom app store to access applications.

The ability to provision remote desktops with pre-created Active Directory accounts addresses the
requirements of locked-down Active Directory environments that have read-only access policies.

Data backups can be scheduled without considering when end users' systems might be turned off.

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Remote desktops and applications that are hosted in a data center experience little or no downtime.
Virtual machines can reside on high-availability clusters of VMware servers.

Virtual desktops can also connect to back-end physical systems and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services
(RDS) hosts.

Convenience
The unified management console is built for scalability so that even the largest Horizon 7 deployments can
be efficiently managed from a single management interface. Wizards and dashboards enhance the workflow
and facilitate drilling down to see details or change settings. Figure 1-1 provides an example of the browserbased user interface for Horizon Administrator.
Figure 1‑1. Administrative Console Showing the Dashboard View

Other features that increase convenience are the VMware remote display protocols, PCoIP (PC over IP) and
Blast Extreme. These display protocols deliver an end-user experience equal to the current experience of
using a physical PC:
n

On LANs, the display is faster and smoother than traditional remote displays.

On WANs, the display protocols can compensate for an increase in latency or a reduction in bandwidth,
ensuring that end users can remain productive regardless of network conditions.

Manageability
Provisioning desktops and applications for end users is a quick process. No one is required to install
applications one by one on each end user's physical PC. End users connect to a remote application or a
remote desktop complete with applications. End users can access their same remote desktop or application
from various devices at various locations.
Using VMware vSphere to host virtual desktops and RDS host servers provides the following benefits:
n

Administration tasks and management chores are reduced. Administrators can patch and upgrade
applications and operating systems without touching a user's physical PC.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Horizon 7

Integration with VMware Identity Manager means that IT managers can use the Web-based
VMware Identity Manager administration interface to monitor user and group entitlements to remote
desktops.

Integration with VMware App Volumes, a real-time application delivery system, enables enterprises to
deliver and manage applications at scale. Use App Volumes to attach applications to users, groups, or
target computers, even when users are logged into their desktop. Applications can also be provisioned,
delivered, updated and retired in real time.

With Horizon Persona Management, physical and virtual desktops can be centrally managed, including
user profiles, application entitlement, policies, performance, and other settings. Deploy Persona
Management to physical desktop users prior to converting to virtual desktops.

With VMware User Environment Manager, end users get a personalized Windows desktop that is
adapted to the user's situation, meaning that access to the required IT resources is based on aspects
such as role, device, and location.

Storage management is simplified. Using VMware vSphere, you can virtualize volumes and file systems
to avoid managing separate storage devices.

With vSphere 6.0 or a later release, you can use Virtual Volumes (VVols). This feature maps virtual disks
and their derivatives, clones, snapshots, and replicas, directly to objects, called virtual volumes, on a
storage system. This mapping allows vSphere to offload intensive storage operations such as
snapshotting, cloning, and replication to the storage system. For example, a cloning operation that
previously took an hour might now take just a few minutes using Virtual Volumes.

With vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or a later release, you can use Virtual SAN, which virtualizes the local
physical solid-state disks and hard disk drives available on ESXi™ hosts into a single datastore shared
by all hosts in a cluster. You specify only one datastore when creating a desktop pool, and the various
components, such as virtual machine files, replicas, user data, and operating system files, are placed on
either SSD disks or hard drive disks, as appropriate.
You manage virtual machine storage requirements, such as capacity, performance, and availability, in
the form of default storage policy profiles, which get created automatically when you create a desktop
pool.

With the Horizon 7 storage accelerator, the IOPS storage load is dramatically reduced, supporting enduser logins at larger scales without requiring any special storage array technology.

If remote desktops use the space-efficient disk format available with vSphere 5.1 and later, stale or
deleted data within a guest operating system is automatically reclaimed with a wipe and shrink
process.

Hardware Independence
Remote desktops and applications are hardware-independent. For example, because a remote desktop runs
on a server in the data center and is only accessed from a client device, a remote desktop can use an
operating system that might not be compatible with the hardware of the client device.
Remote desktops run on PCs, Macs, thin clients, and PCs that have been repurposed as thin clients, tablets,
and phones. The remote applications run on a subset of these devices. New device support is added
quarterly.
If you use the HTML Access feature, end users can open a remote desktop or application inside a browser,
without having to install any client application on the client system or device.

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Horizon 7 Features
Features included in Horizon 7 support usability, security, centralized control, and scalability.
The following features provide a familiar experience for the end user:
n

On certain client devices, print from a virtual desktop to any local or networked printer that is defined
on the client device. This virtual printer feature solves compatibility issues and does not require you to
install additional print drivers in a virtual machine.

On most client devices, use the location-based printing feature to map to printers that are physically
near the client system. Location-based printing does require that you install print drivers in the virtual
machine.

Local printer redirection is designed for the following use cases:
n

Printers directly connected to USB or serial ports on the client

Specialized printers such as bar code printers and label printers connected to the client

Network printers on a remote network that are not addressable from the virtual session.

Use multiple monitors. With the PCoIP and Blast Extreme display protocols, multiple-monitor support
means you can adjust the display resolution and rotation separately for each monitor.

Access USB devices and other peripherals that are connected to the local device that displays your
virtual desktop.
You can specify which types of USB devices end users are allowed to connect to. For composite devices
that contain multiple types of devices, such as a video input device and a storage device, you can split
the device so that one device (for example, the video input device) is allowed but the other device (for
example, the storage device) is not.

Use Horizon Persona Management to retain user settings and data between sessions even after the
desktop has been refreshed or recomposed. Persona Management has the ability to replicate user
profiles to a remote profile store (CIFS share) at configurable intervals.
You can also use a standalone version of Persona Management on physical computers and virtual
machines that are not managed by Horizon 7.

Horizon 7 offers the following security features, among others:
n

Use two-factor authentication, such as RSA SecurID or RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User
Service), or smart cards to log in.

Use pre-created Active Directory accounts when provisioning remote desktops and applications in
environments that have read-only access policies for Active Directory.

Use SSL/TLS tunneling to ensure that all connections are completely encrypted.

Use VMware High Availability to ensure automatic failover.

Scalability features depend on the VMware virtualization platform to manage both desktops and servers:

Integrate with VMware vSphere to achieve cost-effective densities, high levels of availability, and
advanced resource allocation control for your remote desktops and applications.

Use the Horizon 7 storage accelerator feature to support end-user logins at larger scales with the same
storage resources. This storage accelerator uses features in the vSphere 5 platform to create a host
memory cache of common block reads.

Configure Horizon Connection Server to broker connections between end users and the remote
desktops and applications that they are authorized to access.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Horizon 7

Use View Composer to quickly create desktop images that share virtual disks with a master image.
Using linked clones in this way conserves disk space and simplifies the management of patches and
updates to the operating system.

Use the Instant Clone feature, introduced in Horizon 7, to quickly create desktop images that share
virtual disks and memory with a parent image. Instant Clones not only have the space efficiency of
View Composer linked clones, they also eliminate the need to refresh, recompose, rebalance, thus
further simplifying management of patches and updates to the operating system. Instant clones
eliminate the desktop maintenance window altogether.

The following features provide centralized administration and management:
n

Use Microsoft Active Directory to manage access to remote desktops and applications and to manage
policies.

Use Persona Management to simplify and streamline migration from physical to virtual desktops.

Use the Web-based administrative console to manage remote desktops and applications from any
location.

Use Horizon Administrator to distribute and manage applications packaged with VMware ThinApp™.

Use a template, or master image, to quickly create and provision pools of desktops.

Send updates and patches to virtual desktops without affecting user settings, data, or preferences.

Integrate with VMware Identity Manager so that end users can access remote desktops through the user
portal on the Web, as well as use VMware Identity Manager from a browser inside a remote desktop.

Integrate with Mirage™ and Horizon FLEX™ to manage locally installed virtual machine desktops and
to deploy and update applications on dedicated full-clone remote desktops without overwriting userinstalled applications.

How the Components Fit Together
End users start Horizon Client to log in to Horizon Connection Server. This server, which integrates with
Windows Active Directory, provides access to remote desktops hosted on a VMware vSphere server, a
physical PC, or a Microsoft RDS host. Horizon Client also provides access to remote applications on a
Microsoft RDS host.
Note Horizon 7 supports Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) domain functional levels. For more
information about supported AD DS domain functional levels, see the VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2150351.
Figure 1-2 shows the relationship between the major components of a Horizon 7 deployment.

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Figure 1‑2. High-Level Example of a Horizon 7 Environment
tablet

Mac client

Windows client

View
Administrator
(browser)

Microsoft
Active Directory

Thin Client

network
ThinApp
View
Connection
Server

non-vCenter VMs

VM
VMware vCenter Server
with View Composer

physical PCs

RDS hosts
View Agent

ESXi hosts running
Virtual Desktop virtual machines
Virtual desktops
Desktop OS
app

app

ESXi host
View Agent
Virtual machine

Client Devices
A major advantage of using Horizon 7 is that remote desktops and applications follow the end user
regardless of device or location. Users can access their personalized virtual desktop or remote application
from a company laptop, their home PC, a thin client device, a Mac, or a tablet or phone.
End users open Horizon Client to display their remote desktops and applications. Thin client devices use
Horizon 7 thin client software and can be configured so that the only application that users can launch
directly on the device is Horizon 7 Thin Client. Repurposing a legacy PC into a thin client desktop can
extend the life of the hardware by three to five years. For example, by using Horizon 7 on a thin desktop,
you can use a newer operating system such as Windows 8.x on older desktop hardware.
If you use the HTML Access feature, end users can open a remote desktop inside a browser, without having
to install any client application on the client system or device.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Horizon 7

Horizon Connection Server
This software service acts as a broker for client connections. Horizon Connection Server authenticates users
through Windows Active Directory and directs the request to the appropriate virtual machine, physical PC,
or Microsoft RDS host.
Connection Server provides the following management capabilities:
n

Authenticating users

Entitling users to specific desktops and pools

Assigning applications packaged with VMware ThinApp to specific desktops and pools

Managing remote desktop and application sessions

Establishing secure connections between users and remote desktops and applications

Enabling single sign-on

Setting and applying policies

Inside the corporate firewall, you install and configure a group of two or more Connection Server instances.
Their configuration data is stored in an embedded LDAP directory and is replicated among members of the
group.
Outside the corporate firewall, in the DMZ, you can install and configure Connection Server as a security
server, or you can install a Unified Access Gateway appliance. Security servers and Unified Access Gateway
appliances in the DMZ communicate with Connection Servers inside the corporate firewall. Security servers
and Unified Access Gateway appliances ensure that the only remote desktop and application traffic that can
enter the corporate data center is traffic on behalf of a strongly authenticated user. Users can access only the
resources that they are authorized to access.
Security servers offer a subset of functionality and are not required to be in an Active Directory domain. You
install Connection Server in a Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 R2 server, preferably on a
VMware virtual machine. For more information about Unified Access Gateway appliances, see Deploying
and Configuring Unified Access Gateway.
Important It is possible to create a Horizon 7 setup that does not use Connection Server. If you install the
Horizon 7 Agent Direct Connect Plugin in a remote virtual machine desktop, the client can connect directly
to the virtual machine. All the remote desktop features, including PCoIP, HTML Access, RDP, USB
redirection, and session management work in the same way, as if the user had connected through
Connection Server. For more information, see View Agent Direct-Connection Plugin Administration.

Horizon Client
The client software for accessing remote desktops and applications can run on a tablet, a phone, a Windows,
Linux, or Mac PC or laptop, a thin client, and more.
After logging in, users select from a list of remote desktops and applications that they are authorized to use.
Authorization can require Active Directory credentials, a UPN, a smart card PIN, or an RSA SecurID or
other two-factor authentication token.
An administrator can configure Horizon Client to allow end users to select a display protocol. Protocols
include PCoIP, Blast Extreme, and Microsoft RDP for remote desktops. The speed and display quality of
PCoIP and Blast Extreme rival that of a physical PC.
Features differ according to which Horizon Client you use. This guide focuses on Horizon Client for
Windows. The following types of clients are not described in detail in this guide:
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Details about Horizon Client for tablets, Linux clients, and Mac clients. See the Horizon Client
documentation at https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

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Details about the HTML Access Web client, which allows you to open a remote desktop inside a
browser. No Horizon Client application is installed on the client system or device. See the
Horizon Client documentation at
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

Various third-party thin clients and zero clients, available only through certified partners.

View Open Client, which supports the VMware partner certification program. View Open Client is not
an official client application and is not supported as such.

VMware Horizon User Web Portal
From a Web browser on a client device, end users can connect to remote desktops and applications through
the browser, automatically start Horizon Client if it is installed, or download the Horizon Client installer.
When you open a browser and enter the URL of a View Connection Server instance, the Web page that
appears contains links to the VMware Downloads site for downloading Horizon Client. The links on the
Web page are configurable, however. For example, you can configure the links to point to an internal Web
server, or you can limit which client versions are available on your own View Connection Server.
If you use the HTML Access feature, the Web page also displays a link for accessing remote desktops and
applications inside a supported browser. With this feature, no Horizon Client application is installed on the
client system or device. For more information, see the Horizon Client documentation at
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

Horizon Agent
You install the Horizon Agent service on all virtual machines, physical systems, and Microsoft RDS hosts
that you use as sources for remote desktops and applications. On virtual machines, this agent communicates
with Horizon Client to provide features such as connection monitoring, virtual printing, Horizon Persona
Management, and access to locally connected USB devices.
If the desktop source is a virtual machine, you first install the Horizon Agent service on that virtual machine
and then use the virtual machine as a template or as a parent of linked clones or instant clones. When you
create a pool from this virtual machine, the agent is automatically installed on every remote desktop.
You can install the agent with an option for single sign-on. With single sign-on, users are prompted to log in
only when they connect to Horizon Connection Server and are not prompted a second time to connect to a
remote desktop or application.

Horizon Administrator
This Web-based application allows administrators to configure Horizon Connection Server, deploy and
manage remote desktops and applications, control user authentication, and troubleshoot end user issues.
When you install a Connection Server instance, the Horizon Administrator application is also installed. This
application allows administrators to manage Connection Server instances from anywhere without having to
install an application on their local computer.

View Composer
You can install this software service on a vCenter Server instance that manages virtual machines or on a
separate server. View Composer can then create a pool of linked clones from a specified parent virtual
machine. This strategy reduces storage costs by up to 90 percent.
Each linked clone acts like an independent desktop, with a unique host name and IP address, yet the linked
clone requires significantly less storage because it shares a base image with the parent. Because linked-clone
desktop pools share a base image, you can quickly deploy updates and patches by updating only the parent
virtual machine. End users' settings, data, and applications are not affected.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Horizon 7

You can also use View Composer to create automated farms of linked-clone Microsoft RDS hosts, which
provide published applications to end users.
Although you can install View Composer on its own server host, a View Composer service can operate with
only one vCenter Server instance. Similarly, a vCenter Server instance can be associated with only one View
Composer service.
Important View Composer is an optional component. If you plan to provision instant clones, you do not
need to install View Composer.

vCenter Server
This service acts as a central administrator for VMware ESXi servers that are connected on a network.
vCenter Server provides the central point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtual machines in
the datacenter.
In addition to using these virtual machines as sources for virtual machine desktop pools, you can use virtual
machines to host the server components of Horizon 7, including View Connection Server instances, Active
Directory servers, Microsoft RDS hosts, and vCenter Server instances.
You can install View Composer on the same server as vCenter Server or on a different server. vCenter Server
then manages the assignment of the virtual machines to physical servers and storage and manages the
assignment of CPU and memory resources to virtual machines.
You can install vCenter Server either as a VMware virtual appliance or install vCenter Server in a Windows
Server 2008 R2 server or a Windows Server 2012 R2 server, preferably on a VMware virtual machine.

Integrating and Customizing Horizon 7
To enhance the effectiveness of Horizon 7 in your organization, you can use several interfaces to integrate
Horizon 7 with external applications or to create administration scripts that you can run from the command
line or in batch mode.

Integrating with Other Components
VMware Identity
Manager

You can integrate VMware Identity Manager with Horizon 7 to provide the
following benefits to IT managers and end users:
n

End users have on-demand access to remote desktops and applications
through the same user portal on the Web that they use to access SaaS,
Web, and Windows applications, with the same single sign-on
convenience.
With the True SSO feature, users who authenticate using smart cards or
two-factor authentication can access their remote desktops and
applications without supplying Active Directory credentials.

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End users can access VMware Identity Manager on the Web from inside
a remote desktop for applications they need.

If you also use HTML Access, end users can open a remote desktop
inside a browser, without having to install any client application on the
client system or device.

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VMware Mirage and
Horizon FLEX

IT managers can use the browser-based administration console of
VMware Identity Manager to monitor user and group entitlements to
remote desktops.

You can use Mirage and Horizon FLEX to deploy and update applications on
dedicated full-clone remote desktops without overwriting user-installed
applications or data.
Mirage provides a better offline virtual desktop solution than the Local Mode
feature that was previously included with Horizon 7. Mirage includes the
following security and management features for offline desktops:

Encrypts the locally installed virtual machine and prevents a user from
modifying virtual machine settings that affect the integrity of the secure
container.

Provides policies, including expiration, available in VMware Fusion™
®
Professional and VMware Player Plus™, that are comparable to the
polices provided with the previous Local Mode feature. Fusion Pro and
Player Plus are included with Mirage.

Eliminates the need for users to check in or check out their desktops to
receive updates.

Enables administrators to utilize the Mirage layering capability, backup
features, and file portal.

VMware App Volumes

VMware App Volumes is an integrated and unified application delivery and
user management system for Horizon 7 and other virtual environments.
Applications and data managed by App Volumes are kept in specialized
VMDKs or VHDs called AppStacks, which are attached to each Windows
user session at login or reboot. This strategy ensures that the most current
applications and data are delivered to the user. App Volumes also provides a
different container for persistent user-installed applications and settings
called a writable volume, which is also loaded at login or reboot time. User
profile and policy settings can also be managed using the App Volumes
platform.

VMware User
Environment Manager

You can use the Smart Policies feature to create policies that control the
behavior of the USB redirection, virtual printing, clipboard redirection, client
drive redirection, and PCoIP display protocol features on specific remote
desktops. User Environment Manager allows IT to control which settings
users are allowed to personalize, and also maps environmental settings such
as networks and location-specific printers. With Smart Policies, you can
create policies that take effect only if certain conditions are met. For example,
you can configure a policy that disables the client drive redirection feature if
a user connects to a remote desktop from outside your corporate network.

VMware
Unified Access Gateway

Unified Access Gateway functions as a secure gateway for users who want to
access remote desktops and applications from outside the corporate firewall.
Unified Access Gateway is an appliance that is installed in a demilitarized
zone (DMZ). Use Unified Access Gateway to ensure that the only traffic
entering the corporate data center is traffic on behalf of a strongly
authenticated remote user. You can use Unified Access Gateway appliances
instead of Horizon 7 security servers. For more information, see the
Unified Access Gateway documentation.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Horizon 7

Integrating with Popular Video Conferencing Software
Flash URL Redirection

Streaming Flash content directly from Adobe Media Server to client
endpoints lowers the load on the datacenter ESXi host, removes the extra
routing through the datacenter, and reduces the bandwidth required to
simultaneously stream live video events to multiple client endpoints.
The Flash URL redirection feature uses a JavaScript that is embedded inside
a Web page by the Web page administrator. Whenever a virtual desktop user
clicks on the designated URL link from within a Web page, the JavaScript
intercepts and redirects the ShockWave File (SWF) from the virtual desktop
session to the client endpoint. The endpoint then opens a local VMware Flash
Projector outside of the virtual desktop session and plays the media stream
locally.
Note With Flash URL Redirection, the multicast or unicast stream is
redirected to client devices that might be outside your organization's firewall.
Your clients must have access to the Adobe Web server that hosts the
ShockWave Flash (SWF) file that initiates the multicast or unicast streaming.
If needed, configure your firewall to open the appropriate ports to allow
client devices to access this server.
This feature is available only on some types of clients. To find out whether
this feature is supported on a particular type of client, see the feature support
matrix included in the "Using VMware Horizon Client" document for the
specific type of desktop or mobile client device. Go to
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

Microsoft Lync 2013

You can use a Microsoft Lync 2013 client on remote desktops to participate in
Unified Communications (UC) VoIP (voice over IP) and video chat calls with
Lync certified USB audio and video devices. A dedicated IP phone is no
longer required.
This architecture requires the installation of a Microsoft Lync 2013 client on
the remote desktop and a Microsoft Lync VDI plug-in on the Windows 7 or 8
client endpoint. Customers can use the Microsoft Lync 2013 client for
presence, instant messaging, Web conferencing, and Microsoft Office
functionality.
Whenever a Lync VoIP or video chat call occurs, the Lync VDI plug-in
offloads all the media processing from the datacenter server to the client
endpoint, and encodes all media into Lync-optimized audio and video
codecs. This optimized architecture is highly scalable, results in lower
network bandwidth used, and provides point-to-point media delivery with
support for high-quality real-time VoIP and video. For more information, see
the white paper about VMware Horizon 6 and Microsoft Lync 2013, at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmware-horizon-viewmicrosoft-lync-install-configure.pdf.
Note Recording audio is not yet supported. This integration is supported
only with the PCoIP or Blast Extreme display protocol.

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Integrating Horizon 7 with Business Intelligence Software
You can configure Horizon Connection Server to record events to a Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle database.
n

End-user actions such as logging in and starting a desktop session.

Administrator actions such as adding entitlements and creating desktop pools.

Alerts that report system failures and errors.

Statistical sampling such as recording the maximum number of users over a 24-hour period.

You can use business intelligence reporting engines such as Crystal Reports, IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy 9,
and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System to access and analyze the event database.
For more information, see the View Integration document.
You can alternatively generate Horizon 7 events in Syslog format so that the event data can be accessible to
analytics software. If you enable file-based logging of events, events are accumulated in a local log file. If
you specify a file share, the log files are moved to that share. For more information, see the View Installation
document.

Using Horizon PowerCLI to Create Administration Scripts
Windows PowerShell is a command-line and scripting environment that is designed for Microsoft Windows.
PowerShell uses the .NET object model and provides administrators with management and automation
capabilities. As with any other console environment, you work with PowerShell by running commands,
which are called cmdlets in PowerShell.
The Horizon PowerCLI provides an easy-to-use PowerShell interface to Horizon 7. You can use the
Horizon PowerCLI cmdlets to perform various administration tasks on Horizon 7 components.
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Create and update desktop pools.

Configure multiple network labels to greatly expand the number of IP addresses assigned to virtual
machines in a pool.

Add datacenter resources to a full virtual machine or linked-clone pool.

Perform rebalance, refresh, or recompose operations on linked-clone desktops.

Sample the usage of specific desktops or desktop pools over time.

Query the event database.

Query the state of services.

You can use the cmdlets in conjunction with the vSphere PowerCLI cmdlets, which provide an
administrative interface to the VMware vSphere product.
For more information, see the View Integration document.

Modifying LDAP Configuration Data in Horizon 7
When you use Horizon Administrator to modify the configuration of Horizon 7, the appropriate LDAP data
in the repository is updated. Horizon Connection Server stores its configuration information in an LDAP
compatible repository. For example, if you add a desktop pool, Connection Server stores information about
users, user groups, and entitlements in LDAP.
You can use VMware and Microsoft command-line tools to export and import LDAP configuration data in
LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) files from and into Horizon 7. These commands are for advanced
administrators who want to use scripts to update configuration data without using Horizon Administrator
or Horizon PowerCLI.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Horizon 7

You can use LDIF files to perform a number of tasks.
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Transfer configuration data between Connection Server instances.

Define a large number of Horizon 7 objects, such as desktop pools, and add these to your Connection
Server instances without using Horizon Administrator or Horizon PowerCLI.

Back up a configuration so that you can restore the state of a Connection Server instance.

For more information, see the View Integration document.

Using SCOM to Monitor Horizon 7 Components
You can use Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor the state and performance of
Horizon 7 components, including Connection Server instances and security servers and the services running
on these hosts.
For more information, see the View Integration document.

Using the vdmadmin Command
You can use the vdmadmin command line interface to perform a variety of administration tasks on a
Connection Server instance. You can use vdmadmin to perform administration tasks that are not possible from
within the Horizon Administrator user interface or that need to run automatically from scripts.
For more information, see the View Administration document.

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Horizon 7provides the familiar, personalized desktop environment that end users expect. For example, on
some client systems, end users can access USB and other devices connected to their local computer, send
documents to any printer that their local computer can detect, authenticate with smart cards, and use
multiple display monitors.
Horizon 7 includes many features that you might want to make available to your end users. Before you
decide which features to use, you must understand the limitations and restrictions of each feature.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Feature Support Matrix for Horizon Agent,” on page 21

“Choosing a Display Protocol,” on page 22

“Using Published Applications,” on page 26

“Using Horizon Persona Management to Retain User Data and Settings,” on page 27

“Using USB Devices with Remote Desktops and Applications,” on page 28

“Using the Real-Time Audio-Video Feature for Webcams and Microphones,” on page 29

“Using 3D Graphics Applications,” on page 29

“Streaming Multimedia to a Remote Desktop,” on page 30

“Printing from a Remote Desktop,” on page 30

“Using Single Sign-On for Logging In,” on page 31

“Monitors and Screen Resolution,” on page 31

Feature Support Matrix for Horizon Agent
When planning which display protocol and features to make available to your end users, use the following
information to determine which agent (remote desktop and application) operating systems support the
feature.
The types and editions of the supported guest operating system depend on the Windows version. For
updates to the list of supported Windows 10 operating systems, see the VMware Knowledge Base (KB)
article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2149393. For Windows operating systems, other than Windows 10, see the
VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2150295.

