Virtualisation
VMware Horizon (Omnissa) — Deployment, administration and virtual applications
Design, deploy and administer a complete virtual desktop and application infrastructure: Connection Server, Unified Access Gateway, instant-clone pools, RDSH, App Volumes and Dynamic Environment Manager.
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- recognise the features, benefits and architecture of Horizon
- use vSphere to create and optimise the virtual machines used as Horizon desktops
- install and configure Horizon Agent, and prepare a Windows and Linux master image
- configure and manage Horizon clients and their end-user features
- configure, manage and entitle full-clone and instant-clone machine pools
- create and operate RDS desktop and application pools
- deploy App Volumes and Dynamic Environment Manager for application and profile management
- monitor the environment through the Horizon console and the Help Desk tool
- describe the authentication, certificate and True SSO options
- integrate Workspace ONE Access with Horizon 8
- understand the platform's performance, scalability and security options
Who it's for: administrators and systems engineers responsible for deploying or operating a VDI infrastructure.
Prerequisites: command of the VMware vSphere Client, of virtualisation concepts, of Windows Server administration and of Active Directory directory principles.
Block 1 — Foundations and scoping
- Introduction to VMware Horizon — features and benefits, conceptual and logical architecture.
- Introduction to use cases — use cases for a virtual desktop and application infrastructure, converting client requirements into use cases.
- vSphere for VMware Horizon — virtualisation concepts, access to vCenter Server and ESXi hosts through the vSphere Client, creating, provisioning and deleting a virtual machine.
Block 2 — Horizon foundation
- Horizon Connection Server — reference architecture, supported features, system requirements, event database, initial configuration, the critical role of the ADAM database.
- Building the full infrastructure — installing and configuring the Connection Server in Standard and Replica modes, a dedicated SQL Server event database, deploying and configuring Unified Access Gateway, enabling the access protocols and network ports.
- Horizon scalability — the role of the replica server, synchronisation between instances of a pod, LDAP and VIPA replication in a Cloud Pod architecture, scalability options.
Block 3 — Desktops and pools
- Horizon desktops — creating Windows and Linux virtual machines through vSphere, optimising and preparing desktop VMs.
- Horizon agents — installation options on Windows and Linux, creating a Windows master image.
- Horizon pools — deployment models, adding desktops to the inventory, dedicated versus floating assignment, creating an automated pool, user entitlements, the hierarchy of global, pool and user policies.
- Instant-clone pools — benefits, provisioning technology, configuring an automated pool, pushing updated images to the pools.
Block 4 — Applications, RDSH and user environment
- RDS desktop and application pools — the difference between an RDS pool and an automated pool, session host, server farm and application pool, creation and access from Horizon Client, automating RDSH farms with instant clones, load balancing.
- Managing RDSH and farms — setting up an RDSH farm, RDS desktop pools, published application pools, user access rights.
- App Volumes Manager — SQL database configuration, creating and managing application packages (AppStacks), user assignments, validation in Horizon Client.
- Dynamic Environment Manager (FlexEngine) — configuration and user write shares, installing FlexEngine on the desktops, personalisation and environment management policies (drives, printers, variables, GPOs), verifying profile persistence between sessions.
- Workspace ONE Access — features and benefits, administration console, identity and access management, directory integration, virtual application deployment.
Block 5 — User experience and performance
- Horizon client options — available clients and their benefits, access to desktops through native and HTML clients, integrated printing, USB redirection, shared folders, session collaboration and Microsoft Teams optimisation.
- Horizon protocols — comparison of remote display protocols, BLAST protocol codecs, common BLAST and PCoIP ADMX GPO configurations.
- Graphics cards — 3D rendering options in Horizon 8, vSGA versus vDGA, configuration steps for graphics cards.
Block 6 — Security, authentication and operations
- Authentication and certificates — Connection Server authentication options, smart card authentication, creating administrators and custom roles, available roles, the role of certificates, installing and configuring certificates, setting up True SSO.
- Horizon security — securing connections, restricting connections, what Unified Access Gateway brings, supported two-factor authentication, firewall rules, deploying UAG with one, two or three network interfaces.
- Monitoring VMware Horizon — component health through the administration console dashboard, session tracking through the Help Desk tool.
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