What this book covers

Chapter 1, VMware Horizon Infrastructure Overview, provides a broad overview of VMware Horizon and discusses topics that will influence the design, implementation, and assessment of a VMware Horizon infrastructure.

Chapter 2, Implementing Horizon Connection Server, covers the infrastructure requirements, sizing, limits, high availability, deployment, configuration, backup, and recovery of Horizon Connection Server.

Chapter 3, Implementing Horizon Composer, covers the infrastructure requirements, deployment, configuration, backup, and recovery of Horizon Composer. The capabilities of Horizon Composer and benefits of using linked-clone desktops are also discussed.

Chapter 4, Implementing Horizon Security Server, covers the infrastructure requirements, limits, high availability designs, deployment, configuration, backup, and recovery of Horizon Security Server.

Chapter 5,  Implementing Horizon Unified Access Gateway, covers the infrastructure requirements, limits, high availability designs, deployment, configuration, and troubleshooting of Horizon Unified Access Gateway.

Chapter 6, Implementing a Horizon Cloud Pod, covers how to deploy, configure, and administer a Horizon Cloud Pod, which enables the creation of global client entitlements to resources in multi-site, multi-pod Horizon environments.

Chapter 7, Creating Horizon Desktop Pools, covers how to create desktop pools using the Horizon View Manager Admin console. Topics covered include desktop pool options, desktop pool types, monitoring pool creation, user entitlement, and common provisioning problems.

Chapter 8, Implementing Microsoft Remote Desktop Services Application and Desktop Pools, covers how to configure Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop Services for use with Horizon, how to deploy and manage Remote Desktop Services farms, how to create Remote Desktop Services-based Horizon Application and Desktop Pools, and how to manage and monitor the status of Windows Remote Desktop Services hosts and Horizon clients who are streaming applications.

Chapter 9, Performing Horizon Pool Maintenance, covers how to perform maintenance on Horizon pools that contain linked-clone or instant-clone desktops. Topics include an overview of the different maintenance operations including linked-clone refresh, recompose, and rebalance, instant-clone push image and recovery, and how to manage the optional linked-clone persistent disks.

Chapter 10, Creating a Master Virtual Desktop Image, covers the techniques that should be used when creating a master Horizon desktop image. Topics covered include the importance of optimizing the desktop OS; sample optimization results; examples of how to disable native application update features; and how to optimize the Windows filesystem, Windows OS, and Windows user profiles.

Chapter 11, Implementing App Volumes, covers the infrastructure prerequisites, deployment, configuration, and administration of VMware App Volumes. Topics include the deployment and configuration of the App Volumes Manager appliance, the installation and configuration of the App Volumes Agent and AppCapture program, the App Volumes AppStack creation, update, and assignment process, the Writable Volume assignment and creation process; and App Volumes backup and recovery procedures.

Chapter 12, Implementing User Environment Manager, covers the implementation and management of the VMware User Environment Manager profile management platform and provides an overview of the capabilities of some of the product's advanced features.

Chapter 13, Implementing the Just-in-Time Management Platform (JMP), covers the implementation of the Horizon Just-in-Time Management Server, the VMware resources required, and how to create JMP Assignments that include access to Horizon desktops, App Volumes AppStacks, and user profile management using User Environment Manager.

Chapter 14, Using Horizon PowerCLI, covers the different PowerCLI commands that you can use to configure and administer nearly all aspects of the Horizon platform, and provides examples of how those commands are used.

Chapter 15, Implementing Horizon Group Policies, covers how to use the View Active Directory Group Policy templates to customize the different Horizon software components. Topics covered include a detailed description of each of the different Group Policy template settings, an explanation of where the settings should be applied within Active Directory, the location of the Group Policy template files, and the importance Group Policy loopback processing with View desktops.

Chapter 16, Managing Horizon SSL Certificates, covers how to replace the default SSL certificates on each of the Horizon components including Connection Server, Composer, Security Server, and Unified Access Gateway. This chapter also discusses how to create the SSL certificate requests and obtain new certificates using a Microsoft Active Directory Certificate Services server.