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To see a list of specific remote experience features supported on Windows operating systems where Horizon
Agent is installed, see the VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2150305.
Note For information about which features are supported on the various types of client devices, see the
Horizon Client documentation at
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.
In addition, several VMware partners offer thin and zero client devices for Horizon 7 deployments. The
features that are available for each thin or zero client device are determined by the vendor and model and
the configuration that an enterprise chooses to use. For information about the vendors and models for thin
and zero client devices, see the VMware Compatibility Guide, available on the VMware Web site.

Choosing a Display Protocol
A display protocol provides end users with a graphical interface to a remote desktop or application that
resides in the datacenter. Depending on which type of client device you have, you can choose from among
Blast Extreme and PCoIP (PC-over-IP), which VMware provides, or Microsoft RDP (Remote Desktop
Protocol).
You can set policies to control which protocol is used or to allow end users to choose the protocol when they
log in to a desktop.
Note For some types of clients, neither the PCoIP nor the RDP remote display protocol is used. For
example, if you use the HTML Access client, available with the HTML Access feature, the Blast Extreme
protocol is used, rather than PCoIP or RDP. Similarly, if you use a remote Linux desktop, Blast Extreme is
used.

VMware Blast Extreme
Optimized for the mobile cloud, VMware Blast Extreme supports the broadest range of client devices that
are H.264 capable. Of the display protocols, VMware Blast offers the lowest CPU consumption for longer
battery life on mobile devices. VMware Blast Extreme can compensate for an increase in latency or a
reduction in bandwidth and can leverage both TCP and UDP network transports.
The VMware Blast display protocol can be used for remote applications and for remote desktops that use
virtual machines or shared-session desktops on an RDS host. The RDS host can be a physical machine or a
virtual machine. The VMware Blast display protocol does not operate on a single-user physical computer.

VMware Blast Extreme Features
Key features of VMware Blast Extreme include the following:

Users outside the corporate firewall can use this protocol with the corporate virtual private network
(VPN), or users can make secure, encrypted connections to a security server or Access Point appliance
in the corporate DMZ.

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128-bit encryption is supported and is turned on by default. You
can, however, change the encryption key cipher to AES-256.

Connections from all types of client devices.

Optimization controls for reducing bandwidth usage on the LAN and WAN.

32-bit color is supported for virtual displays.

ClearType fonts are supported.

Audio redirection with dynamic audio quality adjustment for LAN and WAN.

Real-Time Audio-Video for using webcams and microphones on some client types.

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Copy and paste of text and, on some clients, images between the client operating system and a remote
application or desktop. For other client types, only copy and paste of plain text is supported. You
cannot copy and paste system objects such as folders and files between systems.

Multiple monitors are supported for some client types. On some clients, you can use up to four
monitors with a resolution of up to 2560 x 1600 per display or up to three monitors with a resolution of
4K (3840 x 2160) for Windows 7 remote desktops with Aero disabled. Pivot display and autofit are also
supported.
When the 3D feature is enabled, up to two monitors are supported with a resolution of up to 1920 x
1200, or one monitor with a resolution of 4K (3840 x 2160).

USB redirection is supported for some client types.

MMR redirection is supported for some Windows client operating systems and some remote desktop
operating systems (with Horizon Agent installed).

Connections to physical machines that have no monitors attached are supported with NVIDIA graphics
cards. For best performance, use a graphics card that supports H.264 encoding. This is a technical
preview feature for Horizon 7 version 7.1.
If you have an add-in discrete GPU and an embedded GPU, the operating system might default to the
embedded GPU. To fix this problem, you can disable or remove the device in Device Manager. If the
problem persists, you can install the WDDM graphics driver for the embedded GPU, or disable the
embedded GPU in the system BIOS. Refer to your system documentation on how disable the embedded
GPU.
Caution Disabling the embedded GPU might cause future loss of access to functionality such as
console access to BIOS setup or NT Boot Loader.

For information about which client devices support specific VMware Blast Extreme features, go to
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

Recommended Guest Operating System Settings
1 GB of RAM or more and a dual CPU is recommended for playing in high-definition, full screen mode, or
720p or higher formatted video. To use Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration for graphics-intensive
applications such as CAD applications, 4 GB of RAM is required.

Video Quality Requirements
480p-formatted video

You can play video at 480p or lower at native resolutions when the remote
desktop has a single virtual CPU. If you want to play the video in highdefinition Flash or in full screen mode, the desktop requires a dual virtual
CPU. Even with a dual virtual CPU desktop, as low as 360p-formatted video
played in full screen mode can lag behind audio, particularly on Windows
clients.

720p-formatted video

You can play video at 720p at native resolutions if the remote desktop has a
dual virtual CPU. Performance might be affected if you play videos at 720p
in high definition or in full screen mode.

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1080p-formatted video

If the remote desktop has a dual virtual CPU, you can play 1080p formatted
video, although the media player might need to be adjusted to a smaller
window size.

3D rendering

You can configure remote desktops to use software- or hardware-accelerated
graphics. The software-accelerated graphics feature enables you to run
DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.1 applications without requiring a physical graphics
processing unit (GPU). The hardware-accelerated graphics features enable
virtual machines to either share the physical GPUs (graphical processing
unit) on a vSphere host or dedicate a physical GPU to a single virtual
desktop.
For 3D applications, up to two monitors are supported, and the maximum
screen resolution is 1920 x 1200. The guest operating system on the remote
desktops must be Windows 7 or later.
For more information about 3D features, see “Using 3D Graphics
Applications,” on page 29.

Hardware Requirements for Client Systems
For information about processor and memory requirements, see the "Using VMware Horizon Client"
document for the specific type of desktop or mobile client device. Go to
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

PCoIP
PCoIP (PC over IP) provides an optimized desktop experience for the delivery of a remote application or an
entire remote desktop environment, including applications, images, audio, and video content for a wide
range of users on the LAN or across the WAN. PCoIP can compensate for an increase in latency or a
reduction in bandwidth, to ensure that end users can remain productive regardless of network conditions.
The PCoIP display protocol can be used for remote applications and for remote desktops that use virtual
machines, physical machines that contain Teradici host cards, or shared session desktops on an RDS host.

PCoIP Features
Key features of PCoIP include the following:

Users outside the corporate firewall can use this protocol with your company's virtual private network
(VPN), or users can make secure, encrypted connections to a security server or Access Point appliance
in the corporate DMZ.

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128-bit encryption is supported and is turned on by default. You
can, however, change the encryption key cipher to AES-256.

Connections from all types of client devices.

Optimization controls for reducing bandwidth usage on the LAN and WAN.

32-bit color is supported for virtual displays.

ClearType fonts are supported.

Audio redirection with dynamic audio quality adjustment for LAN and WAN.

Real-Time Audio-Video for using webcams and microphones on some client types.

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Multiple monitors are supported for some client types. On some clients, you can use up to 4 monitors
with a resolution of up to 2560 x 1600 per display or up to 3 monitors with a resolution of 4K (3840 x
2160) for Windows 7 remote desktops with Aero disabled. Pivot display and autofit are also supported.
When the 3D feature is enabled, up to 2 monitors are supported with a resolution of up to 1920 x 1200,
or one monitor with a resolution of 4K (3840 x 2160).

USB redirection is supported for some client types.

MMR redirection is supported for some Windows client operating systems and some remote desktop
operating systems (with Horizon Agent installed).

For information about which desktop operating systems support specific PCoIP features, see “Feature
Support Matrix for Horizon Agent,” on page 21.
For information about which client devices support specific PCoIP features, go to
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

Recommended Guest Operating System Settings
1GB of RAM or more and a dual CPU is recommended for playing in high-definition, full screen mode, or
720p or higher formatted video. To use Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration for graphics-intensive
applications such as CAD applications, 4GB of RAM is required.

Video Quality Requirements
480p-formatted video

720p-formatted video

You can play video at 720p at native resolutions if the remote desktop has a
dual virtual CPU. Performance might be affected if you play videos at 720p
in high definition or in full screen mode.

1080p-formatted video

If the remote desktop has a dual virtual CPU, you can play 1080p formatted
video, although the media player might need to be adjusted to a smaller
window size.

3D rendering

You can configure remote desktops to use software- or hardware-accelerated
graphics. The software-accelerated graphics feature enables you to run
DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.1 applications without requiring a physical graphics
processing unit (GPU). The hardware-accelerated graphics features enable
virtual machines to either share the physical GPUs (graphical processing
unit) on a vSphere host or dedicate a physical GPU to a single virtual
machine desktop.
For 3D applications, up to 2 monitors are supported, and the maximum
screen resolution is 1920 x 1200. The guest operating system on the remote
desktops must be Windows 7 or later.
For more information about 3D features, see “Using 3D Graphics
Applications,” on page 29.

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Microsoft RDP
Remote Desktop Protocol is the same multichannel protocol many people already use to access their work
computer from their home computer. Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) uses RDP to transmit
data.
Microsoft RDP is a supported display protocol for remote desktops that use virtual machines, physical
machines, or shared session desktops on an RDS host. (Only the PCoIP display protocol and the VMware
Blast display protocol are supported for remote applications.) Microsoft RDP provides the following
features:
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RDP 7 has true multiple monitor support, for up to 16 monitors.

You can copy and paste text and system objects such as folders and files between the local system and
the remote desktop.

32-bit color is supported for virtual displays.

RDP supports 128-bit encryption.

Users outside the corporate firewall can use this protocol with your company's virtual private network
(VPN), or users can make secure, encrypted connections to a View security server in the corporate
DMZ.

To support TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2 connections to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you must apply
Microsoft hotfix KB3080079.

Hardware Requirements for Client Systems
For information about processor and memory requirements, see the "Using VMware Horizon Client"
document for the specific type of client system. Go to
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.
Note Mobile client 3.x devices use only the PCoIP display protocol. Mobile client 4.x clients use only the
PCoIP display protocol or the VMware Blast display protocol.

Using Published Applications
You can use Horizon Client to securely access published Windows-based applications, in addition to remote
desktops.
With this feature, after launching Horizon Client and logging in to a Horizon 7 server, users see all the
published applications they are entitled to use, in addition to remote desktops. Selecting an application
opens a window for that application on the local client device, and the application looks and behaves as if it
were locally installed.
For example, on a Windows client computer, if you minimize the application window, an item for that
application remains in the Taskbar and looks identical to the way it would look if it were installed on the
local Windows computer. You can also create a shortcut for the application that will appear on your client
desktop, just like shortcuts for locally installed applications.

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Deploying published applications in this way might be preferable to deploying complete remote desktops
under the following conditions:
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If an application is set up with a multi-tiered architecture, where the components work better if they are
located geographically near each other, using published applications is a good solution.
For example, when a user must access a database remotely, if large amounts of data must be transmitted
over the WAN, performance is usually affected. With published applications, all parts of the application
can be located in the same data center as the database, so that traffic is isolated and only the screen
updates are sent across the WAN.

From a mobile device, accessing an individual application is easier than opening a remote Windows
desktop and then navigating to the application.

To use this feature, you install applications on a Microsoft RDS host. In this respect, Horizon 7 published
applications work similarly to other application remoting solutions. Horizon 7 published applications are
delivered using either the Blast Extreme display protocol or the PCoIP display protocol, for an optimized
user experience.

Using Horizon Persona Management to Retain User Data and Settings
You can use Horizon Persona Management with remote desktops and with physical computers and virtual
machines that are not managed by Horizon 7. Persona Management retains changes that users make to their
profiles. User profiles comprise a variety of user-generated information.
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User-specific data and desktop settings, which allow the desktop appearance to be the same regard less
of which desktop a user logs in to.

Application data and settings. For example, these settings allow applications to remember toolbar
positions and preferences.

Windows registry entries configured by user applications.

To facilitate these abilities, Persona Management requires storage on a CIFS share equal or greater than the
size of the user's local profile.

Minimizing Logon and Logoff Times
Persona Management minimizes the time it takes to log on to and off of desktops. During logon, by default,
Horizon 7 downloads only the files that Windows requires, such as user registry files. Horizon 7 takes recent
changes in the profile on the remote desktop and copies them to the remote repository at regular intervals.
With Persona Management, you can avoid making any changes to Active Directory in order to have a
managed profile. To configure Persona Management, you specify a central repository, without changing the
user's properties in Active Directory. With this central repository, you can manage a user's profile in one
environment without affecting the physical machines that users might also log on to.
With Persona Management, if you provision desktops with VMware ThinApp applications, the ThinApp
sandbox data can also be stored in the user profile. This data can roam with the user but does not
significantly affect logon times. This strategy provides better protection against data loss or corruption.

Configuration Options
You can configure Horizon 7 personas at several levels: a single remote desktop, a desktop pool, an OU, or
all remote desktops in your deployment. You can also use a standalone version of Persona Management on
physical computers and virtual machines that are not managed by Horizon 7.
By setting group policies (GPOs), you have granular control of the files and folders to include in a persona.
You can specify whether to include the local settings folder, which files to load at login time, which files to
download in the background after a user logs in, and which files within a user's persona to manage with
Windows roaming profiles functionality instead of Persona Management.

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As with Windows roaming profiles, you can configure folder redirection. You can redirect the following
folders to a network share.
Contacts

My Documents

Save Games

My Music

Searches

Desktop

My Pictures

Start Menu

Downloads

My Videos

Startup Items

Favorites

Network Neighborhood

Templates

History

Printer Neighborhood

Temporary Internet Files

Links

Recent Items

Limitations
Persona Management has the following limitations and restrictions:
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This feature is not supported on instant clone desktop pools.

You must have a Horizon 7 license that includes the Personal Management component.

Persona Management requires a CIFS (Common Internet File System) share.

This feature is not supported for use with persistent disk on Windows 10 linked-clone desktop pools.

Using USB Devices with Remote Desktops and Applications
Administrators can configure the ability to use USB devices, such as thumb flash drives, cameras, VoIP
(voice-over-IP) devices, and printers, from a remote desktop. This feature is called USB redirection, and it
supports using the Blast Extreme, PCoIP, or Microsoft RDP display protocol. A remote desktop can
accommodate up to 128 USB devices.
You can also redirect locally connected USB thumb flash drives and hard disks for use in RDS desktops and
applications. Other types of USB devices, including other types of storage devices, are not supported in RDS
desktops and applications.
When you use this feature in desktop pools that are deployed on single-user machines, most USB devices
that are attached to the local client system become available in the remote desktop. You can even connect to
and manage an iPad from a remote desktop. For example, you can sync your iPad with iTunes installed in
your remote desktop. On some client devices, such as Windows and Mac computers, the USB devices are
listed in a menu in Horizon Client. You use the menu to connect and disconnect the devices.
In most cases, you cannot use a USB device in your client system and in your remote desktop or application
at the same time. Only a few types of USB devices can be shared between a remote desktop and the local
computer. These devices include smart card readers and human interface devices such as keyboards and
pointing devices.
Administrators can specify which types of USB devices end users are allowed to connect to. For composite
devices that contain multiple types of devices, such as a video input device and a storage device, on some
client systems, administrators can split the device so that one device (for example, the video input device) is
allowed but the other device (for example, the storage device) is not.
The USB redirection feature is available only on some types of clients. To find out whether this feature is
supported on a particular type of client, see the feature support matrix included in the "Using
VMware Horizon Client" document for the specific type of desktop or mobile client device. Go to
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

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Using the Real-Time Audio-Video Feature for Webcams and
Microphones
With the Real-Time Audio-Video feature, you can use your local computer's webcam or microphone on your
remote desktop. Real-Time Audio-Video is compatible with standard conferencing applications and
browser-based video applications, and supports standard webcams, audio USB devices, and analog audio
input.
End users can run Skype, Webex, Google Hangouts, and other online conferencing applications on their
virtual desktops. This feature redirects video and audio data to the remote desktop with a significantly
lower bandwidth than can be achieved by using USB redirection. With Real-Time Audio-Video, webcam
images and audio input are encoded on the client and then sent to the remote desktop. On the remote
desktop the stream is decoded and played by a virtual webcam and virtual microphone, which can be used
by the third-party application.
No special configuration is necessary, although administrators can set GPOs and registry keys for the remote
desktop to configure frame rate and image resolution, or to turn the feature off altogether. By default the
resolution is 320 by 240 pixels at 15 frames per second. Administrators can also use client-side configuration
settings to set a preferred webcam or audio device if needed.
Note This feature is available only on some types of clients. To find out whether this feature is supported
on a particular type of client, see the feature support matrix included in the Using VMware Horizon Client
document for the specific type of desktop or mobile client device.

Using 3D Graphics Applications
The software- and hardware-accelerated graphics features available with the Blast Extreme or PCoIP display
protocol enable remote desktop users to run 3D applications ranging from Google Earth to CAD and other
graphics-intensive applications.
NVIDIA GRID vGPU
(shared GPU hardware
acceleration)

Available with vSphere 6.0 and later, this feature allows a physical GPU
(graphical processing unit) on an ESXi host to be shared among virtual
machines. Use this feature if you require high-end, hardware-accelerated
workstation graphics.

AMD Multiuser GPU
using vDGA

Available with vSphere 6.0 and later, this feature allows multiple virtual
machines to share an AMD GPU by making the GPU appear as multiple PCI
passthrough devices. This feature offers flexible hardware-accelerated 3D
profiles, ranging from lightweight 3D task workers to high-end workstation
graphics power users.

Virtual Dedicated
Graphics Acceleration
(vDGA)

Available with vSphere 5.5 and later, this feature dedicates a single physical
GPU on an ESXi host to a single virtual machine. Use this feature if you
require high-end, hardware-accelerated workstation graphics.
Note Some Intel vDGA cards require a certain vSphere 6 version. See the
VMware Hardware Compatibility List at
http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php. Also, for Intel
vDGA, the Intel integrated GPU is used rather than discrete GPUs, as is the
case with other vendors.

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Virtual Shared Graphics
Acceleration (vSGA)

Available with vSphere 5.1 and later, this feature allows multiple virtual
machines to share the physical GPUs on ESXi hosts. You can use 3D
applications for design, modeling, and multimedia.

Soft 3D

Software-accelerated graphics, available with vSphere 5.0 and later, allows
you to run DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.1 applications without requiring a
physical GPU. Use this feature for less demanding 3D applications such as
Windows Aero themes, Microsoft Office 2010, and Google Earth.

NVIDIA GRID vGPU and vDGA are now also supported in remote applications running on Microsoft RDS
hosts.
Important For more information on the various choices and requirements for 3D rendering, see the
VMware white paper about graphics acceleration and the NVIDIA GRID vGPU Deployment Guide for
VMware Horizon 6.1.

Streaming Multimedia to a Remote Desktop
The Windows Media MMR (multimedia redirection) feature, for Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 desktops
and clients, enables full-fidelity playback on Windows client computers when multimedia files are streamed
to a remote desktop.
With MMR, the multimedia stream is processed, that is, decoded, on the Windows client system. The client
system plays the media content, thereby offloading the demand on the ESXi host. Media formats that are
supported on Windows Media Player are supported; for example: M4V; MOV; MP4; WMP; MPEG-4 Part 2;
WMV 7, 8, and 9; WMA; AVI; ACE; MP3; WAV.
Note You must add the MMR port as an exception to your firewall software. The default port for MMR is
9427.

Printing from a Remote Desktop
The virtual printing feature allows end users on some client systems to use local or network printers from a
remote desktop without requiring that additional print drivers be installed in the remote desktop operating
system. The location-based printing feature allows you to map remote desktops to the printer that is closest
to the endpoint client device.
With virtual printing, after a printer is added on a local client computer, that printer is automatically added
to the list of available printers on the remote desktop. No further configuration is required. For each printer
available through this feature, you can set preferences for data compression, print quality, double-sided
printing, color, and so on. Users who have administrator privileges can still install printer drivers on the
remote desktop without creating a conflict with the virtual printing component.
Local printer redirection is designed for the following use cases:
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Printers directly connected to USB or serial ports on the client device

Specialized printers such as bar code printers and label printers connected to the client

Network printers on a remote network that are not addressable from the virtual session.

To send print jobs to a USB printer, you can either use the USB redirection feature or use the virtual printing
feature.

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Location-based printing allows IT organizations to map remote desktops to the printer that is closest to the
endpoint client device. For example, as a doctor moves from room to room in a hospital, each time the
doctor prints a document, the print job is sent to the nearest printer. Using this feature does require that the
correct printer drivers be installed in the remote desktop.
Note These printing features are available only on some types of clients. To find out whether a printing
feature is supported on a particular type of client, see the feature support matrix included in the "Using
VMware Horizon Client" document for the specific type of desktop or mobile client device. Go to
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

Using Single Sign-On for Logging In
The single-sign-on (SSO) feature allows end users to supply Active Directory login credentials only once.
If you do not use the single-sign-on feature, end users must log in twice. They are first prompted for Active
Directory credentials to log in to Horizon Connection Server and then are prompted log in to their remote
desktop. If smart cards are also used, end users must sign in three times because users must also log in
when the smart card reader prompts them for a PIN.
For remote desktops, this feature includes a credential provider dynamic-link library.

True SSO
With the True SSO feature, introduced with Horizon 7 and VMware Identity Manager 2.6, users are no
longer required to supply Active Directory credentials at all. After users log in to VMware Identity Manager
using any non-AD method (for example, RSA SecurID or RADIUS authentication), users are not prompted
to also enter Active Directory credentials in order to use a remote desktop or application.
If a user authenticates by using smart cards or Active Directory credentials, the True SSO feature is not
necessary, but you can configure True SSO to be used even in this case. Then any AD credentials that the
user provides are ignored and True SSO is used.
True SSO works by generating a unique, short-lived certificate for the Windows logon process. You must set
up a Certificate Authority, if you do not already have one, and a certificate Enrollment Server in order to
generate short-lived certificates on behalf of the user. You install the Enrollment Server by running the
Connection Server installer and selecting the Enrollment Server option.
True SSO separates authentication (validating a user's identity) from access (such as to a Windows desktop
or application). User credentials are secured by a digital certificate. No passwords are vaulted or transferred
within the data center. For more information, see the View Administration document.

Monitors and Screen Resolution
You can extend a remote desktop to multiple monitors. If you have a high-resolution monitor, you can see
the remote desktop or application in full resolution.
You can select the All Monitors display mode to display a remote desktop on multiple monitors. If you are
using All Monitors mode and click the Minimize button, if you then maximize the window, the window
goes back to All Monitors mode. Similarly, if you are using Fullscreen mode and minimize the window,
when you maximize the window, the window goes back to Fullscreen mode on one monitor.

Using All Monitors in a Multiple-Monitor Setup
Regardless of the display protocol, you can use multiple monitors with a remote desktop. If you have
Horizon Client use all monitors, if you maximize an application window, the window expands to the full
screen of only the monitor that contains it.

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Horizon Client supports the following monitor configurations:
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If you use two monitors, the monitors are not required to be in the same mode. For example, if you are
using a laptop connected to an external monitor, the external monitor can be in portrait mode or
landscape mode.

Monitors can be placed side by side, stacked two by two, or vertically stacked only if you are using two
monitors and the total height is less than 4096 pixels.

To use the 3D rendering feature, you must use the VMware Blast display protocol or the PCoIP display
protocol. You can use up to two monitors, with a resolution of up to 1920 X 1200. For a resolution of 4 K
(3840 X 2160), only one monitor is supported.

If you use instant clone desktops pools, the maximum number of monitors that you can use to display a
remote desktop is two, with a resolution of up to 2560 X 1600.

With the VMware Blast display protocol or the PCoIP display protocol, a remote desktop screen
resolution of 4K (3840 x 2160) is supported. The number of 4K displays that are supported depends on
the hardware version of the desktop virtual machine and the Windows version.

Hardware Version

Windows Version

Number of 4K Displays
Supported

10 (ESXi 5.5.x compatible)

7, 8, 8.x, 10

11 (ESXi 6.0 compatible)

7 (3D rendering feature disabled and Windows Aero
disabled)

7 (3D rendering feature enabled)

8, 8.x, 10

If you use Microsoft RDP 7, the maximum number of monitors that you can use to display a remote
desktop is 16.

If you use Microsoft RDP display protocol, you must have Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection
(RDC) 6.0 or later installed in the remote desktop.

Using One Monitor in a Multiple-Monitor Setup
If you have multiple monitors but want Horizon Client to use only one monitor, after client installation, you
can select to have a desktop window open in any mode other than All Monitors. By default, the window is
opened on the primary monitor.

Using High-Resolution Mode
On some types of clients, when you use the VMware Blast display protocol or the PCoIP display protocol,
Horizon Client also supports very high resolutions for those client systems with high-resolution displays.
The option to enable High-Resolution Mode appears only if the client system supports high-resolution
displays.

