Publishing applications with VMware Horizon View 6

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So VMware Horizon View 6 has been released and it includes publishing applications via RDS pools which is a very welcome addition to the Horizon View stack. There are still a small number of caveats to using this but its certainly simple to set up and here is how.

 

Firstly you will need to deploy your RDS servers with the applications installed that you wish to use. These must be at minimum Windows Server 2008 R2 sp1 and later so hosting older applications in this way is out unfortunately. Also unlike to desktop component of Horizon View there is no quick prep or image duplication technology built in so you would need to create an RDS master server with all the applications and settings you need then sysprep it and shut it down. You could then convert this to a template and clone out as many RDS servers as you think you will require. There are also many other tools that will prepare a single machine for cloning so you could just use the technique you are used to within your environment.

Once you have your RDS servers set up how you would like them you need to install the VMware Horizon View Agent into each VM.


Now that the agent is installed its time to swap to your VMware Horizon View 6 admin page. Firstly you need to check the the RDS servers are showing as registered, by clicking on the View Configurations node and then the Registered Machines sub-node.

 

Registered Desktops

 

Then we need to add the RDS servers into a Farm. A Farm is a number of identically configured RDS servers as these will be used to allocate applications to users as they request them so its critical that servers within a Farm have the same applications and same configurations applied to them to ensure a unified experience.

Under the Inventory pane click on Inventory and the the Farms Node and Click Add.

 

Farms

 

Now create an ID for the Farm (note my typo here I had to take out the space between RDS and Farm). Leave the other settings as default unless you have a reason to change any of them and click Next.

 

FarmAdd

 

Now select the RDS servers that are registered with the VMware Horizon View installation (in mine there is only one) click Next and then Finish.

 

RDSServers

 

Now within the Inventory pane click on the Application Pool node and click Add.

 

AppPool

 

As I only have one RDS pool the Select an RDS farm has already selected the correct RDS Farm. The VMware View Agent installed on the RDS servers query the servers for installed applications and present you a list of applications to choose from. Again as this is my lab all I’ve selected is Wordpad and Notepad and click Next.

 

SelectApps

On this screen you can change the applications names that are presented to the users which is useful if applications are internally known as something other than the applications own name. If you do not want users to see the applications yet or to allow groups of users to see them untick Entitle users after this wizard finishes.

 

WordpadNotepad

 

If you leave Entitle users ticked on the next screen you will see the familiar adding users and groups. Click Add.

 

AddUsers

Enter the Active Directory Group that you wish to be able to access the application and click Find and OK.

 

DomainUsers

 

Then click OK again to confirm the correct Groups.

 

Screen Shot 2014-06-23 at 10.52.25

 

 

Your Applications are now published. You can test this by ensuring you have the latest VMware Horizon View client downloaded and installed then authenticate against the connection or security server and launch an application.

 

Screen Shot 2014-06-23 at 11.06.10

 

 

 

Author: Dale Scriven

 

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