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Managing Desktop and Application
Pools from a Central Location

You can create pools that include one or hundreds or thousands of remote desktops. As a desktop source,
you can use virtual machines, physical machines, and Windows Remote Desktop Services (RDS) hosts.
Create one virtual machine as a base image, and Horizon 7 can generate a pool of remote desktops from that
image. You can also create pools of applications that give users remote access to applications.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n

“Advantages of Desktop Pools,” on page 33

“Advantages of Application Pools,” on page 34

“Reducing and Managing Storage Requirements,” on page 35

“Application Provisioning,” on page 42

“Using Active Directory GPOs to Manage Users and Desktops,” on page 45

Advantages of Desktop Pools
Horizon 7 offers the ability to create and provision pools of desktops as its basis of centralized management.
You create a remote desktop pool from one of the following sources:
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A physical system such as a physical desktop PC.

A virtual machine that is hosted on an ESXi host and managed by vCenter Server

A virtual machine that runs on a virtualization platform other than vCenter Server that supports
Horizon Agent.

A session-based desktop on an RDS host.

If you use a vSphere virtual machine as a desktop source, you can automate the process of making as many
identical virtual desktops as you need. You can set a minimum and maximum number of virtual desktops to
be generated for the pool. Setting these parameters ensures that you always have enough remote desktops
available for immediate use but not so many that you overuse available resources.
Using pools to manage desktops allows you to apply settings or deploy applications to all remote desktops
in a pool. The following examples show some of the settings available:
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Specify which remote display protocol to use as the default for the remote desktop and whether to let
end users override the default.

For View Composer linked-clone virtual machines or full clone virtual machines, specify whether to
power off the virtual machine when it is not in use and whether to delete it altogether. Instant clone
virtual machines are always powered on.

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View Architecture Planning

For View Composer linked-clone virtual machines, you can specify whether to use a Microsoft Sysprep
customization specification or QuickPrep from VMware. Sysprep generates a unique SID and GUID for
each virtual machine in the pool. Instant clones require a different customization specification, called
ClonePrep, from VMware.

You can also specify how users are assigned desktops in a pool.
Dedicated-assignment
pools

Each user is assigned a particular remote desktop and returns to the same
desktop at each login. Dedicated assignment pools require a one-to-one
desktop-to-user relationship. For example, a pool of 100 desktops are needed
for a group of 100 users.

Floating-assignment
pools

Using floating-assignment pools also allows you to create a pool of desktops
that can be used by shifts of users. For example, a pool of 100 desktops could
be used by 300 users if they worked in shifts of 100 users at a time. The
remote desktop is optionally deleted and re-created after each use, offering a
highly controlled environment.

Advantages of Application Pools
With application pools, you give users access to applications that run on servers in a data center instead of
on their personal computers or devices.
Application pools offer several important benefits:
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Accessibility
Users can access applications from anywhere on the network. You can also configure secure network
access.

Device independence
With application pools, you can support a range of client devices, such as smart phones, tablets,
laptops, thin clients, and personal computers. The client devices can run various operating systems,
such as Windows, iOS, Mac OS, or Android.

Access control
You can easily and quickly grant or remove access to applications for one user or a group of users.

Accelerated deployment
With application pools, deploying applications can be accelerated because you only deploy applications
on servers in a data center and each server can support multiple users.

Manageability
Managing software that is deployed on client computers and devices typically requires significant
resources. Management tasks include deployment, configuration, maintenance, support, and upgrades.
With application pools, you can simplify software management in an enterprise because the software
runs on servers in a data center, which requires fewer installed copies.

Security and regulatory compliance
With application pools, you can improve security because applications and their associated data are
centrally located in a data center. Centralized data can address security concerns and regulatory
compliance issues.

Reduced cost
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.

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Chapter 3 Managing Desktop and Application Pools from a Central Location

Reducing and Managing Storage Requirements
Deploying desktops on virtual machines that are managed by vCenter Server provides all the storage
efficiencies that were previously available only for virtualized servers. Using instant clones or View
Composer linked clones as desktop machines increases the storage savings because all virtual machines in a
pool share a virtual disk with a base image.
n

Managing Storage with vSphere on page 35
vSphere lets you virtualize disk volumes and file systems so that you can manage and configure
storage without having to consider where the data is physically stored.

Using Virtual SAN for High-Performance Storage and Policy-Based Management on page 37
VMware Virtual SAN is a software-defined storage tier, available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or a later
release, that virtualizes the local physical storage disks available on a cluster of vSphere hosts. You
specify only one datastore when creating an automated desktop pool or an automated farm, and the
various components, such as virtual machine files, replicas, user data, and operating system files, are
placed on the appropriate solid-state drive (SSD) disks or direct-attached hard disks (HDDs).

Using Virtual Volumes for Virtual-Machine-Centric Storage and Policy-Based Management on
page 38
With Virtual Volumes (VVols), available with vSphere 6.0 or a later release, an individual virtual
machine, not the datastore, becomes a unit of storage management. The storage hardware gains
control over virtual disk content, layout, and management.

Reducing Storage Requirements with View Composer on page 39
Because View Composer creates desktop images that share virtual disks with a base image, you can
reduce the required storage capacity by 50 to 90 percent.

Reducing Storage Requirements with Instant Clones on page 41
The instant clones feature leverages vSphere vmFork technology (available with vSphere 6.0U1 and
later) to quiesce a running base image, or parent virtual machine, and rapidly create and customize a
pool of virtual desktops.

Managing Storage with vSphere
vSphere lets you virtualize disk volumes and file systems so that you can manage and configure storage
without having to consider where the data is physically stored.
Fibre Channel SAN arrays, iSCSI SAN arrays, and NAS arrays are widely used storage technologies
supported by vSphere to meet different datacenter storage needs. The storage arrays are connected to and
shared between groups of servers through storage area networks. This arrangement allows aggregation of
the storage resources and provides more flexibility in provisioning them to virtual machines.

Compatible vSphere 5.0 and 5.1 or Later Features
With vSphere 5.0 or a later release, you can use the following features:
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With the View storage accelerator feature, you can configure ESXi hosts to cache virtual machine disk
data.
Using this content-based read cache (CBRC) can reduce IOPS and improve performance during boot
storms, when many machines start up and run anti-virus scans at the same time. Instead of reading the
entire OS from the storage system over and over, a host can read common data blocks from cache.

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View Architecture Planning

Replica disks must be stored on VMFS5 or later datastores or NFS datastores. If you store replicas on a
VMFS version earlier than VMFS5, a cluster can have at most eight hosts. OS disks and persistent disks
can be stored on NFS or VMFS datastores.

Compatible vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or Later Features
With vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or a later release, you can use Virtual SAN, which virtualizes the local physical
solid-state disks and hard disk drives available on ESXi hosts into a single datastore shared by all hosts in a
cluster. Virtual SAN provides high-performance storage with policy-based management, so that you specify
only one datastore when creating a desktop pool, and the various components, such as virtual machine files,
replicas, user data, and operating system files, are placed on the appropriate solid-state drive (SSD) disks or
direct-attached hard disks (HDDs).
Virtual SAN also lets you manage virtual machine storage and performance by using storage policy profiles.
If the policy becomes noncompliant because of a host, disk, or network failure, or workload changes, Virtual
SAN reconfigures the data of the affected virtual machines and optimizes the use of resources across the
cluster. You can deploy a desktop pool on a cluster that contains up to 20 ESXi hosts.
While supporting VMware features that require shared storage, such as HA, vMotion, and DRS, Virtual
SAN eliminates the need for an external shared storage and simplifies storage configuration and virtual
machine provisioning activities.
Important The Virtual SAN feature available with vSphere 6.0 and later releases contains many
performance improvements over the feature that was available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1. With vSphere 6.0
this feature also has broader HCL (hardware compatibility) support. For more information about Virtual
SAN in vSphere 6 or later, see the Administering VMware Virtual SAN document.
Note Virtual SAN is compatible with the View storage accelerator feature but not with the space-efficient
disk format feature, which reclaims disk space by wiping and shrinking disks.

Compatible vSphere 6.0 or Later Features
With vSphere 6.0 or a later release, you can use Virtual Volumes (VVols). This feature maps virtual disks and
their derivatives, clones, snapshots, and replicas, directly to objects, called virtual volumes, on a storage
system. This mapping allows vSphere to offload intensive storage operations such as snapshoting, cloning,
and replication to the storage system.
Virtual Volumes also lets you manage virtual machine storage and performance by using storage policy
profiles in vSphere. These storage policy profiles dictate storage services on a per-virtual-machine basis.
This type of granular provisioning increases capacity utilization. You can deploy a desktop pool on a cluster
that contains up to 32 ESXi hosts.
Note Virtual Volumes is compatible with the View storage accelerator feature but not with the spaceefficient disk format feature, which reclaims disk space by wiping and shrinking disks.
Note Instant clones do not support Virtual Volumes.

VMware, Inc.

Chapter 3 Managing Desktop and Application Pools from a Central Location

Using Virtual SAN for High-Performance Storage and Policy-Based
Management
VMware Virtual SAN is a software-defined storage tier, available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or a later
release, that virtualizes the local physical storage disks available on a cluster of vSphere hosts. You specify
only one datastore when creating an automated desktop pool or an automated farm, and the various
components, such as virtual machine files, replicas, user data, and operating system files, are placed on the
appropriate solid-state drive (SSD) disks or direct-attached hard disks (HDDs).
Virtual SAN implements a policy-based approach to storage management. When you use Virtual SAN,
Horizon 7 defines virtual machine storage requirements, such as capacity, performance, and availability, in
the form of default storage policy profiles and automatically deploys them for virtual desktops onto vCenter
Server. The policies are automatically and individually applied per disk (Virtual SAN objects) and
maintained throughout the life cycle of the virtual desktop. Storage is provisioned and automatically
configured according to the assigned policies. You can modify these policies in vCenter. Horizon creates
vSAN policies for linked-clone desktop pools, instant-clone desktop pools, full-clone desktop pools, or an
automated farm per Horizon cluster.
You can enable encryption for a Virtual SAN cluster to encrypt all data-at-rest in the Virtual SAN datastore.
Virtual SAN encryption is available with Virtual SAN version 6.6 or later. For more information about
encrypting a Virtual SAN cluster, see the VMware Virtual SAN documentation.
Each virtual machine maintains its policy regardless of its physical location in the cluster. If the policy
becomes noncompliant because of a host, disk, or network failure, or workload changes, Virtual SAN
reconfigures the data of the affected virtual machines and load-balances to meet the policies of each virtual
machine.
While supporting VMware features that require shared storage, such as HA, vMotion, and DRS, Virtual
SAN eliminates the need for an external shared storage infrastructure and simplifies storage configuration
and virtual machine provisioning activities.
Important The Virtual SAN feature available with vSphere 6.0 and later releases contains many
performance improvements over the feature that was available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1. With vSphere 6.0
this feature also has broader HCL (hardware compatibility) support. Also, VMware Virtual SAN 6.0
supports an all-flash architecture that uses flash-based devices for both caching and persistent storage.

Requirements and Limitations
The Virtual SAN feature has the following limitations when used in a Horizon 7 deployment:
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This release does not support using the Horizon 7 space-efficient disk format feature, which reclaims
disk space by wiping and shrinking disks.

Virtual SAN does not support the View Composer Array Integration (VCAI) feature because Virtual
SAN does not use NAS devices.

Note Virtual SAN is compatible with the View Storage Accelerator feature. Virtual SAN provides a
caching layer on SSD disks, and the View Storage Accelerator feature provides a content-based cache that
reduces IOPS and improves performance during boot storms.
The Virtual SAN feature has the following requirements:
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vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or a later release.

Appropriate hardware. For example, VMware recommends a 10GB NIC and at least one SSD and one
HDD for each capacity-contributing node. For specifics, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

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A cluster of at least three ESXi hosts. You need enough ESXi hosts to accommodate your setup even if
you use two ESXi hosts with a Virtual SAN stretched cluster. For more information, see the vSphere
Configuration Maximums document.

SSD capacity that is at least 10 percent of HDD capacity.

Enough HDDs to accommodate your setup. Do not exceed more than 75% utilization on a magnetic
disk.

For more information about Virtual SAN requirements, see "Working with Virtual SAN" in the vSphere 5.5
Update 1 Storage document. For vSphere 6 or later, see the Administering VMware Virtual SAN document. For
guidance on sizing and designing the key components of Horizon 7 virtual desktop infrastructures for
VMware Virtual SAN, see the white paper at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsan/VMW-TMD-Virt-SAN-Dsn-Szing-Guid-Horizon-View.pdf.

Using Virtual Volumes for Virtual-Machine-Centric Storage and Policy-Based
Management
With Virtual Volumes (VVols), available with vSphere 6.0 or a later release, an individual virtual machine,
not the datastore, becomes a unit of storage management. The storage hardware gains control over virtual
disk content, layout, and management.
With Virtual Volumes, abstract storage containers replace traditional storage volumes based on LUNs or
NFS shares. Virtual Volumes maps virtual disks and their derivatives, clones, snapshots, and replicas,
directly to objects, called virtual volumes, on a storage system. With this mapping, vSphere can offload
intensive storage operations such as snapshoting, cloning, and replication to the storage system. The result,
for example, is that a cloning operation that previously took an hour might now take a few minutes using
Virtual Volumes.
Important One of the key benefits of Virtual Volumes is the ability to use Software Policy-Based
Management (SPBM). However, for this release, Horizon 7 does not create the default granular storage
policies that Virtual SAN creates. Instead, you can set a global default storage policy in vCenter Server that
applies to all Virtual Volume datastores.
Virtual Volumes has the following benefits:
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Virtual Volumes supports offloading a number of operations to storage hardware. These operations
include snapshotting, cloning, and Storage DRS.

With Virtual Volumes, you can use advanced storage services that include replication, encryption,
deduplication, and compression on individual virtual disks.

Virtual Volumes supports such vSphere features as vMotion, Storage vMotion, snapshots, linked clones,
Flash Read Cache, and DRS.

You can use Virtual Volumes with storage arrays that support vSphere APIs for Array Integration
(VAAI).

Requirements and Limitations
The Virtual Volumes feature has the following limitations when used in a Horizon 7 deployment:

This release does not support using the Horizon 7 space-efficient disk format feature, which reclaims
disk space by wiping and shrinking disks.

Virtual Volumes does not support using View Composer Array Integration (VCAI).

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Chapter 3 Managing Desktop and Application Pools from a Central Location

Virtual Volumes datastores are not supported for instant clone desktop pools.

Note Virtual Volumes is compatible with the View Storage Accelerator feature. Virtual SAN provides a
caching layer on SSD disks, and the View Storage Accelerator feature provides a content-based cache that
reduces IOPS and improves performance during boot storms.
The Virtual Volumes feature has the following requirements:
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vSphere 6.0 or a later release.

Appropriate hardware. Certain storage vendors are responsible for supplying storage providers that
can integrate with vSphere and provide support for Virtual Volumes. Every storage provider must be
certified by VMware and properly deployed.

All virtual disks that you provision on a virtual datastore must be an even multiple of 1 MB.

Virtual Volumes is a vSphere 6.0 feature. For more information about the requirements, functionality,
background, and setup requirements, see the topics about Virtual Volumes in the vSphere Storage document.

Reducing Storage Requirements with View Composer
Because View Composer creates desktop images that share virtual disks with a base image, you can reduce
the required storage capacity by 50 to 90 percent.
View Composer uses a base image, or parent virtual machine, and creates a pool of up to 2,000 linked-clone
virtual machines. Each linked clone acts like an independent desktop, with a unique host name and IP
address, yet the linked clone requires significantly less storage.

Replica and Linked Clones on the Same Datastore
When you create a linked-clone desktop pool or farm of Microsoft RDS hosts, a full clone is first made from
the parent virtual machine. The full clone, or replica, and the clones linked to it can be placed on the same
data store, or LUN (logical unit number). If necessary, you can use the rebalance feature to move the replica
and linked-clone desktop pools from one LUN to another or to move linked-clone desktop pools to a Virtual
SAN datastore or from a Virtual SAN datastore to a LUN.

Replica and Linked Clones on Different Datastores
Alternatively, you can place View Composer replicas and linked clones on separate datastores with different
performance characteristics. For example, you can store the replica virtual machines on a solid-state drive
(SSD). Solid-state drives have low storage capacity and high read performance, typically supporting tens of
thousands of I/Os per second (IOPS). You can store linked clones on traditional, spinning media-backed
datastores. These disks provide lower performance, but are less expensive and provide higher storage
capacity, which makes them suited for storing the many linked clones in a large pool. Tiered storage
configurations can be used to cost-effectively handle intensive I/O scenarios such as simultaneous rebooting
of many virtual machines or running scheduled antivirus scans.
For more information, see the best-practices guide called Storage Considerations for VMware View.
If you use Virtual SAN datastores or Virtual Volumes datastores, you cannot manually select different
datastores for replicas and linked clones. Because the Virtual SAN and Virtual Volumes features
automatically place objects on the appropriate type of disk and cache of all I/O operations, there is no need
to use replica tiering for Virtual SAN and Virtual Volumes datastores.

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Disposable Disks for Paging and Temp Files
When you create a linked-clone pool or farm, you can also optionally configure a separate, disposable
virtual disk to store the guest operating system's paging and temp files that are generated during user
sessions. When the virtual machine is powered off, the disposable disk is deleted. Using disposable disks
can save storage space by slowing the growth of linked clones and reducing the space used by powered off
virtual machines.

Persistent Disks for Dedicated Desktops
When you create dedicated-assignment desktop pools, View Composer can also optionally create a separate
persistent virtual disk for each virtual desktop. The end user's Windows profile and application data are
saved on the persistent disk. When a linked clone is refreshed, recomposed, or rebalanced, the contents of
the persistent virtual disk are preserved. VMware recommends that you keep View Composer persistent
disks on a separate datastore. You can then back up the whole LUN that holds persistent disks. Persistent
disks are not supported for Windows 10 virtual machines.

Local Datastores for Floating, Stateless Desktops
Linked-clone desktops can be stored on local datastores, which are internal spare disks on ESXi hosts. Local
storage offers advantages such as inexpensive hardware, fast virtual-machine provisioning, highperformance power operations, and simple management. However, using local storage limits the vSphere
infrastructure configuration options that are available to you. Using local storage is beneficial in certain
environments but not appropriate in others.
Note The limitations described in this section do not apply to Virtual SAN datastores, which also use local
storage disks but require specific hardware, as described in the preceding section about Virtual SAN.
Using local datastores is most likely to work well if the remote desktops in your environment are stateless.
For example, you might use local datastores if you deploy stateless kiosks or classroom and training
stations.
If you intend to take advantage of the benefits of local storage, you must carefully consider the following
limitations:
n

You cannot use VMotion, VMware High Availability (HA), or vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler
(DRS).

You cannot use the View Composer rebalance operation to load-balance virtual machines across a
resource pool.

You cannot store a View Composer replica and linked clones on separate datastores, and, in fact,
VMware recommends storing them on the same volume.

If you manage local disk usage by controlling the number of virtual machines and their disk growth, and if
you use floating assignments and perform regular refresh and delete operations, you can successfully
deploy linked clones to local datastores.
For more information, see the chapter about creating desktop pools in the Setting Up Virtual Desktops in
Horizon 7 document.

VMware, Inc.

Chapter 3 Managing Desktop and Application Pools from a Central Location

Reducing Storage Requirements with Instant Clones
The instant clones feature leverages vSphere vmFork technology (available with vSphere 6.0U1 and later) to
quiesce a running base image, or parent virtual machine, and rapidly create and customize a pool of virtual
desktops.
Not only do instant clones share the virtual disks with the parent virtual machine at the time of creation,
instant clones also share the memory of the parent. Each instant clone acts like an independent desktop,
with a unique host name and IP address, yet the instant clone requires significantly less storage. Instant
clones reduce the required storage capacity by 50 to 90 percent. The overall memory requirement is also
reduced at clone creation time. For more information on storage requirements and sizing limits, see the
VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2150348.

Replica and Instant Clones on the Same Datastore
When you create an instant clone desktop pool, a full clone is first made from the master virtual machine.
The full clone, or replica, and the clones linked to it can be placed on the same data store, or LUN (logical
unit number).

Replica and Instant Clones on Different Datastores
Alternatively, you can place instant clone replicas and instant clones on separate datastores with different
performance characteristics. For example, you can store the replica virtual machines on a solid-state drive
(SSD). Solid-state drives have low storage capacity and high read performance, typically supporting tens of
thousands of I/Os per second (IOPS).
You can store instant clones on traditional, spinning media-backed datastores. These disks provide lower
performance, but are less expensive and provide higher storage capacity, which makes them suited for
storing the many instant clones in a large pool. Tiered storage configurations can be used to cost-effectively
handle intensive I/O scenarios such as simultaneous running scheduled antivirus scans.
If you use Virtual SAN datastores, you cannot manually select different datastores for replicas and instant
clones. Because Virtual SAN automatically places objects on the appropriate type of disk and caches all I/O
operations, there is no need to use replica tiering for Virtual SAN data stores. Instant clone pools are
supported on Virtual SAN data stores.

Storing Instant Clones on Local Datastores
Instant clone virtual machines can be stored on local datastores, which are internal spare disks on ESXi
hosts. Local storage offers advantages such as inexpensive hardware, fast virtual-machine provisioning,
high-performance power operations, and simple management. However, using local storage limits the
vSphere infrastructure configuration options that are available to you. Using local storage is beneficial in
certain Horizon 7 environments but not appropriate in others.
Note The limitations described in this topic do not apply to Virtual SAN datastores, which also use local
storage disks but require specific hardware.
Using local datastores is most likely to work well if the Horizon 7 desktops in your environment are
stateless. For example, you might use local datastores if you deploy stateless kiosks or classroom and
training stations.
Consider using local datastores if your virtual machines have floating assignments, are not dedicated to
individual end users, and can be deleted or refreshed at regular intervals such as on user logoff. This
approach lets you control the disk usage on each local datastore without having to move or load-balance the
virtual machines across datastores.

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View Architecture Planning

However, you must consider the restrictions that using local datastores imposes on your Horizon 7 desktop
or farm deployment:
n

You cannot use VMotion to manage Virtual Volumes.

You cannot use VMware High Availability.

You cannot use the vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).
If you are deploying instant clones on a single ESXi host with a local datastore, you must configure a
cluster containing that single ESXi host. If you have a cluster of two or more ESXi hosts with local
datastores, select the local datastore from each of the hosts in the cluster. Otherwise, instant clone
creation fails. This behavior differs from the behavior of local datastores with View Composer linked
clones.

You cannot store a replica and instant clones on separate datastores.

If you select local spinning-disk drives, performance might not match that of a commercially available
storage array. Local spinning-disk drives and a storage array might have similar capacity, but local
spinning-disk drives do not have the same throughput as a storage array. Throughput increases as the
number of spindles grows. If you select direct attached solid-state disks (SSDs), performance is likely to
exceed that of many storage arrays.

If you intend to take advantage of the benefits of local storage, you must carefully consider the
consequences of not having VMotion, High Availability, DRS, and other features available. If you
manage local disk usage by controlling the number and disk growth of the virtual machines, if you use
floating assignments and perform regular refresh and delete operations, you can successfully deploy
instant clones to local datastores.

Local datastore support for instant clones is available for both virtual desktops and published desktops.

Differences between Instant Clones and View Composer Linked Clones
Since instant clones can be created significantly faster than linked clones, the following features of linked
clones are no longer needed when you provision a pool of instant clones:
n

Instant clone pools do not support configuration of a separate, disposable virtual disk for storing the
guest operating system's paging and temp files. Each time a user logs out of an instant clone desktop,
View automatically deletes the clone and provisions and powers on another instant clone based on the
latest OS image available for the pool. Any guest operating systems paging and temp files are
automatically deleted during the logoff operation.

Instant clone pools do not support the creation of a separate persistent virtual disk for each virtual
desktop. Instead, you can store the end user's Windows profile and application data on App Volumes'
user writable disks. An end user's user writable disk is attached to an instant clone desktop when the
end user logs in. In addition, user writable disks can be used to persist user-installed applications.

Due to short-lived nature of instant clone desktops, instant clones do not support the space-efficient
disk format (SE sparse), with its wipe and shrink process.

Application Provisioning
With Horizon 7, you have several options regarding application provisioning: You can use traditional
application provisioning techniques, you can provide remote applications rather than a remote desktop, you
can distribute application packages created with VMware ThinApp, you can deploy applications as part of a
View Composer or instant clone base image, or you can attach applications using App Volumes.
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Deploying Individual Applications Using an RDS Host on page 43
You might choose to provide end users with remote applications rather than remote desktops.
Individual remote applications might be easier to navigate on a small mobile device.

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Chapter 3 Managing Desktop and Application Pools from a Central Location

Deploying Applications and System Updates with View Composer on page 43
Because linked-clone desktop pools share a base image, you can quickly deploy updates and patches
by updating the parent virtual machine.

Deploying Applications and System Updates with Instant Clones on page 44
Because instant clone desktop pools share a base image, you can quickly deploy updates and patches
by updating the parent virtual machine.

Managing VMware ThinApp Applications in View Administrator on page 44
VMware ThinApp™ lets you package an application into a single file that runs in a virtualized
application sandbox. This strategy results in flexible, conflict-free application provisioning.

Deploying and Managing Applications Using App Volumes on page 45
VMware App Volumes offers an alternative way to manage applications by virtualizing applications
above the operating system. By using this strategy, applications, data files, settings, middleware, and
configurations act as separate, layered containers.

Using Existing Processes or VMware Mirage for Application Provisioning on page 45
With Horizon 7, you can continue to use the application provisioning techniques that your company
currently uses, and you can use Mirage. Two additional considerations include managing server CPU
usage and storage I/O and determining whether users are permitted to install applications.

Deploying Individual Applications Using an RDS Host
You might choose to provide end users with remote applications rather than remote desktops. Individual
remote applications might be easier to navigate on a small mobile device.
End users can access remote Windows-based applications by using the same Horizon Client that they
previously used for accessing remote desktops, and they use the same Blast Extreme or PCoIP display
protocol.
To provide a remote application, you install the application on a Microsoft Remote Desktop Session (RDS)
host. One or more RDS hosts make up a farm, and from that farm administrators create application pools in
a similar manner to creating desktop pools. For farm sizing recommendations see the VMware Knowledge
Base (KB) article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2150348.
Using this strategy simplifies adding, removing, and updating applications; adding or removing user
entitlements to applications; and providing access from any device or network to centrally or distributed
application farms.

Deploying Applications and System Updates with View Composer
Because linked-clone desktop pools share a base image, you can quickly deploy updates and patches by
updating the parent virtual machine.
The recompose feature allows you to make changes to the parent virtual machine, take a snapshot of the
new state, and push the new version of the image to all, or a subset of, users and desktops. You can use this
feature for the following tasks:
n

Applying operating system and software patches and upgrades

Applying service packs

Adding applications

Adding virtual devices

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View Architecture Planning

Changing other virtual machine settings, such as available memory

Note Because you can also use View Composer to create farms of linked-clone Microsoft RDS hosts, the
recompose feature lets you update the guest operating system and applications on RDS hosts.
You can create a View Composer persistent disk that contains user settings and other user-generated data.
This persistent disk is not affected by a recompose operation. When a linked clone is deleted, you can
preserve the user data. When an employee leaves the company, another employee can access the departing
employee's user data. A user who has multiple desktops can consolidate the user data on a single desktop.
If you want to disallow users from adding or removing software or changing settings, you can use the
refresh feature to bring the desktop back to its default values. This feature also reduces the size of linked
clones, which tend to grow over time.

Deploying Applications and System Updates with Instant Clones
Because instant clone desktop pools share a base image, you can quickly deploy updates and patches by
updating the parent virtual machine.
The push image feature allows you to make changes to the parent virtual machine, take a snapshot of the
new state, and push the new version of the image to all users and desktops on a rolling basis. With rolling
updates, the downtime associated with pool maintenance can be minimized. When a user logs off an instant
clone virtual desktop, Horizon 7 deletes the instant clone and creates a fresh new instant clone from the
latest version of the image, and the new clone is ready for the next user to log in.
You can use this feature for the following tasks:
n

Applying operating system and software patches and upgrades

Applying service packs

Adding applications

Adding virtual devices

Changing other virtual machine settings, such as available memory

Managing VMware ThinApp Applications in View Administrator
VMware ThinApp™ lets you package an application into a single file that runs in a virtualized application
sandbox. This strategy results in flexible, conflict-free application provisioning.
VMware ThinApp provides application virtualization by decoupling an application from the underlying
operating system and its libraries and framework and bundling the application into a single executable file
called an application package. You can use View Administrator to distribute VMware ThinApp applications
to desktops and pools.
Important If, instead of distributing ThinApps by assigning them to desktops and pools, you would
rather assign ThinApps to Active Directory users and groups, you can use VMware Identity Manager.
After you create a virtualized application with VMware ThinApp, you can choose to either stream the
application from a shared file server or install the application on the virtual desktops. If you configure the
virtualized application for streaming, you must address the following architectural considerations:
n

Access for specific user groups to specific application repositories, where the application package is
stored

Storage configuration for the application repository

Network traffic generated by streaming, which depends largely on the type of application

For streamed applications, users launch the applications by using a desktop shortcut.

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Chapter 3 Managing Desktop and Application Pools from a Central Location

If you assign a ThinApp package so that it is installed on a virtual desktop, the architectural considerations
are similar to those that you address when you use traditional MSI-based software provisioning. Storage
configuration for the application repository is a consideration both for streamed applications and for
ThinApp packages installed in remote desktops.

Deploying and Managing Applications Using App Volumes
VMware App Volumes offers an alternative way to manage applications by virtualizing applications above
the operating system. By using this strategy, applications, data files, settings, middleware, and
configurations act as separate, layered containers.
These containers are called application stacks (AppStacks) when in read-only mode or writable volumes
when in read-write mode. Administrators can use the App Volumes Manager to create AppStacks and
assign application entitlements, and to deliver provisioned AppStacks to the system or to a user or group.
Applications delivered by App Volumes look and feel natively installed, and they follow users across
sessions and devices. Administrators can update or replace applications in real time and remove any
assigned application, either immediately, while the user is still logged in, or at next login or reboot.
For more information, see the VMware App Volumes documentation, available at
https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/app-volumes-pubs.html.

Using Existing Processes or VMware Mirage for Application Provisioning
With Horizon 7, you can continue to use the application provisioning techniques that your company
currently uses, and you can use Mirage. Two additional considerations include managing server CPU usage
and storage I/O and determining whether users are permitted to install applications.
If you push applications out to large numbers of remote desktops at exactly the same time, you might see
significant spikes in CPU usage and storage I/O. These peak workloads can have noticeable effects on
desktop performance. As a best practice, schedule application updates to occur during off-peak hours and
stagger updates to desktops if possible. You must also verify that your storage solution is designed to
support such workloads.
If your company allows users to install applications, you can continue your current policies, but you cannot
take advantage of View Composer features such as refreshing and recomposing the desktop. With View
Composer, if an application is not virtualized or otherwise included in the user's profile or data settings, that
application is discarded whenever a View Composer refresh, recompose, or rebalance operation occurs. In
many cases, this ability to tightly control which applications are installed is a benefit. View Composer
desktops are easy to support because they are kept close to a known good configuration.
If users have firm requirements for installing their own applications and having those applications persist
for the lifetime of the remote desktop, instead of using View Composer for application provisioning, you
can use instant clones together with App Volumes. Another solution is to create full-clone dedicated
desktops, allow users to install applications, and then use Mirage to manage and update the desktops
without overwriting user-installed applications.
Important Also use Mirage to manage locally installed offline desktops and their applications. For more
information, see the Mirage Documentation page.

Using Active Directory GPOs to Manage Users and Desktops
Horizon 7 includes many Group Policy administrative ADMX templates for centralizing the management
and configuration of Horizon 7 components and remote desktops.
After you import these templates into Active Directory, you can use them to set policies that apply to the
following groups and components:
n

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All systems regardless of which user logs in

View Architecture Planning

All users regardless of the system they log in to

Connection Server configuration

Horizon Client configuration

Horizon Agent configuration

After a GPO is applied, properties are stored in the local Windows registry of the specified component.
You can use GPOs to set all the policies that are available from the Horizon Administrator user interface
(UI). You can also use GPOs to set policies that are not available from the UI. For a complete list and
description of the settings available through ADMX templates, see Configuring Remote Desktop Features in
Horizon 7.

Using Smart Policies
You can also use Smart Policies to create policies that control the behavior of the USB redirection, virtual
printing, clipboard redirection, client drive redirection, and PCoIP display protocol features on specific
remote desktops. This feature requires User Environment Manager.
With Smart Policies, you can create policies that take effect only if certain conditions are met. For example,
you can configure a policy that disables the client drive redirection feature if a user connects to a remote
desktop from outside your corporate network.
In general, Horizon policy settings that you configure for remote desktop features in User Environment
Manager override any equivalent registry key and group policy settings.

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Architecture Design Elements and
Planning Guidelines for Remote
Desktop Deployments

A typical Horizon 7 architecture design uses a pod strategy. Pod definitions can vary, based on hardware
configuration, Horizon 7 and vSphere software versions used, and other environment-specific design
factors.
The examples in this document illustrate a scalable design that you can adapt to your enterprise
environment and special requirements. This chapter includes key details about requirements for memory,
CPU, storage capacity, network components, and hardware to give IT architects and planners a practical
understanding of what is involved in deploying a Horizon 7 solution.
Important This chapter does not cover the following topics:
Architecture design for
hosted applications

A Horizon 7 pod can support farms of Microsoft RDS hosts, where each farm contains RDS
hosts. For more information, see Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7. If
you plan to use virtual machines for RDS hosts, also see “RDS Host Virtual Machine
Configuration,” on page 57.

Architecture design for
View Agent Direct
Connect Plugin

With this plugin running on a remote virtual machine desktop, the client can connect directly to
the virtual machine. All the remote desktop features, including PCoIP, HTML Access, RDP, USB
redirection, and session management work in the same way, as if the user had connected
through View Connection Server. For more information, see View Agent Direct-Connection Plugin
Administration.

This chapter includes the following topics:
n

“Virtual Machine Requirements for Remote Desktops,” on page 48

“Horizon 7 ESXi Node,” on page 52

“Desktop Pools for Specific Types of Workers,” on page 53

“Desktop Virtual Machine Configuration,” on page 57

“RDS Host Virtual Machine Configuration,” on page 57

“vCenter Server and View Composer Virtual Machine Configuration,” on page 58

“Horizon Connection Server Maximums and Virtual Machine Configuration,” on page 59

“vSphere Clusters,” on page 61

“Storage and Bandwidth Requirements,” on page 63

“Horizon 7 Building Blocks,” on page 71

“Horizon 7 Pods,” on page 72

“Advantages of Using Multiple vCenter Servers in a Pod,” on page 74

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View Architecture Planning

Virtual Machine Requirements for Remote Desktops
When you plan the specifications for remote desktops, the choices that you make regarding RAM, CPU, and
disk space have a significant effect on your choices for server and storage hardware and expenditures.
n

Planning Based on Types of Workers on page 48
For many configuration elements, including RAM, CPU, and storage sizing, requirements depend
largely on the type of worker who uses the virtual desktop and on the applications that must be
installed.

Estimating Memory Requirements for Virtual Machine Desktops on page 49
RAM costs more for servers than it does for PCs. Because the cost of RAM is a high percentage of
overall server hardware costs and total storage capacity needed, determining the correct memory
allocation is crucial to planning your desktop deployment.

Estimating CPU Requirements for Virtual Machine Desktops on page 51
When estimating CPU, you must gather information about the average CPU utilization for various
types of workers in your enterprise.

Choosing the Appropriate System Disk Size on page 51
When allocating disk space, provide only enough space for the operating system, applications, and
additional content that users might install or generate. Usually this amount is smaller than the size of
the disk that is included on a physical PC.

Planning Based on Types of Workers
For many configuration elements, including RAM, CPU, and storage sizing, requirements depend largely on
the type of worker who uses the virtual desktop and on the applications that must be installed.
For architecture planning, workers can be categorized into several types.

Task workers

Task workers and administrative workers perform repetitive tasks within a
small set of applications, usually at a stationary computer. The applications
are usually not as CPU- and memory-intensive as the applications used by
knowledge workers. Task workers who work specific shifts might all log in to
their virtual desktops at the same time. Task workers include call center
analysts, retail employees, warehouse workers, and so on.

Knowledge workers

Knowledge workers' daily tasks include accessing the Internet, using email,
and creating complex documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.
Knowledge workers include accountants, sales managers, marketing
research analysts, and so on.

Power users

Power users include application developers and people who use graphicsintensive applications.

Kiosk users

These users need to share a desktop that is located in a public place.
Examples of kiosk users include students using a shared computer in a
classroom, nurses at nursing stations, and computers used for job placement
and recruiting. These desktops require automatic login. Authentication can
be done through certain applications if necessary.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Estimating Memory Requirements for Virtual Machine Desktops
RAM costs more for servers than it does for PCs. Because the cost of RAM is a high percentage of overall
server hardware costs and total storage capacity needed, determining the correct memory allocation is
crucial to planning your desktop deployment.
If the RAM allocation is too low, storage I/O can be negatively affected because too much Windows paging
occurs. If the RAM allocation is too high, storage capacity can be negatively affected because the paging file
in the guest operating system and the swap and suspend files for each virtual machine grow too large.

RAM Sizing Impact on Performance
When allocating RAM, avoid choosing an overly conservative setting. Take the following considerations into
account:
n

Insufficient RAM allocations can cause excessive Windows paging, which can generate I/O that causes
significant performance degradations and increases storage I/O load.

VMware ESXi supports sophisticated memory resource management algorithms such as transparent
page sharing and memory ballooning, which can significantly reduce the physical RAM needed to
support a given guest RAM allocation. For example, even though 2GB might be allocated to a virtual
desktop, only a fraction of that number is consumed in physical RAM.

Because virtual desktop performance is sensitive to response times, on the ESXi host, set nonzero values
for RAM reservation settings. Reserving some RAM guarantees that idle but in-use desktops are never
completely swapped out to disk. It can also reduce storage space consumed by ESXi swap files.
However, higher reservation settings affect your ability to overcommit memory on an ESXi host and
might affect VMotion maintenance operations.

RAM Sizing Impact on Storage
The amount of RAM that you allocate to a virtual machine is directly related to the size of the certain files
that the virtual machine uses. To access the files in the following list, use the Windows guest operating
system to locate the Windows page and hibernate files, and use the ESXi host's file system to locate the ESXi
swap and suspend files.
Windows page file

By default, this file is sized at 150 percent of guest RAM. This file, which is by
default located at C:\pagefile.sys, causes thin-provisioned storage to grow
because it is accessed frequently. On View Composer linked-clone virtual
machines, the page file and temporary files can be redirected to a separate
virtual disk that is deleted when the virtual machines are powered off.
Disposable page-file redirection saves storage, slowing the growth of linked
clones and also can improve performance. Although you can adjust the size
from within Windows, doing so might have a negative effect on application
performance.
For instant clones, any guest operating systems paging and temp files are
automatically deleted during the logoff operation and so do not have time to
grow very large. Each time a user logs out of an instant clone desktop, View
deletes the clone, and provisions and powers on another instant clone based
on the latest OS image available for the pool.

Windows hibernate file
for laptops

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This file can equal 100 percent of guest RAM. You can safely delete this file
because it is not needed in View deployments.

View Architecture Planning

ESXi swap file

This file, which has a .vswp extension, is created if you reserve less than 100
percent of a virtual machine's RAM. The size of the swap file is equal to the
unreserved portion of guest RAM. For example, if 50 percent of guest RAM
is reserved and guest RAM is 2GB, the ESXi swap file is 1GB. This file can be
stored on the local data store on the ESXi host or cluster.

ESXi suspend file

This file, which has a .vmss extension, is created if you set the desktop pool
logoff policy so that the virtual desktop is suspended when the end user logs
off. The size of this file is equal to the size of guest RAM.

RAM Sizing for Specific Monitor Configurations When Using PCoIP or Blast
Extreme
In addition to system memory, a virtual machine also requires a small amount of RAM on the ESXi host for
video overhead. This VRAM size requirement depends in on the display resolution and number of monitors
configured for end users. Table 4-1 lists the amount of overhead RAM required for various configurations.
The amounts of memory listed in the columns are in addition to the amount of memory required for other
PCoIP or Blast Extreme functionality.
Table 4‑1. PCoIP or Blast Extreme Client Display Overhead
Display
Resolution
Standard

Width, in
Pixels

Height, in
Pixels

1-Monitor
Overhead

2-Monitor
Overhead

3-Monitor
Overhead

4-Monitor
Overhead

VGA

640

480

1.20MB

3.20MB

4.80MB

5.60MB

WXGA

1280

800

4.00MB

12.50MB

18.75MB

25.00MB

1080p

1920

1080

8.00MB

25.40MB

38.00MB

50.60MB

WQXGA

2560

1600

16.00MB

60.00MB

84.80MB

109.60MB

UHD (4K)

3840

2160

32.00MB

78.00MB

124.00MB

Not supported

For calculating system requirements, the VRAM values are in addition to the base system RAM for the
virtual machine. Overhead memory is automatically calculated and configured when you specify the
maximum number of monitors and select the display resolution in View Administrator.
If you use the 3D rendering feature and select Soft3D or vSGA, you can recalculate using the additional
VRAM values in a View Administrator control for configuring VRAM for 3D guests. Alternatively, and for
other types of graphics acceleration besides Soft3D and vSGA, you can specify the exact amount of VRAM if
you elect to manage VRAM by using vSphere Client.
By default, the multiple-monitor configuration matches the host topology. There is extra overhead
precalcuated for more than 2 monitors to accommodate additional topology schemes. If you encounter a
black screen when starting a remote desktop session, verify that the values for the number of monitors and
the display resolution, which are set in View Administrator, match the host system, or manually adjust the
amount of memory by using selecting Manage using vSphere Client in View Administrator and then set
the total video memory value to maximum of 128MB.

RAM Sizing for Specific Workloads and Operating Systems
Because the amount of RAM required can vary widely, depending on the type of worker, many companies
conduct a pilot phase to determine the correct setting for various pools of workers in their enterprise.
A good starting point is to allocate 1GB for 32-bit Windows 7 or later desktops and 2GB for 64-bit
Windows 7 or later desktops. If you want to use one of the hardware accelerated graphics features for 3D
workloads, VMware recommends 2 virtual CPUs and 4GB of RAM. During a pilot, monitor the performance
and disk space used with various types of workers and make adjustments until you find the optimal setting
for each pool of workers.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Estimating CPU Requirements for Virtual Machine Desktops
When estimating CPU, you must gather information about the average CPU utilization for various types of
workers in your enterprise.
CPU requirements vary by worker type. During your pilot phase, use a performance monitoring tool, such
as Perfmon in the virtual machine, esxtop in ESXi, or vCenter Server performance monitoring tools, to
understand both the average and peak CPU use levels for these groups of workers. Also use the following
guidelines:
n

Software developers or other power uses with high-performance needs might have much higher CPU
requirements than knowledge workers and task workers. Dual or Quad virtual CPUs are recommended
for 64-bit Windows 7 virtual machines running compute-intensive tasks such as using CAD
applications, playing HD videos, or driving 4K display resolutions.

Single virtual CPUs are generally recommended for other cases.

Because many virtual machines run on one server, CPU can spike if agents such as antivirus agents all check
for updates at exactly the same time. Determine which agents and how many agents could cause
performance issues and adopt a strategy for addressing these issues. For example, the following strategies
might be helpful in your enterprise:
n

Use instant clones or View Composer linked clones to update images rather than having software
management agents download software updates to each individual virtual desktop.

Schedule antivirus and software updates to run at nonpeak hours, when few users are likely to be
logged in.

Stagger or randomize when updates occur.

Use an antivirus product that is compatible with the VMware vShield API. For example, this API has
®
been integrated into VMware vCloud Networking and Security 5.1 and later.

As an informal initial sizing approach, to start, assume that each virtual machine requires 1/8 to 1/10 of a
CPU core as the minimum guaranteed compute power. That is, plan a pilot that uses 8 to 10 virtual
machines per core. For example, if you assume 8 virtual machines per core and have a 2-socket 8-core ESXi
host, you can host 128 virtual machines on the server during the pilot. Monitor the overall CPU usage on the
host during this period and ensure that it rarely exceeds a safety margin such as 80 percent to give enough
headroom for spikes.

Choosing the Appropriate System Disk Size
When allocating disk space, provide only enough space for the operating system, applications, and
additional content that users might install or generate. Usually this amount is smaller than the size of the
disk that is included on a physical PC.
Because datacenter disk space usually costs more per gigabyte than desktop or laptop disk space in a
traditional PC deployment, optimize the operating system image size. The following suggestions might help
optimize image size:
n

Remove unnecessary files. For example, reduce the quotas on temporary Internet files.

Turn off Windows services such as the indexer service, the defragmenter service, and restore points. For
details, see the topics "Optimize Windows Guest Operating System Performance," "Optimize Windows
7 and Windows 8 Guest Operating System Performance," and "Overview of Windows 7 and Windows 8
Services and Tasks That Cause Linked-Clone Growth," in Setting Up Virtual Desktops in Horizon 7.

Choose a virtual disk size that is sufficient to allow for future growth, but is not unrealistically large.

Use centralized file shares or a View Composer persistent disk or App Volumes for user-generated
content and user-installed applications.

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View Architecture Planning

If you are using vSphere 5.1 or later, enable space reclamation for vCenter Server and for the linkedclone desktop pools.
If virtual machine desktops use the space-efficient disk format available with vSphere 5.1 or later, stale
or deleted data within a guest operating system is automatically reclaimed with a wipe and shrink
process.

The amount of storage space required must take into account the following files for each virtual desktop:
n

The ESXi suspend file is equivalent to the amount of RAM allocated to the virtual machine.

By default, the Windows page file is equivalent to 150 percent of RAM.

Log files can take up as much as 100MB for each virtual machine.

The virtual disk, or .vmdk file, must accommodate the operating system, applications, and future
applications and software updates. The virtual disk must also accommodate local user data and userinstalled applications if they are located on the virtual desktop rather than on file shares.
If you use View Composer, the .vmdk files grow over time, but you can control the amount of growth by
scheduling View Composer refresh operations, setting a storage over-commit policy for virtual machine
desktop pools, and redirecting Windows page and temporary files to a separate, nonpersistent disk.
If you use instant clones, the .vmdk files grow over time within a login session. Whenever a user logs
out, the instant clone desktop is automatically deleted and a new instant clone is created and ready for
the next user to log in. With this process, the desktop is effectively refreshed and returned to its original
size.

You can also add 15 percent to this estimate to be sure that users do not run out of disk space.

Horizon 7 ESXi Node
A node is a single VMware ESXi host that hosts virtual machine desktops in a Horizon 7 deployment.
Horizon 7 is most cost-effective when you maximize the consolidation ratio, which is the number of
desktops hosted on an ESXi host. Although many factors affect server selection, if you are optimizing strictly
for acquisition price, you must find server configurations that have an appropriate balance of processing
power and memory.
There is no substitute for measuring performance under actual, real world scenarios, such as in a pilot, to
determine an appropriate consolidation ratio for your environment and hardware configuration.
Consolidation ratios can vary significantly, based on usage patterns and environmental factors. Use the
following guidelines:
n

As a general framework, consider compute capacity in terms of 8 to 10 virtual desktops per CPU core.
For information about calculating CPU requirements for each virtual machine, see “Estimating CPU
Requirements for Virtual Machine Desktops,” on page 51.

Think of memory capacity in terms of virtual desktop RAM, host RAM, and overcommit
ratio. Although you can have between 8 and 10 virtual desktops per CPU core, if virtual desktops have
1GB or more of RAM, you must also carefully consider physical RAM requirements. For information
about calculating the amount of RAM required per virtual machine, see “Estimating Memory
Requirements for Virtual Machine Desktops,” on page 49.
Note that physical RAM costs are not linear and that in some situations, it can be cost-effective to
purchase more smaller servers that do not use expensive DIMM chips. In other cases, rack density,
storage connectivity, manageability and other considerations can make minimizing the number of
servers in a deployment a better choice.

Note that in Horizon 7 5.2 and later, the View Storage Accelerator feature is turned on by default, which
allows ESXi 5.0 and later hosts to cache common virtual machine disk data. View Storage Accelerator
can improve performance and reduce the need for extra storage I/O bandwidth to manage boot storms
and anti-virus scanning I/O storms. This feature requires 1GB of RAM per ESXi host.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Finally, consider cluster requirements and any failover requirements. For more information, see
“Determining Requirements for High Availability,” on page 62.

For information about specifications of ESXi hosts in vSphere, see the VMware vSphere Configuration
Maximums document.

Desktop Pools for Specific Types of Workers
Horizon 7 provides many features to help you conserve storage and reduce the amount of processing power
required for various use cases. Many of these features are available as pool settings.
The most fundamental question to consider is whether a certain type of user needs a stateful desktop image
or a stateless desktop image. Users who need a stateful desktop image have data in the operating system
image itself that must be preserved, maintained, and backed up. For example, these users install some of
their own applications or have data that cannot be saved outside of the virtual machine itself, such as on a
file server or in an application database.
Stateless desktop
images

Also known as nonpersistent desktops, stateless architectures have many
advantages, such as being easier to support and having lower storage costs.
Other benefits include a limited need to back up the virtual machines and
easier, less expensive disaster recovery and business continuity options.

Stateful desktop images

Also known as persistent desktops, these images might require traditional
image management techniques. Stateful images can have low storage costs in
conjunction with certain storage system technologies. Backup and recovery
technologies such as VMware Consolidated Backup and VMware Site
Recovery Manager are important when considering strategies for backup,
disaster recovery, and business continuity.

There are two ways to create stateless desktop images in Horizon 7:
n

You can create floating assignment pools of instant clone virtual machines. Folder redirection and
roaming profiles can optionally be used to store user data.

You can use View Composer to create floating or dedicated assignment pools of linked clone virtual
machines. Folder redirection and roaming profiles can optionally be used to store user data or configure
persistent disks to persist user data.

There are several ways to create stateful desktop images in Horizon 7:
n

You can create full clones or full virtual machines. Some storage vendors have cost-effective storage
solutions for full clones. These vendors often have their own best practices and provisioning utilities.
Using one of these vendors might require that you create a manual dedicated-assignment pool.

You can create pools of instant-clone or linked-clone virtual machines and use App Volumes user
writable volumes to attach user data and user-installed apps.

Whether you use stateless or stateful desktops depends on the specific type of worker.
n

Pools for Task Workers on page 54
You can standardize on stateless desktop images for task workers so that the image is always in a wellknown, easily supportable configuration and so that workers can log in to any available desktop.

Pools for Knowledge Workers and Power Users on page 55
Knowledge workers must be able to create complex documents and have them persist on the desktop.
Power users must be able to install their own applications and have them persist. Depending on the
nature and amount of personal data that must be retained, the desktop can be stateful or stateless.

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View Architecture Planning

Pools for Kiosk Users on page 56
Kiosk users might include customers at airline check-in stations, students in classrooms or libraries,
medical personnel at medical data entry workstations, or customers at self-service points. Accounts
associated with client devices rather than users are entitled to use these desktop pools because users
do not need to log in to use the client device or the remote desktop. Users can still be required to
provide authentication credentials for some applications.

Pools for Task Workers
You can standardize on stateless desktop images for task workers so that the image is always in a wellknown, easily supportable configuration and so that workers can log in to any available desktop.
Because task workers perform repetitive tasks within a small set of applications, you can create stateless
desktop images, which help conserve storage space and processing requirements.
Use the following pool settings for instant-clone desktop pools:
n

For instant clone pools, to optimize resource utilization, use on demand provisioning to grow or shrink
the pool based on usage. Be sure to specify enough spare desktops to satisfy the login rate.

For instant clone desktop pools, Horizon 7 automatically deletes the instant clone whenever a user logs
out. A new instant clone is created and ready for the next user to log in, thus effectively refreshing the
desktop on every log out.

Use the following pool settings for View Composer linked-clone desktop pools:
n

For View Composer desktop pools, determine what action, if any, to take when users log off. Disks
grow over time. You can conserve disk space by refreshing the desktop to its original state when users
log off. You can also set a schedule for periodically refreshing desktops. For example, you can schedule
desktops to refresh daily, weekly, or monthly.

If applicable, and if you use View Composer linked-clone pools, consider storing desktops on local ESXi
data stores. This strategy can offer advantages such as inexpensive hardware, fast virtual-machine
provisioning, high-performance power operations, and simple management. For a list of the limitations,
see “Local Datastores for Floating, Stateless Desktops,” on page 40. Instant clone pools are not
supported on local data stores.
Note For information about other types of storage options, see “Reducing and Managing Storage
Requirements,” on page 35.

Use the Persona Management feature so that users always have their preferred desktop appearance and
application settings, as with Windows user profiles. If you do not have the desktops set to be refreshed
or deleted at logoff, you can configure the persona to be removed at logoff.
Important Persona Management facilitates implementing a floating-assignment pool for those users
who want to retain settings between sessions. Previously, one of the limitations of floating-assignment
desktops was that when end users logged off, they lost all their configuration settings and any data
stored in the remote desktop.
Each time end users logged on, their desktop background was set to the default wallpaper, and they
would have to configure each application's preferences again. With Persona Management, an end user
of a floating-assignment desktop cannot tell the difference between their session and a session on a
dedicated-assignment desktop.

Use the following general pool settings for all desktop pools:

Create an automated pool so that desktops can be created when the pool is created or can be generated
on demand based on pool usage.

Use floating assignment so that users log in to any available desktop. This setting reduces the number of
desktops required if everyone does not need to be logged in at the same time.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Create instant-clone or View Composer linked-clone desktops so that desktops share the same base
image and use less storage space in the datacenter than full virtual machines.

Pools for Knowledge Workers and Power Users
Knowledge workers must be able to create complex documents and have them persist on the desktop.
Power users must be able to install their own applications and have them persist. Depending on the nature
and amount of personal data that must be retained, the desktop can be stateful or stateless.
For knowledge workers who do not need user-installed applications except for temporary use, you can
create stateless desktop images and save all their personal data outside of the virtual machine, on a file
server or in an application database. For other knowledge workers and for power users, you can create
stateful desktop images.
Use the following pool settings for instant-clone desktop pools:
n

If you use instant clone desktops, implement file share, roaming profile, or another profile management
solution.

Use the following pool settings for View Composer linked-clone desktop pools:
n

If you use View Composer with vSphere 5.1 or later virtual desktops, enable the space reclamation
feature for vCenter Server and for the desktop pool. With the space reclamation feature, stale or deleted
data within a guest operating system is automatically reclaimed with a wipe and shrink process.

If you use View Composer linked-clone desktops, implement Persona Management, roaming profiles,
or another profile management solution. You can also configure persistent disks so that you can refresh
and recompose the linked-clone OS disks while keeping a copy of the user profile on the persistent
disks.

Use the Persona Management feature so that users always have their preferred desktop appearance and
application settings, as with Windows user profiles.

Use the following general pool settings for all desktop pools:
n

Some power users and knowledge workers, such as accountants, sales managers, marketing research
analysts, might need to log into the same desktop every time. Create dedicated assignment pools for
them.

Use vStorage thin provisioning so that at first, each desktop uses only as much storage space as the disk
needs for its initial operation.

For power users and knowledge workers who must install their own applications, which adds data to
the operating system disk, there are two options. One option is to create full virtual machine desktops.
The other option is to create a pool of linked clones or instant clones, and use App Volumes to persist
user-installed applications and user data across logins.

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If knowledge workers do not require user-installed applications except for temporary use, you can
create View Composer linked-clone desktops or instant clone desktops. The desktop images share the
same base image and use less storage space than full virtual machines.

View Architecture Planning

Pools for Kiosk Users
Kiosk users might include customers at airline check-in stations, students in classrooms or libraries, medical
personnel at medical data entry workstations, or customers at self-service points. Accounts associated with
client devices rather than users are entitled to use these desktop pools because users do not need to log in to
use the client device or the remote desktop. Users can still be required to provide authentication credentials
for some applications.
Virtual machine desktops that are set to run in kiosk mode use stateless desktop images because user data
does not need to be preserved in the operating system disk. Kiosk mode desktops are used with thin client
devices or locked-down PCs. You must ensure that the desktop application implements authentication
mechanisms for secure transactions, that the physical network is secure against tampering and snooping,
and that all devices connected to the network are trusted.
As a best practice, use dedicated Connection Server instances to handle clients in kiosk mode, and create
dedicated organizational units and groups in Active Directory for the accounts of these clients. This practice
not only partitions these systems against unwarranted intrusion, but also makes it easier to configure and
administer the clients.
To set up kiosk mode, you must use the vdmadmin command-line interface and perform several procedures
documented in the topics about kiosk mode in the View Administration document.
As part of this setup, you can use the following instant-clone desktop pool settings.
n

If you are using instant clone desktop pools, Horizon 7automatically deletes the instant clone whenever
a user logs out. A new instant clone is created and ready for the next user to log in, thus effectively
refreshing the desktop on every log out.

As part of this setup, you can use the following View Composer linked-clone desktop pool settings.
n

If you are using View Composer linked-clone desktops, institute a refresh policy so that the desktop is
refreshed frequently, such as at every user logoff.

If applicable, consider storing desktops on local ESXi datastores. This strategy can offer advantages
such as inexpensive hardware, fast virtual-machine provisioning, high-performance power operations,
and simple management. For a list of the limitations, see “Local Datastores for Floating, Stateless
Desktops,” on page 40. Instant clone pools are not supported on local data stores.
Note For information about other types of storage options, see “Reducing and Managing Storage
Requirements,” on page 35.

As part of this setup, you can use the following general settings for all desktop pools.

Create an automated pool so that desktops can be created when the pool is created or can be generated
on demand based on pool usage.

Use floating assignment so that users can access any available desktop in the pool.

Create instant-clone or View Composer linked-clone desktops so that desktops share the same base
image and use less storage space in the datacenter than full virtual machines.

Use an Active Directory GPO (group policy object) to configure location-based printing, so that the
desktop uses the nearest printer. For a complete list and description of the settings available through
Group Policy administrative (ADMX) templates, see Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7.

Use a GPO or Smart Policies to control whether local USB devices are connected to the desktop when
the desktop is launched or when USB devices are plugged in to the client computer.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Desktop Virtual Machine Configuration
The example settings for items such as memory, number of virtual processors, and disk space are specific to
Horizon 7.
The amount of system disk space required depends on the number of applications required in the base
image. VMware has validated a setup that included 8GB of disk space. Applications included Microsoft
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer, McAfee Antivirus, and PKZIP.
The amount of disk space required for user data depends on the role of the end user and organizational
policies for data storage. If you use View Composer, this data is kept on a persistent disk.
The guidelines listed in the following table are for a standard Windows 7 or later virtual machine desktop.
Table 4‑2. Desktop Virtual Machine Example for Windows 7 or Windows 8
Item

Example

Operating system

32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 or later (with the latest service pack)

RAM

1GB (4GB if users must have hardware-accelerated graphics for 3D rendering)

Virtual CPU

1 (2 for 64-bit systems or if users must play high-definition or full screen video)

System disk capacity

24GB (slightly less than standard)

User data capacity (as a
persistent disk)

5GB (starting point)

Virtual SCSI adapter type

LSI Logic SAS (the default)

Virtual network adapter

VMXNET 3

RDS Host Virtual Machine Configuration
Use RDS (Remote Desktop Services) hosts for providing published applications and session-based remote
desktops to end users.
An RDS host can be a physical machine or a virtual machine. This example uses a virtual machine with the
specifications listed in the following table. The ESXi host for this virtual machine can be part of a VMware
HA cluster to guard against physical server failures.
Table 4‑3. RDS Host Virtual Machine Example
Item

Example

Operating system

64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 R2

RAM

24GB

Virtual CPU

System disk capacity

40GB

Virtual SCSI adapter type

LSI Logic SAS (the default for Windows Server 2008)

Virtual network adapter

VMXNET 3

1 NIC

1 Gigabit

Maximum number of client connections total
(including session-based remote desktop
connections and remote application connections)

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View Architecture Planning

For more information about RDS host configuration and tested workloads, see the VMware Horizon 6
Reference Architecture white paper at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-Reference-Architecture-Horizon-6-View-MirageWorkspace.pdf.

vCenter Server and View Composer Virtual Machine Configuration
You can install vCenter Server and View Composer on the same virtual machine or on separate servers.
These servers require much more memory and processing power than a desktop virtual machine.
VMware tested having View Composer create and provision 2,000 desktops per pool using vSphere 5.1 or
later. VMware also tested having View Composer perform a recompose operation on 2,000 desktops at a
time. For these tests, vCenter Server and View Composer were installed on separate virtual machines.
Desktop pool size is limited by the following factors:
n

Each desktop pool can contain only one vSphere cluster.

With some setups, clusters can contain up to 32 hosts. With other setups, clusters are limited to 8 hosts.
For more information, see “vSphere Clusters,” on page 61.

Each CPU core has compute capacity for 8 to 10 virtual desktops.

The number of IP addresses available for the subnet limits the number of desktops in the pool. For
example, if your network is set up so that the subnet for the pool contains only 256 usable IP addresses,
the pool size is limited to 256 desktops. You can, however, configure multiple network labels to greatly
expand the number of IP addresses assigned to virtual machines in a pool.

Although you can install vCenter Server and View Composer on a physical machine, this example uses
separate virtual machines with the specifications listed in the following tables. The ESXi host for these
virtual machines can be part of a VMware HA cluster to guard against physical server failures.
This example assumes that you are using View with vSphere 5.1 or later and vCenter Server 5.1 or later.
Important This example also assumes that View Composer and vCenter Server are installed on separate
virtual machines.
Table 4‑4. vCenter Server Virtual Machine Example
Example for a vCenter Server
That Manages 10,000 Desktops

Example for a vCenter Server That
Manages 2,000 Desktops

Operating system

64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2
Enterprise

RAM

48GB

10-24GB, depending on vSphere version

Virtual CPU

2 -8, depending on vSphere version

System disk capacity

180GB

40GB

Virtual SCSI adapter type

LSI Logic SAS (the default for
Windows Server 2008)

LSI Logic SAS (the default for Windows
Server 2008)

Virtual network adapter

E1000 (the default)

VMXNET 3 (though E1000, the default, is
fine too)

Maximum concurrent vCenter
provisioning operations

Maximum concurrent power
operations

Item

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Table 4‑5. View Composer Virtual Machine Example
Example for a View Composer
That Manages 10,000 Desktops

Example for a View Composer That
Manages 2,000 Desktops

Operating system

64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2
Enterprise

RAM

10GB or more , depending on
vSphere version

4-10GB, depending on vSphere version

Virtual CPU

4 or more , depending on vSphere
version

2 -4, depending on vSphere version

System disk capacity

50GB

40GB

Virtual SCSI adapter type

LSI Logic SAS (the default for
Windows Server 2008)

LSI Logic SAS (the default for Windows
Server 2008)

Virtual network adapter

VMXNET 3

Maximum View Composer pool size

2,000 desktops

1,000 desktops

Maximum concurrent View
Composer maintenance operations

Maximum concurrent View
Composer provisioning operations

Item

Important VMware recommends that you place the database to which vCenter Server and View
Composer connect on a separate virtual machine.

Horizon Connection Server Maximums and Virtual Machine
Configuration
When you install Horizon Connection Server, the Horizon Administrator user interface is also installed.

Connection Server Configuration
Although you can install Connection Server on a physical machine, this example uses a virtual machine with
the specifications listed in Table 4-6. The ESXi host for this virtual machine can be part of a VMware HA
cluster to guard against physical server failures.
Table 4‑6. Connection Server Virtual Machine Example
Item

Example

Operating system

64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 R2

RAM

10GB

Virtual CPU

System disk capacity

70GB

Virtual SCSI adapter type

LSI Logic SAS (the default for Windows Server 2008)

Virtual network adapter

VMXNET 3

Network adapter

1Gbps NIC

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Connection Server Cluster Design Considerations
You can deploy multiple replicated Connection Server instances in a group to support load balancing and
high availability. Groups of replicated instances are designed to support clustering within a LAN-connected
single-datacenter environment.
Important To use a group of replicated Connection Server instances across a WAN, MAN (metropolitan
area network), or other non-LAN, in scenarios where a Horizon deployment needs to span datacenters, you
must use the Cloud Pod Architecture feature. You can link together 25 pods to provide a single large
desktop brokering and management environment for five geographically distant sites and provide desktops
and applications for up to 50,000 sessions. For more information, see the Administering Cloud Pod Architecture
in Horizon 7 document.

Maximum Connections for Connection Server
Table 4-7 provides information about the tested limits regarding the number of simultaneous connections
that a Horizon 7 deployment can accommodate.
This example assumes that Connection Server is running on a 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
operating system.
Table 4‑7. Remote Desktop Connections
Connection Servers per
Deployment

Connection Type

Maximum Simultaneous
Connections

1 Connection Server

Direct connection, RDP, Blast Extreme, or
PCoIP

4,000 (tested limit)

1 Connection Server

Tunneled connection, RDP

2,000 (hard limit)

1 Connection Server

PCoIP Secure Gateway connection

4,000 (tested limit)

1 Connection Server

Blast Secure Gateway connection

4,000 (tested limit)

1 Connection Server

Unified Access to physical PCs

2,000

1 Connection Server

Unified Access to RDS hosts

2,000

7 Connection Servers

Direct connection, RDP, Blast Extreme, or
PCoIP

20,000 (tested, and therefore
supported, limit)

PCoIP Secure Gateway connections are required if you use security servers or Unified Access Gateway
appliances for PCoIP connections from outside the corporate network. Blast Secure Gateway connections are
required if you use security servers or Unified Access Gateway appliances for Blast Extreme or HTML
Access connections from outside the corporate network. Tunneled connections are required if you use
security servers or Unified Access Gateway appliances for RDP connections from outside the corporate
network and for USB and multimedia redirection (MMR) acceleration with a PCoIP or Blast Secure Gateway
connection. You can pair multiple security servers to a single Connection Server instance.
Although the maximum number of simultaneous connections to security servers is also 2,000, instead of
using just one security server per Connection Server instance (with 2,000 sessions), you might choose to use
2 or 4. Monitoring of the security server might indicate that the activity for 2,000 users is too great. The
required amount of memory and CPU usage might dictate that you add more security servers per
Connection Server instance to spread the load. For example, you might use 2 security servers, with each one
handling 1,000 connections, or you might use 4 security servers, with each one handling 500 connections.
The ratio of security servers to Connection Server instances depends on the requirements of the particular
environment.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

The number of connections per Unified Access Gateway appliance is similar to those for security servers.
For more information about Unified Access Gateway appliances, see Deploying and Configuring Unified Access
Gateway.
Note In this example, although 5 Connection Server instances could handle 10,000 connections, the
number 7 is shown in the table for availability planning purposes, to accommodate connections coming
from both inside and outside of the corporate network.
For example, if you had 10,000 users, with 8,000 of them inside the corporate network, you would need 5
Connection Server instances inside the corporate network. That way, if one of the instances became
unavailable, the 4 remaining instances could handle the load. Similarly, for the 2,000 connections coming
from outside the corporate network, you would use 2 Connection Server instances so that if one became
unavailable, you would still have one instance left that could handle the load.

Hardware Requirements for Unified Access Gateway with Horizon 7
VMware recommends to use 4 vCPUs and 10GB RAM for Unified Access Gateway appliances to support
maximum number of connections when used with Horizon 7.
Table 4‑8. Hardware Requirements for Unified Access Gateway
Item

Example

Operating system

OVA (SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 (64-bit))

RAM

4GB

Virtual CPU

System disk capacity

20GB (changing the default log level requires additional
space)

Virtual SCSI adapter type

LSI Logic Parallel (the default for OVA)

Virtual network adapter

VMXNET 3

Network adapter

1Gbps NIC

Network Mapping

Single NIC option

vSphere Clusters
Horizon 7 deployments can use VMware HA clusters to guard against physical server failures. Depending
on your setup, clusters can contain up to 32 nodes.
vSphere and vCenter Server provide a rich set of features for managing clusters of servers that host virtual
machine desktops. The cluster configuration is also important because each virtual machine desktop pool
must be associated with a vCenter Server resource pool. Therefore, the maximum number of desktops per
pool is related to the number of servers and virtual machines that you plan to run per cluster.
In very large Horizon 7 deployments, vCenter Server performance and responsiveness can be improved by
having only one cluster object per datacenter object, which is not the default behavior. By default,
vCenter Server creates new clusters within the same datacenter object.
Under the following conditions, vSphere clusters can contain up to 32 ESXi hosts, or nodes:
n

vSphere 5.1 and later, with View Composer linked-clone pools, and store replica disks on NFS
datastores or VMFS5 or later datastores

vSphere 6.0 and later, and store pools on Virtual Volumes datastores

If you have vSphere 5.5 Update 1 and later, and store pools on Virtual SAN datastores, the vSphere clusters
can contain up to 20 ESXi hosts.

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View Architecture Planning

If you store View Composer replicas on a VMFS version earlier than VMFS5, a cluster can have at most eight
hosts. OS disks and persistent disks can be stored on NFS or VMFS datastores.
For more information, see the chapter about creating desktop pools, in the Setting Up Virtual Desktops in
Horizon 7 document. Networking requirements depend on the type of server, the number of network
adapters, and the way in which VMotion is configured.

Determining Requirements for High Availability
vSphere, through its efficiency and resource management, lets you achieve industry-leading levels of virtual
machines per server. But achieving a higher density of virtual machines per server means that more users
are affected if a server fails.
Requirements for high availability can differ substantially based on the purpose of the desktop pool. For
example, a stateless desktop image (floating-assignment) pool might have different recovery point objective
(RPO) requirements than a stateful desktop image (dedicated-assignment) pool. For a floating-assignment
pool, an acceptable solution might be to have users log in to a different desktop if the desktop they are using
becomes unavailable.
In cases where availability requirements are high, proper configuration of VMware HA is essential. If you
use VMware HA and are planning for a fixed number of desktops per server, run each server at a reduced
capacity. If a server fails, the capacity of desktops per server is not exceeded when the desktops are restarted
on a different host.
For example, in an 8-host cluster, where each host is capable of running 128 desktops, and the goal is to
tolerate a single server failure, make sure that no more than 128 * (8 - 1) = 896 desktops are running on that
cluster. You can also use VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) to help balance the desktops
among all 8 hosts. You get full use of the extra server capacity without letting any hot-spare resources sit
idle. Additionally, DRS can help rebalance the cluster after a failed server is restored to service.
You must also make sure that storage is properly configured to support the I/O load that results from many
virtual machines restarting at once in response to a server failure. Storage IOPS has the most effect on how
quickly desktops recover from a server failure.

Example: Cluster Configuration Examples
The settings listed in the following tables are Horizon 7-specific. For information about limits of HA clusters
in vSphere, see the VMware vSphere Configuration Maximums document.
Note The following infrastructure example was tested with Horizon 7 5.2 and vSphere 5.1. The example
uses View Composer linked-clones, rather than instant clones, because the test was performed with View
5.2. The instant clone feature is introduced with Horizon 7. Other features that were not available with View
5.2 include Virtual SAN and Virtual Volumes.
Table 4‑9. Horizon 7 Infrastructure Cluster Example

Item

Example

Virtual machines

vCenter Server instances, Active Directory, SQL database server, View Composer, Connection
Server instances, security servers, parent virtual machines to use as desktop pool sources

Nodes (ESXi hosts)

6 Dell PowerEdge R720 servers (16 cores * 2 GHz; and 192GB RAM on each host)

SSD storage

Virtual machines for vCenter Server, View Composer, SQL database server, and the parent
virtual machines

Non-SSD storage

Virtual machines for Active Directory, Connection Server, and security server

Cluster type

DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler)/HA

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Table 4‑10. Virtual Machine Desktop Cluster Example
Item

Example

Number of clusters

Number of desktops
and pools per cluster

1 pool of 2,000 desktops (virtual machines) per cluster

Nodes (ESXi hosts)

Following are examples of various servers that could be used for each cluster:
12 Dell PowerEdge R720 (16 cores * 2 GHz; and 192GB RAM on each host)
n 16 Dell PowerEdge R710 (12 cores * 2.526 GHz; and 144GB RAM on each host)
n 8 Dell PowerEdge R810 (24 cores * 2 GHz; and 256GB RAM on each host)
n 6 Dell PowerEdge R810 + 3 PowerEdge R720
n

SSD storage

Replica virtual machines

Non-SSD storage

32 Non-SSD datastores for clones (450 GB per datastore)

Cluster type

DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler)/HA

Storage and Bandwidth Requirements
Several considerations go into planning for shared storage of virtual machine desktops, planning for storage
bandwidth requirements with regard to I/O storms, and planning network bandwidth needs.
Details about the storage and networking components used in a test setup at VMware are provided in these
related topics.
n

Shared Storage Example on page 64
For a View 5.2 test environment, View Composer replica virtual machines were placed on high-readperformance solid-state drives (SSD), which support tens of thousands of I/Os per second (IOPS).
Linked clones were placed on traditional, lower-performance spinning media-backed datastores,
which are less expensive and provide higher storage capacity. The example uses View Composer
linked-clones, rather than instant clones, because the test was performed with View 5.2. The instant
clone feature is introduced with Horizon 7.

Storage Bandwidth Considerations on page 66
In a Horizon 7 environment, logon storms are the main consideration when determining bandwidth
requirements.

Network Bandwidth Considerations on page 66
Certain virtual and physical networking components are required to accommodate a typical workload.

View Composer Performance Test Results on page 68
These test results describe a View 5.2 setup with 10,000-desktops, in which one vCenter Server 5.1
instance managed 5 pools of 2,000 virtual machine desktops each. Only one maintenance period was
required for provisioning a new pool or for recomposing, refreshing, or rebalancing an existing pool of
2,000 virtual machines. A logon storm of 10,000 users was also tested.

WAN Support on page 70
For wide-area networks (WANs), you must consider bandwidth constraints and latency issues. The
PCoIP and Blast Extreme display protocols provided by VMware adapt to varying latency and
bandwidth conditions.

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View Architecture Planning

Shared Storage Example
For a View 5.2 test environment, View Composer replica virtual machines were placed on high-readperformance solid-state drives (SSD), which support tens of thousands of I/Os per second (IOPS). Linked
clones were placed on traditional, lower-performance spinning media-backed datastores, which are less
expensive and provide higher storage capacity. The example uses View Composer linked-clones, rather than
instant clones, because the test was performed with View 5.2. The instant clone feature is introduced with
Horizon 7.
Storage design considerations are one of the most important elements of a successful View architecture. The
decision that has the greatest architectural impact is whether to use View Composer desktops, which use
linked-clone technology. The ESXi binaries, virtual machine swap files, and View Composer replicas of
parent virtual machines are stored on the shared storage system.
The external storage system that vSphere uses can be a Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN (storage area network),
or an NFS (Network File System) NAS (network-attached storage). With the Virtual SAN feature, available
with vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or later, the storage system can also be aggregated local server-attached storage.
The following example describes the tiered storage strategy used in a View 5.2 test setup in which one
vCenter Server managed 10,000 desktops.
Note This example was used in a View 5.2 setup, which was carried out prior to the release of VMware
Virtual SAN. For guidance on sizing and designing the key components of View virtual desktop
infrastructures for VMware Virtual SAN, see the white paper at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsan/VMW-TMD-Virt-SAN-Dsn-Szing-Guid-Horizon-View.pdf.
The Virtual SAN feature available with vSphere 6.0 and later releases contains many performance
improvements over the feature that was available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1. With vSphere 6.0 this feature
also has broader HCL (hardware compatibility) support. For more information about Virtual SAN in
vSphere 6 or later, see the Administering VMware Virtual SAN document.
Physical storage

SSD storage tier

Virtual machine desktop
storage tier

EMC VNX7500-block only

1.8TB Fast Cache (SSD)

Eight 10Gbit FCoE front end connections (4 per controller).

A single RAID5 storage pool:
n

12 * 200GB EFD

250GB LUN for parent images

500GB LUN for infrastructure

75GB LUNs for replica stores (1 per desktop pool cluster)

Two RAID 1/0 storage pools:
For pool 1:
n

360 15K 300GB HDD (47TB usable)

97 450GB LUNs for desktops

For pool 2:

296 15K 300GB HDD (39TB usable)

7 450GB LUNs for infrastructure

85 450GB LUNs for desktops

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

This storage strategy is illustrated in the following figure.
Figure 4‑1. Tiered Storage Example for a Large Desktop Pool

Parent 2

Parent 4

Parent 1
Parent 3

Parent 5

PARENT SSD, shared across all clusters

Replica 1
ES
X
ES
X
ES
X
ESX cluster, consisting of 192
Intel cores and 2.3TB RAM,
connected via 10Gb FCoE

2000-desktop pool
staorage cross section

Replica SSD, one per pool/cluster
Linked clones

Pool datastores,
15K RAID1/0
32 datastores per pool

From an architectural perspective, View Composer creates desktop images that share a base image, which
can reduce storage requirements by 50 percent or more. You can further reduce storage requirements by
setting a refresh policy that periodically returns the desktop to its original state and reclaims space that is
used to track changes since the last refresh operation.
If you use View Composer with vSphere 5.1 or later virtual machine desktops, you can use the space
reclamation feature. With this feature, stale or deleted data within a guest operating system is automatically
reclaimed with a wipe and shrink process when the amount of unused disk space reaches a certain
threshold. Note that the space reclamation feature is not supported if you use a Virtual SAN datastore.

VMware, Inc.

View Architecture Planning

You can also reduce operating system disk space by using View Composer persistent disks or a shared file
server as the primary repository for the user profile and user documents. Because View Composer lets you
separate user data from the operating system, you might find that only the persistent disk needs to be
backed up or replicated, which further reduces storage requirements. For more information, see “Reducing
Storage Requirements with View Composer,” on page 39.
Note Decisions regarding dedicated storage components can best be made during a pilot phase. The main
consideration is I/Os per second (IOPS). You might experiment with a tiered-storage strategy or Virtual SAN
storage to maximize performance and cost savings.
For more information, see the best-practices guide called Storage Considerations for VMware View.

Storage Bandwidth Considerations
In a Horizon 7 environment, logon storms are the main consideration when determining bandwidth
requirements.
Although many elements are important to designing a storage system that supports a Horizon 7
environment, from a server configuration perspective, planning for proper storage bandwidth is essential.
You must also consider the effects of port consolidation hardware.
Horizon 7 environments can occasionally experience I/O storm loads, during which all virtual machines
undertake an activity at the same time. I/O storms can be triggered by guest-based agents such as antivirus
software or software-update agents. I/O storms can also be triggered by human behavior, such as when all
employees log in at nearly the same time in the morning. VMware has tested a logon storm scenario for
10,000 desktops. For more information, see “View Composer Performance Test Results,” on page 68.
You can minimize these storm workloads through operational best practices, such as staggering updates to
different virtual machines. You can also test various log-off policies during a pilot phase to determine
whether suspending or powering off virtual machines when users log off causes an I/O storm. By storing
View Composer replicas on separate, high-performance datastores, you can speed up intensive, concurrent
read operations to contend with I/O storm loads. For example, you can use one of the following storage
strategies:
n

Manually configure the pool settings so that replicas are stored on separate, high-performance
datastores.

Use Virtual SAN, available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or later, which uses Software Policy-Based
Management to determine which kinds of disks to use for replicas.

Use Virtual Volumes, available with vSphere 6.0 or later, which uses Software Policy-Based
Management to determine which kinds of disks to use for replicas.

In addition to determining best practices, VMware recommends that you provide bandwidth of 1Gbps per
100 virtual machines, even though average bandwidth might be 10 times less than that. Such conservative
planning guarantees sufficient storage connectivity for peak loads.

Network Bandwidth Considerations
Certain virtual and physical networking components are required to accommodate a typical workload.
For display traffic, many elements can affect network bandwidth, such as protocol used, monitor resolution
and configuration, and the amount of multimedia content in the workload. Concurrent launches of streamed
applications can also cause usage spikes.
Because the effects of these issues can vary widely, many companies monitor bandwidth consumption as
part of a pilot project. As a starting point for a pilot, plan for 150 to 200Kbps of capacity for a typical
knowledge worker.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

With the PCoIP or Blast Extreme display protocol, if you have an enterprise LAN with 100Mb or a 1Gb
switched network, your end users can expect excellent performance under the following conditions:
n

Two monitors (1920 x 1080)

Heavy use of Microsoft Office applications

Heavy use of Flash-embedded Web browsing

Frequent use of multimedia with limited use of full screen mode

Frequent use of USB-based peripherals

Network-based printing

For more information, see the information guide called PCoIP Display Protocol: Information and Scenario-Based
Network Sizing Guide.

Optimization Controls Available with PCoIP and Blast Extreme
If you use the PCoIP or the Blast Extreme display protocol from VMware, you can adjust several elements
that affect bandwidth usage.
n

You can configure the image quality level and frame rate used during periods of network congestion.
The quality level setting allows you to limit the initial quality of the changed regions of the display
image. You can also adjust the frame rate.
This control works well for static screen content that does not need to be updated or in situations where
only a portion needs to be refreshed.

With regard to session bandwidth, you can configure the maximum bandwidth, in kilobits per second,
to correspond to the type of network connection, such as a 4Mbit/s Internet connection. The bandwidth
includes all imaging, audio, virtual channel, USB, and PCoIP or Blast control traffic.
You can also configure a lower limit, in kilobits per second, for the bandwidth that is reserved for the
session, so that a user does not have to wait for bandwidth to become available. You can specify the
Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size for UDP packets for a session, from 500 to 1500 bytes.

For more information, see the "PCoIP General Settings" and the "VMware Blast Policy Settings" sections in
Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7.

Network Configuration Example
In a View 5.2 test pod in which one vCenter Server 5.1 instance managed 5 pools of 2,000 virtual machines in
each pool, each ESXi host had the following hardware and software for networking requirements.
Note This example was used in a View 5.2 setup, which was carried out prior to the release of VMware
Virtual SAN. For guidance on sizing and designing the key components of View virtual desktop
infrastructures for VMware Virtual SAN, see the white paper at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsan/VMW-TMD-Virt-SAN-Dsn-Szing-Guid-Horizon-View.pdf.
Also, the example uses View Composer linked-clones, rather than instant clones, because the test was
performed with View 5.2. The instant clone feature is introduced with Horizon 7.
Physical components
for each host

vLAN summary

VMware, Inc.

Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter utilizing 10Gig Ethernet and FCoE for
network and storage traffic, respectively.

Connection to a Brocade VCS Ethernet fabric consisting of 6 VDX6720-60
switches. The switches uplinked to the rest of the network with two 1GB
connections to a Juniper J6350 router.

One 10Gb vLAN per desktop pool (5 pools)

View Architecture Planning

Virtual VMotiondvswitch (1 uplink per
host)

Infra-dvswitch (2 uplink
per host)

Desktop-dvswitch (2
uplink per host)

One 1Gb vLAN for the management network

One 1Gb vLAN for the VMotion network

One 10Gb vLAN for the infrastructure network

This switch was used by the ESXi hosts of infrastructure, parent, and desktop
virtual machines.
n

Jumbo Frame (9000 MTU)

1 Ephemeral Distributed Port Group

Private VLAN and 192.168.x.x addressing

This switch was used by the ESXi hosts of infrastructure virtual machines.
n

Jumbo frame (9000 MTU)

1 Ephemeral distributed port group

Infrastructure VLAN /24 (256 addresses)

This switch was used by the ESXi hosts of parent, and desktop virtual
machines.
n

Jumbo frame (9000 MTU)

6 Ephemeral distributed port groups

5 Desktop port groups (1 per pool)

Each network was /21, 2048 addresses

View Composer Performance Test Results
These test results describe a View 5.2 setup with 10,000-desktops, in which one vCenter Server 5.1 instance
managed 5 pools of 2,000 virtual machine desktops each. Only one maintenance period was required for
provisioning a new pool or for recomposing, refreshing, or rebalancing an existing pool of 2,000 virtual
machines. A logon storm of 10,000 users was also tested.
The test results provided here were accomplished with the software, hardware, and configuration settings
described in the following topics:

Desktop and pool configurations described in “Horizon Connection Server Maximums and Virtual
Machine Configuration,” on page 59

Tiered-storage components described in “Shared Storage Example,” on page 64

Networking components described in “Network Bandwidth Considerations,” on page 66

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Capacity for an Hour-Long Logon Storm of 10,000 Users
Note This example was used in a View 5.2 setup, which was carried out prior to the release of VMware
Virtual SAN. For guidance on sizing and designing the key components of View virtual desktop
infrastructures for VMware Virtual SAN, see the white paper at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsan/VMW-TMD-Virt-SAN-Dsn-Szing-Guid-Horizon-View.pdf.
For test results with various workloads and View operations when using Virtual SAN, see the reference
architecture white paper at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmware-horizon-view-virtual-san-reference-architecture.pdf.
The Virtual SAN feature available with vSphere 6.0 and later releases contains many performance
improvements over the feature that was available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1. With vSphere 6.0 this feature
also has broader HCL (hardware compatibility) support. For more information about Virtual SAN in
vSphere 6 or later, see the Administering VMware Virtual SAN document.
In a test setup, the following desktop and pool configurations were used for a logon storm scenario for
10,000 desktops. The power policy for desktops was set to Always On.
For 10,000 desktops the logon storm occurred over a 60-minute period, using a normal distribution of logon
times. The virtual machines were powered on and were available before the logon storm began. After logon,
a workload started, which included the following applications: Adobe Reader, Microsoft Outlook, Internet
Explorer, Microsoft Word, and Notepad.
Following are additional details of the logon storm that was sustained during testing:
n

95% of logons occurred within +/- 2 standard deviation window (40 minutes).

68% of logons occurred within +/- 1 standard deviation window (20 minutes).

Peak logon rate was 400/min, or 6.67/second.

Time Required for Provisioning a Pool
Pools are provisioned either up front, when you create the pool, or on demand, as users are assigned to
them. Provisioning means creating the virtual machine and configuring it to use the correct operating
system image and network settings.
In a test setup already containing 4 pools of 2,000 virtual machines in each pool, provisioning a fifth pool
that contained 2,000 virtual machines took 4 hours. All virtual machines were provisioned up front.

Time Required for Recomposing a Pool
You can use a recompose operation to provide operating system patches, install or update applications, or
modify the desktop hardware settings of virtual machines in a pool. Before recomposing a pool, you take a
snapshot of a virtual machine that has new configuration. The recompose operation uses that snapshot to
update all virtual machines in the pool.
In a test setup of 5 pools of 2,000 virtual machines in each pool, a recompose of one pool of 2,000 virtual
machines took 6 hours and 40 minutes. All virtual machines were powered on and available before the
recompose operation began.

Time Required for Refreshing a Pool
Because disks grow over time, you can conserve disk space by refreshing a desktop to its original state when
users log off, or you can set a schedule for periodically refreshing desktops. For example, you can schedule
desktops to refresh daily, weekly, or monthly.
In a test setup of 5 pools of 2,000 virtual machines in each pool, a refresh of one pool of 2,000 virtual
machines took 2 hours and 40 minutes. All virtual machines were powered on and available before the
refresh operation began.

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Time Required for Rebalancing a Pool
A desktop rebalance operation evenly redistributes linked-clone desktops among available logical drives. A
rebalance operation saves storage space on overloaded drives and ensures that no drives are underused.
You can also use a rebalance operation to migrate all virtual machines in a desktop pool to or from a Virtual
SAN datastore.
In a test pod that contained 5 pools of 2,000 virtual machines in each pool, 2 datastores were added to the
pod for one test. For another test, 2 datastores were removed from the pod. After the datastores were added
or removed, a rebalance operation was performed on one of the pools. A rebalance of one pool of 2,000
virtual machines took 9 hours. All virtual machines were powered on and available before the rebalance
operation began.

WAN Support
For wide-area networks (WANs), you must consider bandwidth constraints and latency issues. The PCoIP
and Blast Extreme display protocols provided by VMware adapt to varying latency and bandwidth
conditions.
If you use the RDP display protocol, you must have a WAN optimization product to accelerate applications
for users in branch offices or small offices. With PCoIP and Blast Extreme, many WAN optimization
techniques are built into the base protocol.
n

WAN optimization is valuable for TCP-based protocols such as RDP because these protocols require
many handshakes between client and server. The latency of these handshakes can be quite large. WAN
accelerators spoof replies to handshakes so that the latency of the network is hidden from the protocol.
Because PCoIP and Blast Extreme are UDP-based, this form of WAN acceleration is unnecessary.

WAN accelerators also compress network traffic between client and server, but this compression is
usually limited to 2:1 compression ratios. PCoIP and Blast Extreme have much higher compression
ratios.

For information about the controls that you can use to adjust the way PCoIP and Blast Extreme consume
bandwidth, see “Optimization Controls Available with PCoIP and Blast Extreme,” on page 67.

Bandwidth Requirements for Various Types of Users
When determining minimum bandwidth requirements for PCoIP, plan with the following estimates:

100 to 150Kbps average bandwidth for a basic office productivity desktop: typical office applications
with no video, no 3D graphics, and the default Windows and Horizon 7 settings.

50 to 100Kbps average bandwidth for an optimized office productivity desktop: typical office
applications with no video, no 3D graphics, with Windows desktop settings optimized and Horizon 7
optimized.

400 to 600Kbps average bandwidth for virtual desktops utilizing multiple monitors, 3D, Aero, and
Microsoft Office.

500Kbps to 1Mbps minimum peak bandwidth to provide headroom for bursts of display changes. In
general, size your network using the average bandwidth, but consider peak bandwidth to
accommodate bursts of imaging traffic associated with large screen changes.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

2Mbps per simultaneous user running 480p video, depending upon the configured frame rate limit and
the video type.

Note The estimate of 50 to 150Kbps per typical user is based on the assumption that all users are operating
continuously and performing similar tasks over an 8- to 10- hour day. The 50Kbps bandwidth usage figure is
from View Planner testing on a LAN with the Build-to-Lossless feature disabled. Situations may vary in that
some users may be fairly inactive and consume almost no bandwidth, allowing more users per link.
Therefore, these guidelines are intended to provide a starting point for more detailed bandwidth planning
and testing.
The following example shows how to calculate the number of concurrent users at a branch or remote office
that has a 1.5Mbps T1 line.

Branch or Remote Office Scenario
n

Users have basic Microsoft Office productivity applications, no video, no 3D graphics, and USB
keyboards and mouse devices.

The bandwidth required per typical office user on Horizon 7 is from 50-150Kbps.

The T1 network capacity is 1.5Mbps.

Bandwidth utilization is 80 percent (.8 utilization factor).

Formula for Determining the Number of Users Supported
n

In the worst case, users require 150Kbps: (1.5Mbps*.8)/150Kbps = (1500*.8)/150 = 8 users

In the best case, users require 50Kbps: (1.5Mbps*.8)/50Kbps = (1500*.8)/50 = 24 users

Result
This remote office can support between 8 and 24 concurrent users per T1 line with 1.5Mbps capacity.
Important You might require optimization of both Horizon 7 and Windows desktop settings to achieve
this user density.
This information was excerpted from the information guide called VMware View 5 with PCoIP: Network
Optimization Guide.

Horizon 7 Building Blocks
A building block consists of physical servers, a vSphere infrastructure, Horizon 7 servers, shared storage,
and virtual machine desktops for end users. A building block is a logical construct and should not be sized
for more than 2,000 Horizon desktops. Customers usually include up to five building blocks in a Horizon 7
pod, although in theory you can use more blocks than that, as long as the pod does not go above 10,000
sessions and 7 Horizon Connection Server instances.
Table 4‑11. Example of a LAN-Based Horizon Building Block for 2,000 Virtual Machine Desktops
Item

Example

vSphere clusters

1 or more

80-port network switch

Shared storage system

vCenter Server with View Composer on
the same host

1 (can be run in the block itself)

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Table 4‑11. Example of a LAN-Based Horizon Building Block for 2,000 Virtual Machine Desktops
(Continued)
Item

Example

Database

MS SQL Server or Oracle database server (can be run in the block itself)

VLANs

3 (a 1Gbit Ethernet network for each: management network, storage
network, and VMotion network)

Horizon 7 Pods
A pod is a unit of organization determined by Horizon 7 scalability limits.

Pod Example Using Five Building Blocks
A traditional Horizon 7 pod integrates five 2,000-user building blocks that you can manage as one entity.
Table 4‑12. Example of a LAN-Based Horizon 7 Pod Constructed of 5 Building Blocks
Item

Number

Building blocks for a Horizon 7 pod

vCenter Server and View Composer

5 (1 virtual machine that hosts both in each building block)

Database server

5 (1 standalone database server in each building block) MS SQL
Server or Oracle database server

Connection Servers

7 (5 for connections from inside the corporate network and 2 for
connections from outside)

vLANs

See Table 4-11.

10Gb Ethernet module

Modular networking switch

Each vCenter Server can support up to 10,000 virtual machines. This support enables you to have building
blocks that contain more than 2,000 virtual machine desktops. However, the actual block size is also subject
to other Horizon 7-specific limitations.
For both examples described here, a network core can load balance incoming requests across Connection
Server instances. Support for a redundancy and failover mechanism, usually at the network level, can
prevent the load balancer from becoming a single point of failure. For example, the Virtual Router
Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) can communicate with a load balancer to add redundancy and failover
capability.
If a Connection Server instance fails or becomes unresponsive during an active session, users do not lose
data. Desktop states are preserved in the virtual machine desktop so that users can connect to a different
Connection Server instance and their desktop session resumes from where it was when the failure occurred.

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Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Figure 4‑2. Pod Diagram for 10,000 Virtual Machine Desktops
View building
blocks
switched
networks
Each switched network connects to each View Connection Server
View Connection
Servers
load balancing

network core

Pod Example Using One vCenter Server
In the previous section, the Horizon 7 pod consisted of multiple building blocks. Each building block
supported 2,000 virtual machines with a single vCenter Server. VMware has received many requests from
both customers and partners to use a single vCenter Server to manage a Horizon 7 pod. This request arises
from the fact that a single instance of vCenter Server can support 10,000 virtual machines. With View 5.2 and
later, customers have the ability to use a single vCenter Server to manage a 10,000-desktop environment.
This topic illustrates an architecture based on using a single vCenter Serverto manage 10,000 desktops
Although using one vCenter Server and one View Composer for 10,000 desktops is possible, doing so
creates a situation where there is a single point of failure. The loss of that single vCenter Server renders the
entire desktop deployment unavailable for power, provisioning, and refit operations. For this reason, choose
a deployment architecture that meets your requirements for overall component resiliency.
For this example, a 10,000-user pod consists of physical servers, a vSphere infrastructure, Horizon 7 servers,
shared storage, and 5 clusters of 2,000 virtual desktops per cluster.
Table 4‑13. Example of a LAN-Based Horizon 7 Pod with One vCenter Server
Item

Example

vSphere clusters

6 (5 clusters with one linked-clone pool per cluster, and 1
infrastructure cluster)

vCenter Server

View Composer

1 (standalone)

Database server

1 (standalone) MS SQL Server or Oracle database server

Active Directory server

1 or 2

Connection Server instances

Security servers

vLANs

8 (5 for the desktop pool clusters, and 1 each for
management, VMotion, and the infrastructure cluster)

VMware, Inc.

View Architecture Planning

Cloud Pod Architecture Overview
To use a group of replicated Connection Server instances across a WAN, MAN (metropolitan area network),
or other non-LAN, in scenarios where a Horizon deployment needs to span datacenters, you must use the
Cloud Pod Architecture feature.
This feature uses standard Horizon components to provide cross-datacenter administration, global and
flexible user-to-desktop mapping, high-availability desktops, and disaster recovery capabilities. You can link
together 25 pods to provide a single large desktop brokering and management environment for five
geographically distant sites and provide desktops and applications for up to 75,000 sessions.
The following diagram is an example of a basic Cloud Pod Architecture topology.

User

New York Datacenter

London Datacenter

New York Pod

London Pod

Security
Server

View
Connection
Server

Interpod
communication

Security
Server

View
Connection
Server

Global Data Layer

In the example topology, two previously standalone pods in different datacenters are joined together to form
a single pod federation. An end user in this environment can connect to a Connection Server instance in the
New York datacenter and receive a desktop or application in the London data center.
The Cloud Pod Architecture feature is not supported in an IPv6 environment.
For more information, see Administering Cloud Pod Architecture in Horizon 7.

Advantages of Using Multiple vCenter Servers in a Pod
When you create a design for a Horizon 7 production environment that accommodates more than 500
desktops, several considerations affect whether to use one vCenter Server instance rather than multiple
instances.
Starting with View 5.2, VMware supports managing up to 10,000 desktop virtual machines within a single
Horizon 7 pod with a single vCenter 5.1 or later server. Before you attempt to manage 10,000 virtual
machines with a single vCenter Server instance, take the following considerations into account:
n

Duration of your company's maintenance windows

Capacity for tolerating Horizon 7 component failures

Frequency of power, provisioning, and refit operations

Simplicity of infrastructure

Duration of Maintenance Windows
Concurrency settings for virtual machine power, provisioning, and maintenance operations are determined
per vCenter Server instance.

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Remote
desktop or
application

Chapter 4 Architecture Design Elements and Planning Guidelines for Remote Desktop Deployments

Pod designs with one
vCenter Server instance

Concurrency settings determine how many operations can be queued up for an entire
Horizon 7 pod at one time.
For example, if you set concurrent provisioning operations to 20 and you have only one
vCenter Server instance in a pod, a desktop pool larger than 20 will cause provisioning
operations to be serialized. After queuing 20 concurrent operations simultaneously, one
operation must complete before the next begins. In large-scale Horizon 7 deployments, this
provisioning operation can take a long time.

Pod designs with
multiple
vCenter Server
instances

Each instance can provision 20 virtual machines concurrently.

To ensure more operations are completed simultaneously within one maintenance window, you can add
multiple vCenter Server instances (up to five) to your pod, and deploy multiple desktop pools in vSphere
clusters managed by separate vCenter Server instances. A vSphere cluster can be managed by only one
vCenter Server instance at one time. To achieve concurrency across vCenter Server instances, you must
deploy your desktop pools accordingly.

Capacity for Tolerating Component Failures
The role of vCenter Server in Horizon 7 pods is to provide power, provisioning, and refit (refresh,
recompose, and rebalance) operations. After a virtual machine desktop is deployed and powered on,
Horizon 7 does not rely on vCenter Server for the normal course of operations.
Because each vSphere cluster must be managed by a single vCenter Server instance, this server represents a
single point of failure in every Horizon 7 design. This risk is also true for each View Composer instance.
(There is a one-to-one mapping between each View Composer instance and vCenter Server instance.) Using
one of the following products can mitigate the impact of a vCenter Server or View Composer outage:
n

VMware vSphere High Availability (HA)

VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat™

Compatible third-party failover products

Important To use one of these failover strategies, the vCenter Server instance must not be installed in a
virtual machine that is part of the cluster that the vCenter Server instance manages.
In addition to these automated options for vCenter Server failover, you can also choose to rebuild the failed
server on a new virtual machine or physical server. Most key information is stored in the vCenter Server
database.
Risk tolerance is an important factor in determining whether to use one or multiple vCenter Server instances
in your pod design. If your operations require the ability to perform desktop management tasks such as
power and refit of all desktops simultaneously, you should spread the impact of an outage across fewer
desktops at a time by deploying multiple vCenter Server instances. If you can tolerate your desktop
environment being unavailable for management or provisioning operations for a long period, or if you
choose to use a manual rebuild process, you can deploy a single vCenter Server instance for your pod.

Frequency of Power, Provisioning, and Refit Operations
Certain virtual machine desktop power, provisioning, and refit operations are initiated only by
administrator actions, are usually predictable and controllable, and can be confined to established
maintenance windows. Other virtual machine desktop power and refit operations are triggered by user
behavior, such as using the Refresh on Logoff or Suspend on Logoff settings, or by scripted action, such as
using Distributed Power Management (DPM) during windows of user inactivity to power off idle ESXi
hosts.

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If your Horizon 7 design does not require user-triggered power and refit operations, a single vCenter Server
instance can probably suit your needs. Without a high frequency of user-triggered power and refit
operations, no long queue of operations can accumulate that might cause Horizon Connection Server to
time-out waiting for vCenter Server to complete the requested operations within the defined concurrency
setting limits.
Many customers elect to deploy floating pools and use the Refresh on Logoff setting to consistently deliver
desktops that are free of stale data from previous sessions. Examples of stale data include unclaimed
memory pages in pagefile.sys or Windows temp files. Floating pools can also minimize the impact of
malware by frequently resetting desktops to a known clean state.
Some customers are reducing electricity usage by configuring Horizon 7 to power off desktops not in use so
that vSphere DRS (Distributed Resources Scheduler) can consolidate the running virtual machines onto a
minimum number of ESXi hosts. VMware Distributed Power Management then powers off the idle hosts. In
scenarios such as these, multiple vCenter Server instances can better accommodate the higher frequency of
power and refit operations required to avoid operations time-outs.

Simplicity of Infrastructure
A single vCenter Server instance in a large-scale Horizon 7 design offers some compelling benefits, such as a
single place to manage golden master images and parent virtual machines, a single vCenter Server view to
match the Horizon Administrator console view, and fewer production back-end databases and database
servers. Disaster Recovery planning is simpler for one vCenter Server than it is for multiple instances. Make
sure you weigh the advantages of multiple vCenter Server instances, such as duration of maintenance
windows and frequency of power and refit operations, against the disadvantages, such as the additional
administrative overhead of managing parent virtual machine images and the increased number of
infrastructure components required.
Your design might benefit from a hybrid approach. You can choose to have very large and relatively static
pools managed by one vCenter Server instance and have several smaller, more dynamic desktop pools
managed by multiple vCenter Server instances. The best strategy for upgrading existing large-scale pods is
to first upgrade the VMware software components of your existing pod. Before changing your pod design,
gauge the impact of the improvements of the latest version's power, provisioning, and refit operations, and
later experiment with increasing the size of your desktop pools to find the right balance of more large
desktop pools on fewer vCenter Server instances.

VMware, Inc.

Planning for Security Features

Horizon 7 offers strong network security to protect sensitive corporate data. For added security, you can
integrate Horizon 7 with certain third-party user-authentication solutions, use a security server, and
implement the restricted entitlements feature.
Important Horizon 6 version 6.2 and later releases can perform cryptographic operations using FIPS
(Federal Information Processing Standard) 140-2 compliant algorithms. You can enable the use of these
algorithms by installing Horizon 7 in FIPS mode. Not all features are supported in FIPS mode. For more
information, see the View Installation document.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n

“Understanding Client Connections,” on page 77

“Choosing a User Authentication Method,” on page 80

“Restricting Remote Desktop Access,” on page 82

“Using Group Policy Settings to Secure Remote Desktops and Applications,” on page 84

“Using Smart Policies,” on page 84

“Implementing Best Practices to Secure Client Systems,” on page 84

“Assigning Administrator Roles,” on page 85

“Preparing to Use a Security Server,” on page 85

“Understanding Horizon 7Communications Protocols,” on page 90

Understanding Client Connections
Horizon Client and Horizon Administrator communicate with a Horizon Connection Server host over
secure HTTPS connections. Information about the server certificate on Connection Server is communicated
to the client as part of the SSL handshake between client and server.
The initial Horizon Client connection, which is used for user authentication and remote desktop and
application selection, is created when a user opens Horizon Client and provides a fully qualified domain
name for the Connection Server, security server, or Unified Access Gateway host. The Horizon
Administrator connection is created when an administrator types the Horizon Administrator URL into a
Web browser.
A default SSL server certificate is generated during Connection Server installation. By default, SSL clients
are presented with this certificate when they visit a secure page such as Horizon Administrator.
You can use the default certificate for testing, but you should replace it with your own certificate as soon as
possible. The default certificate is not signed by a commercial Certificate Authority (CA). Use of noncertified certificates can allow untrusted parties to intercept traffic by masquerading as your server.

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Client Connections Using the PCoIP and Blast Secure Gateways on page 78
When clients connect to a remote desktop or application with the PCoIP or Blast Extreme display
protocol from VMware, Horizon Client can make a second connection to the applicable Secure
Gateway component on a Horizon Connection Server instance, security server, or
Unified Access Gateway appliance. This connection provides the required level of security and
connectivity when accessing remote desktops and applications from the Internet.

Tunneled Client Connections with Microsoft RDP on page 79
When users connect to a remote desktop with the Microsoft RDP display protocol, Horizon Client can
make a second HTTPS connection to the Horizon Connection Server host. This connection is called the
tunnel connection because it provides a tunnel for carrying RDP data.

Direct Client Connections on page 79
Administrators can configure Horizon Connection Server settings so that remote desktop and
application sessions are established directly between the client system and the remote application or
desktop virtual machine, bypassing the Connection Server host. This type of connection is called a
direct client connection.

Client Connections Using the PCoIP and Blast Secure Gateways
When clients connect to a remote desktop or application with the PCoIP or Blast Extreme display protocol
from VMware, Horizon Client can make a second connection to the applicable Secure Gateway component
on a Horizon Connection Server instance, security server, or Unified Access Gateway appliance. This
connection provides the required level of security and connectivity when accessing remote desktops and
applications from the Internet.
Security servers and Unified Access Gateway appliances include a PCoIP Secure Gateway component and a
Blast Secure Gateway component, which offers the following advantages:
n

The only remote desktop and application traffic that can enter the corporate data center is traffic on
behalf of a strongly authenticated user.

Users can access only the resources that they are authorized to access.

The PCoIP Secure Gateway connection supports PCoIP, and the Blast Secure Gateway connection
supports Blast Extreme. Both are advanced remote display protocols that make more efficient use of the
network by encapsulating video display packets in UDP instead of TCP.

PCoIP and Blast Extreme are secured by AES-128 encryption by default. You can, however, change the
encryption cipher to AES-256.

No VPN is required, as long as the display protocol is not blocked by any networking component. For
example, someone trying to access their remote desktop or application from inside a hotel room might
find that the proxy the hotel uses is not configured to pass UDP packets.
For more information, see “Firewall Rules for DMZ-Based Security Servers,” on page 88.

Security servers run on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2 operating systems and take
full advantage of the 64-bit architecture. This security server can also take advantage of Intel processors that
support AES New Instructions (AESNI) for highly optimized encryption and decryption performance.
For more information about Unified Access Gateway virtual appliances, see Deploying and Configuring
Unified Access Gateway.

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Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

Tunneled Client Connections with Microsoft RDP
When users connect to a remote desktop with the Microsoft RDP display protocol, Horizon Client can make
a second HTTPS connection to the Horizon Connection Server host. This connection is called the tunnel
connection because it provides a tunnel for carrying RDP data.
The tunnel connection offers the following advantages:
n

RDP data is tunneled through HTTPS and is encrypted using SSL. This powerful security protocol is
consistent with the security provided by other secure Web sites, such as those that are used for online
banking and credit card payments.

A client can access multiple desktops over a single HTTPS connection, which reduces the overall
protocol overhead.

Because Horizon 7 manages the HTTPS connection, the reliability of the underlying protocols is
significantly improved. If a user temporarily loses a network connection, the HTTP connection is
reestablished after the network connection is restored and the RDP connection automatically resumes
without requiring the user to reconnect and log in again.

In a standard deployment of Connection Server instances, the HTTPS secure connection terminates at the
Connection Server. In a DMZ deployment, the HTTPS secure connection terminates at a security server or
Unified Access Gateway appliance. See “Preparing to Use a Security Server,” on page 85 for information on
DMZ deployments and security servers.
Clients that use the PCoIP or Blast Extreme display protocol can use the tunnel connection for USB
redirection and multimedia redirection (MMR) acceleration, but for all other data, PCoIP uses the PCoIP
Secure Gateway, and Blast Extreme uses the Blast Secure Gateway, on a security server or
Unified Access Gateway appliance. For more information, see “Client Connections Using the PCoIP and
Blast Secure Gateways,” on page 78.
For more information about Unified Access Gateway virtual appliances, see Deploying and Configuring
Unified Access Gateway.

Direct Client Connections
Administrators can configure Horizon Connection Server settings so that remote desktop and application
sessions are established directly between the client system and the remote application or desktop virtual
machine, bypassing the Connection Server host. This type of connection is called a direct client connection.
With direct client connections, an HTTPS connection is still made between the client and the Connection
Server host for users to authenticate and select remote desktops and applications, but the second HTTPS
connection (the tunnel connection) is not used.
Direct PCoIP and Blast Extreme connections include the following built-in security features:
n

Support for Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, which is turned on by default, and IP
Security (IPsec)

Support for third-party VPN clients

For clients that use the Microsoft RDP display protocol, direct client connections to remote desktops are
appropriate only if your deployment is inside a corporate network. With direct client connections, RDP
traffic is sent unencrypted over the connection between the client and the desktop virtual machine.

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Choosing a User Authentication Method
Horizon 7 uses your existing Active Directory infrastructure for user authentication and management. For
added security, you can integrate Horizon 7 with two-factor authentication solutions, such as RSA SecurID
and RADIUS, and smart card authentication solutions.
n

Active Directory Authentication on page 80
Each Horizon Connection Server instance is joined to an Active Directory domain, and users are
authenticated against Active Directory for the joined domain. Users are also authenticated against any
additional user domains with which a trust agreement exists.

Using Two-Factor Authentication on page 81
You can configure a Horizon Connection Server instance so that users are required to use RSA SecurID
authentication or RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) authentication.

Smart Card Authentication on page 81
A smart card is a small plastic card that is embedded with a computer chip. Many government
agencies and large enterprises use smart cards to authenticate users who access their computer
networks. One type of smart card used by the United States Department of Defense is called a
Common Access Card (CAC).

Using the Log In as Current User Feature Available with Windows-Based Horizon Client on page 82
With Horizon Client for Windows, when users select the Log in as current user check box, the
credentials that they provided when logging in to the client system are used to authenticate to the
Horizon Connection Server instance and to the remote desktop. No further user authentication is
required.

Active Directory Authentication
Each Horizon Connection Server instance is joined to an Active Directory domain, and users are
authenticated against Active Directory for the joined domain. Users are also authenticated against any
additional user domains with which a trust agreement exists.
For example, if a Connection Server instance is a member of Domain A and a trust agreement exists between
Domain A and Domain B, users from both Domain A and Domain B can connect to the Connection Server
instance with Horizon Client.
Similarly, if a trust agreement exists between Domain A and an MIT Kerberos realm in a mixed domain
environment, users from the Kerberos realm can select the Kerberos realm name when connecting to the
Connection Server instance with Horizon Client.
You can place users and groups in the following Active Directory domains:
n

The Connection Server domain

A different domain that has a two-way trust relationship with the Connection Server domain

A domain in a different forest than the Connection Server domain that is trusted by the Connection
Server domain in a one-way external or realm trust relationship

A domain in a different forest than the Connection Server domain that is trusted by the Connection
Server domain in a one-way or two-way transitive forest trust relationship

Connection Server determines which domains are accessible by traversing trust relationships, starting with
the domain in which the host resides. For a small, well-connected set of domains, Connection Server can
quickly determine a full list of domains, but the time that it takes increases as the number of domains
increases or as the connectivity between the domains decreases. The list might also include domains that
you would prefer not to offer to users when they log in to their remote desktops and applications.

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Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

Administrators can use the vdmadmin command-line interface to configure domain filtering, which limits the
domains that a Connection Server instance searches and that it displays to users. See the View Administration
document for more information.
Policies, such as restricting permitted hours to log in and setting the expiration date for passwords, are also
handled through existing Active Directory operational procedures.

Using Two-Factor Authentication
You can configure a Horizon Connection Server instance so that users are required to use RSA SecurID
authentication or RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) authentication.
n

RADIUS support offers a wide range of alternative two-factor token-based authentication options.

Horizon 7 also provides an open standard extension interface to allow third-party solution providers to
integrate advanced authentication extensions into Horizon 7.

Because two-factor authentication solutions such as RSA SecurID and RADIUS work with authentication
managers, installed on separate servers, you must have those servers configured and accessible to the
Connection Server host. For example, if you use RSA SecurID, the authentication manager would be RSA
Authentication Manager. If you have RADIUS, the authentication manager would be a RADIUS server.
To use two-factor authentication, each user must have a token, such as an RSA SecurID token, that is
registered with its authentication manager. A two-factor authentication token is a piece of hardware or
software that generates an authentication code at fixed intervals. Often authentication requires knowledge of
both a PIN and an authentication code.
If you have multiple Connection Server instances, you can configure two-factor authentication on some
instances and a different user authentication method on others. For example, you can configure two-factor
authentication only for users who access remote desktops and applications from outside the corporate
network, over the Internet.
Horizon 7 is certified through the RSA SecurID Ready program and supports the full range of SecurID
capabilities, including New PIN Mode, Next Token Code Mode, RSA Authentication Manager, and load
balancing.

Smart Card Authentication
A smart card is a small plastic card that is embedded with a computer chip. Many government agencies and
large enterprises use smart cards to authenticate users who access their computer networks. One type of
smart card used by the United States Department of Defense is called a Common Access Card (CAC).
Administrators can enable individual Horizon Connection Server instances for smart card authentication.
Enabling a Connection Server instance to use smart card authentication typically involves adding your root
certificate to a truststore file and then modifying Connection Server settings.
All client connections, including client connections that use smart card authentication, are SSL enabled.
To use smart cards, client machines must have smart card middleware and a smart card reader. To install
certificates on smart cards, you must set up a computer to act as an enrollment station. For information
about whether a particular type of Horizon Client supports smart cards, see the Horizon Client
documentation at https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

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Using the Log In as Current User Feature Available with Windows-Based
Horizon Client
With Horizon Client for Windows, when users select the Log in as current user check box, the credentials
that they provided when logging in to the client system are used to authenticate to the Horizon Connection
Server instance and to the remote desktop. No further user authentication is required.
To support this feature, user credentials are stored on both the Connection Server instance and on the client
system.
n

On the Connection Server instance, user credentials are encrypted and stored in the user session along
with the username, domain, and optional UPN. The credentials are added when authentication occurs
and are purged when the session object is destroyed. The session object is destroyed when the user logs
out, the session times out, or authentication fails. The session object resides in volatile memory and is
not stored in Horizon LDAP or in a disk file.

On the client system, user credentials are encrypted and stored in a table in the Authentication Package,
which is a component of Horizon Client. The credentials are added to the table when the user logs in
and are removed from the table when the user logs out. The table resides in volatile memory.

Administrators can use Horizon Client group policy settings to control the availability of the Log in as
current user check box and to specify its default value. Administrators can also use group policy to specify
which Connection Server instances accept the user identity and credential information that is passed when
users select the Log in as current user check box in Horizon Client.
The Recursive Unlock feature is enabled after a user logs in to Connection Server with the Log in as current
user feature. The Recursive Unlock feature unlocks all remote sessions after the client machine has been
unlocked. Administrators can control the Recursive Unlock feature with the Unlock remote sessions when
the client machine is unlocked global policy setting in Horizon Client. For more information about global
policy settings for Horizon Client, see the Horizon Client documentation at the VMware Horizon Clients
documentation Web page.
The Log in as current user feature has the following limitations and requirements:
n

When smart card authentication is set to Required on a Connection Server instance, authentication fails
for users who select the Log in as current user check box when they connect to the Connection Server
instance. These users must reauthenticate with their smart card and PIN when they log in to
Connection Server.

The time on the system where the client logs in and the time on the Connection Server host must be
synchronized.

If the default Access this computer from the network user-right assignments are modified on the client
system, they must be modified as described in VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 1025691.

The client machine must be able to communicate with the corporate Active Directory server and not use
cached credentials for authentication. For example, if users log in to their client machines from outside
the corporate network, cached credentials are used for authentication. If the user then attempts to
connect to a security server or a Connection Server instance without first establishing a VPN
connection, the user is prompted for credentials, and the Log in as Current User feature does not work.

Restricting Remote Desktop Access
You can use the restricted entitlements feature to restrict remote desktop access based on the Horizon
Connection Server instance that a user connects to.
With restricted entitlements, you assign one or more tags to a Connection Server instance. Then, when
configuring a desktop pool, you select the tags of the Connection Server instances that you want to be able to
access the desktop pool. When users log in through a tagged Connection Server instance, they can access
only those desktop pools that have at least one matching tag or no tags.

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Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

For example, your Horizon 7 deployment might include two Connection Server instances. The first instance
supports your internal users. The second instance is paired with a security server and supports your
external users. To prevent external users from accessing certain desktops, you could set up restricted
entitlements as follows:
n

Assign the tag "Internal" to the Connection Server instance that supports your internal users.

Assign the tag "External" to the Connection Server instance that is paired with the security server and
supports your external users.

Assign the "Internal" tag to the desktop pools that should be accessible only to internal users.

Assign the "External" tag to the desktop pools that should be accessible only to external users.

External users cannot see the desktop pools tagged as Internal because they log in through the Connection
Server tagged as External, and internal users cannot see the desktop pools tagged as External because they
log in through the Connection Server tagged as Internal. Figure 5-1 illustrates this configuration.
Figure 5‑1. Restricted Entitlements Example
client device

external
network
DMZ
View
Security
Server

client device

View
Connection
Server
Tag: “External”

View
Connection
Server
Tag: “Internal”

desktop pool A
Tag: “External”

desktop pool B
Tag: “Internal”

You can also use restricted entitlements to control desktop access based on the user-authentication method
that you configure for a particular Connection Server instance. For example, you can make certain desktop
pools available only to users who have authenticated with a smart card.
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.

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Using Group Policy Settings to Secure Remote Desktops and
Applications
Horizon 7 includes Group Policy administrative ADMX templates that contain security-related group policy
settings that you can use to secure your remote desktops and applications.
For example, you can use group policy settings to perform the following tasks.
n

Specify the Connection Server instances that can accept user identity and credential information that is
passed when a user selects the Log in as current user check box in Horizon Client for Windows.

Enable single sign-on for smart card authentication in Horizon Client.

Configure server SSL certificate checking in Horizon Client.

Prevent users from providing credential information with Horizon Client command line options.

Prevent non-Horizon Client systems from using RDP to connect to remote desktops. You can set this
policy so that connections must be Horizon Client-managed, which means that users must use
Horizon 7 to connect to remote desktops.

See the Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7 document for information on using remote desktop
and Horizon Client group policy settings.

Using Smart Policies
You can use Smart Policies to create policies that control the behavior of the USB redirection, virtual
printing, clipboard redirection, client drive redirection, and PCoIP display protocol features on specific
remote desktops. You can also use Smart Policies to create policies that control the behavior of published
applications.
With Smart Policies, you can create policies that take effect only if certain conditions are met. For example,
you can configure a policy that disables the client drive redirection feature if a user connects to a remote
desktop from outside your corporate network.
The Smart Policies feature requires User Environment Manager. For more information, see the topics about
Smart Policies in Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7.

Implementing Best Practices to Secure Client Systems
Implement these best practices to secure client systems.
n

Make sure that client systems are configured to go to sleep after a period of inactivity and require users
to enter a password before the computer awakens.

Require users to enter a username and password when starting client systems. Do not configure client
systems to allow automatic logins.

For Mac client systems, consider setting different passwords for the Keychain and the user account.
When the passwords are different, users are prompted before the system enters any passwords on their
behalf. Also consider turning on FileVault protection.

For a concise reference to all the security features Horizon 7 provides, see the View Security document.

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Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

Assigning Administrator Roles
A key management task in a Horizon 7 environment is to determine who can use Horizon Administrator
and what tasks those users are authorized to perform.
The authorization to perform tasks in Horizon Administrator is governed by an access control system that
consists of administrator roles and privileges. A role is a collection of privileges. Privileges grant the ability
to perform specific actions, such as entitling a user to a desktop pool or changing a configuration setting.
Privileges also control what an administrator can see in Horizon Administrator.
An administrator can create folders to subdivide desktop pools and delegate the administration of specific
desktop pools to different administrators in Horizon Administrator. An administrator configures
administrator access to the resources in a folder by assigning a role to a user on that folder. Administrators
can only access the resources that reside in folders for which they have assigned roles. The role that an
administrator has on a folder determines the level of access that the administrator has to the resources in
that folder.
Horizon Administrator includes a set of predefined roles. Administrators can also create custom roles by
combining selected privileges.

Preparing to Use a Security Server
A security server is a special instance of Horizon Connection Server that runs a subset of Connection Server
functions. You can use a security server to provide an additional layer of security between the Internet and
your internal network.
Important With Horizon 6 version 6.2 and later releases, you can use Unified Access Gateway appliances
in place of security servers. Unified Access Gateway appliances are deployed as hardened virtual
appliances, which are based on a Linux appliance that has been customized to provide secure access. For
more information about Unified Access Gateway virtual appliances, see Deploying and Configuring Unified
Access Gateway.
A security server resides within a DMZ and acts as a proxy host for connections inside your trusted
network. Each security server is paired with an instance of Connection Server and forwards all traffic to that
instance. You can pair multiple security servers to a single connection server. This design provides an
additional layer of security by shielding the Connection Server instance from the public-facing Internet and
by forcing all unprotected session requests through the security server.
A DMZ-based security server deployment requires a few ports to be opened on the firewall to allow clients
to connect with security servers inside the DMZ. You must also configure ports for communication between
security servers and the Connection Server instances in the internal network. See “Firewall Rules for DMZBased Security Servers,” on page 88 for information on specific ports.
Because users can connect directly with any Connection Server instance from within their internal network,
you do not need to implement a security server in a LAN-based deployment.
Note Security servers include a PCoIP Secure Gateway component and a Blast Secure Gateway component
so that clients that use the PCoIP or Blast Extreme display protocol can use a security server rather than a
VPN.
For information about setting up VPNs for using PCoIP, see the VPN solution overviews, available in the
Technology Partner Resources section of the Technical Resource Center at
http://www.vmware.com/products/view/resources.html.

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Best Practices for Security Server Deployments
Follow these best practice security policies and procedures when operating a security server in a DMZ.
The DMZ Virtualization with VMware Infrastructure white paper includes examples of best practices for a
virtualized DMZ. Many of the recommendations in this white paper also apply to a physical DMZ.
To limit the scope of frame broadcasts, the Horizon Connection Server instances that are paired with
security servers should be deployed on an isolated network. This topology can help prevent a malicious user
on the internal network from monitoring communication between the security servers and Connection
Server instances.
Alternatively, you might be able to use advanced security features on your network switch to prevent
malicious monitoring of security server and Connection Server communication and to guard against
monitoring attacks such as ARP Cache Poisoning. See the administration documentation for your
networking equipment for more information.

Security Server Topologies
You can implement several different security server topologies.
The topology illustrated in Figure 5-2 shows a high-availability environment that includes two loadbalanced security servers in a DMZ. The security servers communicate with two Horizon Connection Server
instances inside the internal network.
Figure 5‑2. Load-Balanced Security Servers in a DMZ
client device

external
network

DMZ
load balancing
View
Security
Servers

View
Connection
Servers

Microsoft
Active Directory

vCenter
Management Server

ESX hosts running
Virtual Desktop
virtual machines

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Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

When users outside the corporate network connect to a security server, they must successfully authenticate
before they can access remote desktops and applications. With appropriate firewall rules on both sides of the
DMZ, this topology is suitable for accessing remote desktops and applications from client devices located on
the Internet.
You can connect multiple security servers to each instance of Connection Server. You can also combine a
DMZ deployment with a standard deployment to offer access for internal users and external users.
The topology illustrated in Figure 5-3 shows an environment where four instances of Connection Server act
as one group. The instances in the internal network are dedicated to users of the internal network, and the
instances in the external network are dedicated to users of the external network. If the Connection Server
instances paired with the security servers are enabled for RSA SecurID authentication, all external network
users are required to authenticate by using RSA SecurID tokens.
Figure 5‑3. Multiple Security Servers
client device

client device

external
network

DMZ
load balancing

internal
network
View
Security
Servers
load balancing
View
Connection
Servers

Microsoft
Active Directory

vCenter
Management Server

ESXi hosts running
Virtual Desktop
virtual machines

You must implement a hardware or software load balancing solution if you install more than one security
server. Connection Server does not provide its own load balancing functionality. Connection Server works
with standard third-party load balancing solutions.

Firewalls for DMZ-Based Security Servers
A DMZ-based security server deployment must include two firewalls.
n

VMware, Inc.

An external network-facing, front-end firewall is required to protect both the DMZ and the internal
network. You configure this firewall to allow external network traffic to reach the DMZ.

View Architecture Planning

A back-end firewall, between the DMZ and the internal network, is required to provide a second tier of
security. You configure this firewall to accept only traffic that originates from the services within the
DMZ.

Firewall policy strictly controls inbound communications from DMZ services, which greatly reduces the risk
of compromising your internal network.
Figure 5-4 shows an example of a configuration that includes front-end and back-end firewalls.
Figure 5‑4. Dual Firewall Topology
client device

client device

HTTPS
traffic
front-end
firewall

fault-tolerant
load balancing
mechanism

HTTPS
traffic

DMZ

View
Security
Server

View
Security
Server
back-end
firewall

internal
network

View
Connection
Server

VMware
vCenter

Active
Directory
VMware
ESXi servers

Firewall Rules for DMZ-Based Security Servers
DMZ-based security servers require certain firewall rules on the front-end and back-end firewalls. During
installation, Horizon 7 services are set up to listen on certain network ports by default. If necessary, to
comply with organization policies or to avoid contention, you can change which port numbers are used.
Important For additional details and security recommendations, see the View Security document.
Front-End Firewall Rules
To allow external client devices to connect to a security server within the DMZ, the front-end firewall must
allow traffic on certain TCP and UDP ports. Table 5-1 summarizes the front-end firewall rules.

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Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

Table 5‑1. Front-End Firewall Rules
Source

Default
Port

Horizon
Client

Default
Port

Protocol

Destination

Notes

TCP
Any

HTTP

Security
Server

TCP 80

(Optional) External client devices connect to a security server
within the DMZ on TCP port 80 and are automatically
directed to HTTPS. For information about the security
considerations related to letting users connect with HTTP
rather than HTTPS, see the View Security guide.

Horizon
Client

TCP
Any

HTTPS

Security
server

TCP 443

External client devices connect to a security server within the
DMZ on TCP port 443 to communicate with a Connection
Server instance and remote desktops and applications.

Horizon
Client

TCP
Any
UDP
Any

PCoIP

Security
server

TCP 4172
UDP 4172

External client devices connect to a security server within the
DMZ on TCP port 4172 and UDP port 4172 to communicate
with a remote desktop or application over PCoIP.

Security
Server

UDP
4172

PCoIP

Horizon
Client

UDP Any

Security servers send PCoIP data back to an external client
device from UDP port 4172. The destination UDP port is the
source port from the received UDP packets. Because these
packets contain reply data, it is normally unnecessary to add
an explicit firewall rule for this traffic.

Horizon
Client or
Client Web
browser

TCP
Any

HTTPS

Security
server

TCP 8443
UDP 8443

External client devices and external Web clients ( HTML
Access) connect to a security server within the DMZ on
HTTPS port 8443 to communicate with remote desktops.

Back-End Firewall Rules
To allow a security server to communicate with each View Connection Server instance that resides within
the internal network, the back-end firewall must allow inbound traffic on certain TCP ports. Behind the
back-end firewall, internal firewalls must be similarly configured to allow remote desktops applications and
Connection Server instances to communicate with each other. Table 5-2 summarizes the back-end firewall
rules.
Table 5‑2. Back-End Firewall Rules
Default
Port

Protocol

Destination

Security
server

UDP 500

IPSec

Connection
Server

UDP 500

Security servers negotiate IPSec with Connection Server
instances on UDP port 500.

Connection
Server

UDP 500

IPSec

Security server

UDP 500

Connection Server instances respond to security servers
on UDP port 500.

Security
Server

UDP 4500

NAT-T
ISAKMP

Connection
Server

UDP 4500

Required if NAT is used between a security server and
its paired Connection Server instance. Security servers
use UDP port 4500 to traverse NATs and negotiate IPsec
security.

Connection
Server

UDP 4500

NAT-T
ISAKMP

Security server

UDP 4500

Connection Server instances respond to security servers
on UDP port 4500 if NAT is used.

Security
server

TCP Any

AJP13

Connection
Server

TCP 8009

Security servers connect to Connection Server instances
on TCP port 8009 to forward Web traffic from external
client devices.
If you enable IPSec, AJP13 traffic does not use TCP port
8009 after pairing. Instead it flows over either NAT-T
(UDP port 4500) or ESP.

Security
server

TCP Any

JMS

Connection
Server

TCP 4001

Security servers connect to Connection Server instances
on TCP port 4001 to exchange Java Message Service
(JMS) traffic.

Source

VMware, Inc.

Default
Port

Notes

View Architecture Planning

Table 5‑2. Back-End Firewall Rules (Continued)
Default
Port

Protocol

Destination

Security
server

TCP Any

JMS

Connection
Server

TCP 4002

Security servers connect to Connection Server instances
on TCP port 4002 to exchange secure Java Message
Service (JMS) traffic.

Security
server

TCP Any

RDP

Remote
desktop

TCP 3389

Security servers connect to remote desktops on TCP
port 3389 to exchange RDP traffic.

Security
server

TCP Any

MMR

Remote
desktop

TCP 9427

Security servers connect to remote desktops on TCP
port 9427 to receive traffic relating to multimedia
redirection (MMR) and client drive redirection.

Security
server

TCP Any
UDP
55000

PCoIP

Remote
desktop or
application

TCP 4172
UDP 4172

Security servers connect to remote desktops and
applications on TCP port 4172 and UDP port 4172 to
exchange PCoIP traffic.

Remote
desktop or
application

UDP 4172

PCoIP

Security server

UDP
55000

Remote desktops and applications send PCoIP data
back to a security server from UDP port 4172 .
The destination UDP port will be the source port from
the received UDP packets and so as this is reply data, it
is normally unnecessary to add an explicit firewall rule
for this.

Security
server

TCP Any

USB-R

Remote
desktop

TCP 32111

Security servers connect to remote desktops on TCP
port 32111 to exchange USB redirection traffic between
an external client device and the remote desktop.

Security
server

TCP or
UDP Any

Blast
Extreme

Remote
desktop or
application

TCP or
UDP
22443

Security servers connect to remote desktops and
applications on TCP and UDP port 22443 to exchange
Blast Extreme traffic.

Security
server

TCP Any

HTTPS

Remote
desktop

TCP 22443

If you use HTML Access, security servers connect to
remote desktops on HTTPS port 22443 to communicate
with the Blast Extreme agent.

Security
server

ESP

Connection
Server

Encapsulated AJP13 traffic when NAT traversal is not
required. ESP is IP protocol 50. Port numbers are not
specified.

Connection
Server

ESP

Security server

Encapsulated AJP13 traffic when NAT traversal is not
required. ESP is IP protocol 50. Port numbers are not
specified.

Source

Default
Port

Notes

Understanding Horizon 7 Communications Protocols
Horizon 7 components exchange messages by using several different protocols.
Figure 5-5 illustrates the protocols that each component uses for communication when a security server is
not configured. That is, the secure tunnel for RDP, the Blast Secure Gateway, and the PCoIP Secure Gateway
are not turned on. This configuration might be used in a typical LAN deployment.

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Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

Figure 5‑5. View Components and Protocols Without a Security Server
client device

RDP
Client

Horizon
Client

PCoIP

RDP

HTTP(S)

View Secure
GW Server & PCoIP
Secure GW

View
Connection
Server

View
Messaging

View Broker &
Admin Server

View
Administrator
HTTP(S)

SOAP

vCenter
Server

View Manager
LDAP

JMS
RDP
PCoIP

View Agent

View desktop
virtual machine

Note This figure shows direct connections for clients using either PCoIP or RDP. The default setting,
however, is to have direct connections for PCoIP and tunnel connections for RDP.
See Table 5-3 for the default ports that are used for each protocol.
Figure 5-6 illustrates the protocols that each component uses for communication when a security server is
configured. This configuration might be used in a typical WAN deployment.

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Figure 5‑6. View Components and Protocols with a Security Server

client devices
RDP
Client

Horizon
Client

HTTP(S)
Blast

HTTP(S)

PCoIP

View
Security
Server

View Secure
GW Server & PCoIP
Secure GW

Blast

PCoIP

RDP, Framework, MMR, CDR...
AJP13

JMS

View Secure
GW Server & PCoIP
Secure GW

HTTP(S)

View Broker &
Admin Server

View
Messaging

View
Connection
Server

View
Administrator

SOAP

vCenter
Server

View Manager
LDAP

JMS
PCoIP

RDP, Framework, MMR, CDR...
Blast

View Agent

View desktop virtual machine or RDS host
Table 5-3 lists the default ports that are used by each protocol. If necessary, to comply with organization
policies or to avoid contention, you can change which port numbers are used.
Table 5‑3. Default Ports

Protocol

Port

JMS

TCP port 4001
TCP port 4002

AJP13

TCP port 8009
Note AJP13 is used in a security server configuration only.

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Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

Table 5‑3. Default Ports (Continued)
Protocol

Port

HTTP

TCP port 80

HTTPS

TCP port 443

MMR/CDR

For multimedia redirection and client drive redirection, TCP port 9427

RDP

TCP port 3389
Note If the Connection Server instance is configured for direct client connections, these protocols
connect directly from the client to the remote desktop and are not tunneled through the View Secure
GW Server component.

SOAP

TCP port 80 or 443

PCoIP

TCP port 4172
UDP ports 4172, 50002, 55000

USB redirection

TCP port 32111. This port is also used for time zone synchronization.

VMware Blast
Extreme

TCP ports 8443, 22443
UDP ports 443, 8443, 22443

HTML Access

TCP ports 8443, 22443

TCP Ports for Connection Server Intercommunication
Connection Server instances in a group use additional TCP ports to communicate with each other. For
example, Connection Server instances use port 4100 or 4101 to transmit JMS inter-router (JMSIR) traffic to
each other. Firewalls are generally not used between the Connection Server instances in a group.

View Broker and Administration Server
The View Broker component, which is the core of View Connection Server, is responsible for all user
interaction between clients and View Connection Server. View Broker also includes the Administration
Server that is used by the View Administrator Web interface.
View Broker works closely with vCenter Server to provide advanced management of remote desktops,
including virtual machine creation and power operations.

View Secure Gateway Server
View Secure Gateway Server is the server-side component for the secure HTTPS connection between client
systems and a security server, Access Point appliance, or View Connection Server instance.
When you configure the tunnel connection for View Connection Server, RDP, USB, and Multimedia
Redirection (MMR) traffic is tunneled through the View Secure Gateway component. When you configure
direct client connections, these protocols connect directly from the client to the remote desktop and are not
tunneled through the View Secure Gateway Server component.
Note Clients that use the PCoIP or Blast Extreme display protocol can use the tunnel connection for USB
redirection and multimedia redirection (MMR) acceleration, but for all other data, PCoIP uses the PCoIP
Secure Gateway, and Blast Extreme uses the Blast Secure Gateway, on a security server or Access Point
appliance.
View Secure Gateway Server is also responsible for forwarding other Web traffic, including user
authentication and desktop and application selection traffic, from clients to the View Broker component.
View Secure Gateway Server also passes View Administrator client Web traffic to the Administration Server
component.

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Blast Secure Gateway
Security servers and Access Point appliances include a Blast Secure Gateway component. When the Blast
Secure Gateway is enabled, after authentication, clients that use Blast Extreme or HTML Access can make
another secure connection to a security server or Access Point appliance. This connection allows clients to
access remote desktops and applications from the Internet.
When you enable the Blast Secure Gateway component, Blast Extreme traffic is forwarded by a security
server or Access Point appliance to remote desktops and applications. If clients that use Blast Extreme also
use the USB redirection feature or multimedia redirection (MMR) acceleration, you can enable the View
Secure Gateway component in order to forward that data.
When you configure direct client connections, Blast Extreme traffic and other traffic goes directly from a
client to a remote desktop or application.
When end users such as home or mobile workers access desktops from the Internet, security servers or
Access Point appliances provide the required level of security and connectivity so that a VPN connection is
not necessary. The Blast Secure Gateway component ensures that the only remote traffic that can enter the
corporate data center is traffic on behalf of a strongly authenticated user. End users can access only the
resources that they are authorized to access.

PCoIP Secure Gateway
Security servers and Access Point appliances include a PCoIP Secure Gateway component. When the PCoIP
Secure Gateway is enabled, after authentication, clients that use PCoIP can make another secure connection
to a security server or Access Point appliance. This connection allows clients to access remote desktops and
applications from the Internet.
When you enable the PCoIP Secure Gateway component, PCoIP traffic is forwarded by a security server or
Access Point appliance to remote desktops and applications. If clients that use PCoIP also use the USB
redirection feature or multimedia redirection (MMR) acceleration, you can enable the View Secure Gateway
component in order to forward that data.
When you configure direct client connections, PCoIP traffic and other traffic goes directly from a client to a
remote desktop or application.
When end users such as home or mobile workers access desktops from the Internet, security servers or
Access Point appliances provide the required level of security and connectivity so that a VPN connection is
not necessary. The PCoIP Secure Gateway component ensures that the only remote traffic that can enter the
corporate data center is traffic on behalf of a strongly authenticated user. End users can access only the
resources that they are authorized to access.

View LDAP
View LDAP is an embedded LDAP directory in View Connection Server and is the configuration repository
for all View configuration data.
View LDAP contains entries that represent each remote desktop and application, each accessible remote
desktop, multiple remote desktops that are managed together, and View component configuration settings.
View LDAP also includes a set of View plug-in DLLs to provide automation and notification services for
other View components.

View Messaging
The View Messaging component provides the messaging router for communication between View
Connection Server components and between Horizon Agent and View Connection Server.
This component supports the Java Message Service (JMS) API, which is used for messaging in View.

VMware, Inc.

Chapter 5 Planning for Security Features

Intercomponent message validation uses DSA keys. The key size is 512 bits by default, except in FIPS mode,
where the key size is 2048 bits.
Note When the message security mode is set to Enhanced, SSL/TLS is used to secure JMS connections
rather than using per-message encryption. In enhanced message security mode, validation applies to only
one message type. For enhanced message mode, VMware recommends increasing the key size to 2048 bits.
If you are not using enhanced message security mode, VMware recommends not changing the default from
512 bits because increasing the key size affects performance and scalability.
If you want all keys to be 1024 bits, the RSA key size must be changed immediately after the first View
Connection Server instance is installed and before additional servers and desktops are created. See VMware
Knowledge Base (KB) article 1024431 for more information.

Firewall Rules for View Connection Server
Certain ports must be opened on the firewall for View Connection Server instances and security servers.
When you install View Connection Server, the installation program can optionally configure the required
Windows Firewall rules for you. These rules open the ports that are used by default. If you change the
default ports after installation, you must manually configure Windows Firewall to allow Horizon Client
devices to connect to View through the updated ports.
The following table lists the default ports that can be opened automatically during installation. Ports are
incoming unless otherwise noted.
Table 5‑4. Ports Opened During View Connection Server Installation
Protocol

Ports

View Connection Server Instance Type

JMS

TCP 4001

Standard and replica

JMS

TCP 4002

Standard and replica

JMSIR

TCP 4100

Standard and replica

JMSIR

TCP 4101

Standard and replica

AJP13

TCP 8009

Standard and replica

HTTP

TCP 80

Standard, replica, and security server

HTTPS

TCP 443

Standard, replica, and security server

PCoIP

TCP 4172 in;
UDP 4172 both
directions

Standard, replica, and security server

HTTPS

TCP 8443
UDP 8443

Standard, replica, and security server.
After the initial connection to View is made, the Web browser or client device
connects to the Blast Secure Gateway on TCP port 8443. The Blast Secure Gateway
must be enabled on a security server or View Connection Server instance to allow
this second connection to take place.

HTTPS

TCP 8472

Standard and replica
For the Cloud Pod Architecture feature: used for interpod communication.

HTTP

TCP 22389

Standard and replica
For the Cloud Pod Architecture feature: used for global LDAP replication.

HTTPS

TCP 22636

Standard and replica
For the Cloud Pod Architecture feature: used for secure global LDAP replication.

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Firewall Rules for Horizon Agent
The Horizon Agent installation program optionally configures Windows Firewall rules on remote desktops
and RDS hosts to open the default network ports. Ports are incoming unless otherwise noted.
The agent installation program configures the local firewall rule for inbound RDP connections to match the
current RDP port of the host operating system, which is typically 3389.
If you instruct the agent installation program to not enable Remote Desktop support, it does not open ports
3389 and 32111, and you must open these ports manually.
If you change the RDP port number after installation, you must change the associated firewall rules. If you
change a default port after installation, you must manually reconfigure Windows firewall rules to allow
access on the updated port. See "Replacing Default Ports for View Services" in the View Installation
document.
Windows firewall rules on the Horizon Agent on RDS hosts show a block of 256 contiguous UDP ports as
open for inbound traffic. This block of ports is for VMWare Blast Extreme's internal use on the Horizon
Agent. A special Microsoft signed driver on RDS hosts blocks inbound traffic to these ports from external
sources. This driver causes the Windows firewall to treat the ports as closed.
If you use a virtual machine template as a desktop source, firewall exceptions carry over to deployed
desktops only if the template is a member of the desktop domain. You can use Microsoft group policy
settings to manage local firewall exceptions. See the Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article 875357 for more
information.
Table 5‑5. TCP and UDP Ports Opened During Agent Installation
Protocol

Ports

RDP

TCP port 3389

USB redirection and time zone synchronization

TCP port 32111

MMR (multimedia redirection) and CDR (client drive
redirection)

TCP port 9427

PCoIP

TCP port 4172
UDP port 4172 (bidirectional)

VMware Blast Extreme

TCP port 22443
UDP port 22443 (bidirectional)
Note UDP is not used on Linux desktops.

HTML Access

TCP port 22443

Firewall Rules for Active Directory
If you have a firewall between your View environment and your Active Directory server, you must make
sure that all of the necessary ports are opened.
For example, View Connection Server must be able to access the Active Directory Global Catalog and
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) servers. If the Global Catalog and LDAP ports are blocked
by your firewall software, administrators will have problems configuring user entitlements.
See the Microsoft documentation for your Active Directory server version for information about the ports
that must be opened for Active Directory to function correctly through a firewall.

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Overview of Steps to Setting Up a
Horizon 7 Environment

Complete these high-level tasks to install Horizon 7 and configure an initial deployment.
Table 6‑1. View Installation and Setup Check List
Step

Task

Set up the required administrator users and groups in Active Directory.
Instructions: View Installation and vSphere documentation.

If you have not yet done so, install and set up ESXi hosts and vCenter Server.
Instructions: VMware vSphere documentation.

(Optional) If you are going to deploy linked-clone desktops, install View Composer, either on the vCenter Server
system or on a separate server. Also install the View Composer database.
Instructions: View Installation document.

Install and set up Horizon Connection Server. Also install the Events database.
Instructions: View Installation document.

Create one or more virtual machines that can be used as a template for full-clone desktop pools or as a parent for
linked-clone desktop pools or instant clone desktop pools.
Instructions: Setting Up Virtual Desktops in Horizon 7.

(Optional) Set up an RDS host and install applications to be remoted to end users.
Instructions: Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon 7.

Create desktop pools, application pools, or both.
Instructions: Setting Up Virtual Desktops in Horizon 7 and Setting Up Published Desktops and Applications in Horizon
7.

Control user access to desktops.
Instructions: Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7.

Install Horizon Client on end users' machines and have end users access their remote desktops and applications.
Instructions: Horizon Client documentation at
https://www.vmware.com/support/viewclients/doc/viewclients_pubs.html.

(Optional) Create and configure additional administrators to allow different levels of access to specific inventory
objects and settings.
Instructions: View Administration document.

(Optional) Configure policies to control the behavior of Horizon 7 components, desktop and application pools,
and end users.
Instructions: Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7.

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View Architecture Planning

Table 6‑1. View Installation and Setup Check List (Continued)

Step

Task

(Optional) Configure Horizon Persona Management, which gives users access to personalized data and settings
whenever they log in to a desktop.
Instructions: Setting Up Virtual Desktops in Horizon 7.

(Optional) For added security, integrate smart card authentication or a RADIUS two-factor authentication
solution.
Instructions: View Administration document.

VMware, Inc.

Index

Symbols
.vmdk files 51

Numerics
3D graphics 29

A
Active Directory 10, 45, 80
Administration Server 93
administrator roles 85
Adobe Flash 33
AJP13 protocol 88
App Volumes 45
application remoting 26
application pools, advantages 34
application virtualization and provisioning 42,
44, 45
architectural design elements 47

B
back-end firewall
configuring 87
rules 88
bandwidth 66, 70
base image for virtual desktops 35, 39
Blast Extreme 85, 94
Blast Secure Gateway 78
Blast Secure Gateway connection 94
Business Intelligence software 15

C
check list for setting up a Horizon
deployment 97
client connections
Blast Secure Gateway 94
direct 79
PCoIP Secure Gateway 78, 85, 94
tunnel 79
client systems, best practices for securing 84
clones, instant 44
clones, linked 14, 43
cloud pod architecture 74
cluster, vSphere 61
communication protocols, understanding 90
connection types
Blast Secure Gateway 94

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client 77
direct 79
external client 85
PCoIP Secure Gateway 78, 85, 94
tunnel 79
cores, virtual machines density 51
CPU estimates 51, 57
credentials, user 82

D
database types 72
datastores 39
dedicated-assignment desktop pools 33, 39
delegated administration 85
demilitarized zone 85–87, 94
desktop as a managed service (DaaS) 7
desktop configurations 48
desktop pools 14, 33, 39, 53
desktop sources 33
diagram of a Horizon 7 deployment 11
direct client connections 59, 79
disk space allocation for virtual desktops 51, 57
display protocols
defined 22
Horizon 7 PCoIP 21
Microsoft RDP 21, 79
PCoIP 10, 79, 85
Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) 61
DMZ 13, 85–87, 94
dual-firewall topology 87

E
encryption, of user credentials 82
entitlements, restricted 82
ESX/ESXi hosts 52

F
feature support matrix 21
federated pod 74
Fibre Channel SAN arrays 35
FIPS mode 77
firewall rules
Active Directory 96
Horizon Agent 96
View Connection Server 95

View Architecture Planning

firewalls
back-end 87
front-end 87
rules 88
Flash URL Redirection 15
floating-assignment desktop pools 33
front-end firewall
configuring 87
rules 88

G
gateway server 93
GPOs, security settings for remote desktops 84
GRID vGPU, NVIDIA 29

H
HA cluster 58, 59, 61
hardware requirements, PCoIP 24
hardware-accelerated graphics 29
Horizon 7 deployment diagram 11
Horizon Administrator 14
Horizon Agent 14, 45
Horizon Agent Direct Connect Plugin 13
Horizon Client 45
Horizon Client for Linux 13
Horizon Connection Server
configuration 14, 59
grouping 86
load balancing 86
overview 13
smart card authentication 81
Horizon node configuration 52
Horizon pod 72
Horizon PowerCLI 15
Horizon Workspace 7
HTML Access 12

I
I/O storms 66
instant clones 41, 44
iSCSI SAN arrays 35

J
Java Message Service 94
Java Message Service protocol 88
JMS protocol 88, 90

K
kiosk mode 56
knowledge workers 48, 49, 55

100

L
LAN configurations 71, 72
latency 70
LDAP configuration data 15
LDAP directory 13, 94
legacy PCs 12
linked clones 14, 39, 43, 59, 64
Linux clients 12, 14
load balancing, Horizon Connection Server 71,
72, 86
Log in as current user feature 31, 82
LUNs 39

M
Mac clients 12, 14
media file formats supported 30
memory allocation for virtual machines 49, 57
messaging router 94
Microsoft Lync 15
Microsoft RDP 21, 79
Microsoft RDS hosts 59
mobile clients 12
multimedia redirection (MMR) 30
multimedia streaming 30
multiple monitors 10, 31

N
NAS arrays 35
network bandwidth 66
NVIDIA GRID vGPU 29

P
parent virtual machine 39, 43
PCoIP, hardware requirements 24
PCoIP Secure Gateway connection 78, 85, 94
persistent disks 39
persona management, configuring and
managing 27
Persona Management 10
physical PCs 59
pod design 74
policies, desktop 45
pools
desktop 39, 53
kiosk users 56
knowledge workers 55
task workers 54
pools, desktop 14, 33
power users 48
printers 21
printing, virtual 30
processing requirements 51

VMware, Inc.

Index

professional services 5
provisioning a pool 68
provisioning desktops 7
published applications 26

R
RADIUS authentication 81
RAM allocation for virtual machines 49, 57
RDP 26
RDS host 43, 57
rebalance feature 39
rebalancing a pool 68
recompose feature 43
recomposing a pool 68
refresh feature 43, 51
refreshing a pool 68
regulatory compliance 34
remote applications 43
remote display protocols
PCoIP 24
RDP 26
replicas 39
restricted entitlements 82
roaming profiles 27
RSA key size, changing 94
RSA SecurID authentication, configuring 81

S
SBPM (storage-based policy management) 37,
38
scalability, planning for 47
SCOM 15
SCSI adapter types 57
security 34
security features, planning 77
security servers
best practices for deploying 86
Blast Secure Gateway 94
firewall rules for 88
implementing 85
load balancing 86
overview 13
PCoIP Secure Gateway 94
setup, Horizon 97
shared storage 35, 64
single sign-on (SSO) 14, 31, 82
smart policies 45
smart card authentication 81
smart card readers 81
Smart Policies 84
snapshots 43
Soft 3D 29

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software provisioning 44, 45
software-accelerated graphics 29
storage
reducing, with instant clones 41
reducing, with instant clones or View
Composer linked clones 35
reducing, with View Composer 39
storage configurations 63
storage bandwidth 66
storage-based policy management 37, 38
streaming applications 44
streaming multimedia 30
suspend files 49, 51
swap files 49

T
tablets 12
task workers 48, 49, 54
TCP ports
Active Directory 96
Horizon Agent 96
View Connection Server 95
technical support 5
templates, GPO 45
thin client support 12
ThinApp 44
True SSO 31
tunnel connection 59, 79
tunneled communications 93
two-factor authentication 81

U
UDP ports 88
Unified Access 59
USB devices
using with Horizon 7 desktops 21
using with remote desktops 10
using with View desktops 28
USB redirection 28, 30
user authentication
Active Directory 80
methods 80
smart cards 81
User Environment Manager 45
user profiles 27
user types 48

V
vCenter, configuration 58
vCenter Server, in pod design 74
vDGA 3D rendering 29
vdmadmin command 15

101

View Architecture Planning

View Administrator 45
View Broker 93
View Client 13
View Composer, operations 59, 64, 68
View Connection Server, configuration 45
View Messaging 94
View Open Client 13
View Portal 14
View Secure Gateway Server 93
virtual profiles 10, 21
virtual machine configuration
for vCenter 58
for Horizon Connection Server 59
for remote desktops 48
for View Composer 58
virtual printing feature 10, 21, 30
virtual private networks 85
Virtual SAN 35, 37, 39
Virtual Volumes (VVols) 38, 39
VMotion 61
VMware Blast Extreme display protocol 22
vSAN 35, 37, 39
vSGA 3D rendering 29
vSphere 7, 10, 35
vSphere cluster 61, 71, 72

W
WAN support 70
webcam 29
Windows page file 51
Windows roaming profiles 27
worker types 48, 49, 51, 53
Wyse MMR 21, 30

102

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