Chapter 2. Horizon View 6.0 Architectural and Feature Overview

In Chapter 1, Introducing VDI and VMware Horizon 6.0, we discussed what virtual desktop infrastructure is all about and started to focus on the details of the Horizon View solution. Building on what we learned, this chapter is almost going to act as a glossary or encyclopedia of Horizon View Standard Edition and will introduce you to the architecture and components of the solution.

We will start each section in this chapter with an overview of a specific feature or component, describing its role in the overall solution, how it fits into the infrastructure, and in some cases, take a look under the hood at how it works.

As part of the overall solution, VMware works with a number of third-party vendor technologies that compliment Horizon View, such as antivirus solutions and high-end graphics solutions. These form part of the VMware horizontal solutions and provide reference architectures for various markets such as health...

The Horizon View core components

Let's start this section with a high-level overview of the complete VMware Horizon 6 solution and the components and functionality included in the overall solution, before focusing on the specific Horizon View 6.0 elements of the solution.

It's also probably worth mentioning that as part of the Horizon 6 licensing model, you are licensed to deploy the core hosting infrastructure with the VMware vSphere platform and the vSphere for Desktop license. You can deploy as many ESXi hosts and vCenter servers as you require in order to host only the desktop infrastructure. We will discuss this later in the The Horizon View Standard Edition licensing section of this chapter.

The following diagram depicts the Horizon 6 solution and its features:

Now that you now have a high-level picture of VMware Horizon 6 and the features it delivers, we are going to take a deeper look into the components that deliver this functionality and how they work in the following...

The Horizon View security server

The Horizon View security server is another role of the View Connection Server, but architecturally, it sits within your DMZ. The reason for this is that you can allow end users to securely connect to their virtual desktop machine from an external network or the Internet without necessarily needing to connect via a VPN first. The security server does not expose any internal network details to the Internet.

We will cover the installation process of the View security server in Chapter 4, Installing Horizon View 6.0, but it's almost identical to installing the View Connection Server. Instead, you select the View Security Server option from the drop-down menu of the different role options.

Note

You cannot install a View security server on the same machine that is running a View Connection Server or any of the other Horizon View components.

As part of the installation process, a View security server is paired with a View Connection Server on a 1:1 basis, so...

The Horizon View replica server

As the name suggests, the Horizon View replica server is exactly that—a replica or copy of the original View Connection Server.

It is used to enable high availability for your Horizon View environment so that if your View Connection Server fails, the replica server takes over and users are still able to connect to their virtual desktop machines.

In line with the security server, the View replica server is another role of the View Connection Server. As you will see in Chapter 4, Installing Horizon View 6.0, the installation process is the same as the Connection Server and security server, but this time, you select the replica server role from the drop-down menu.

How does it work?

So, the first question that gets asked is what gets replicated? The View Connection Server stores all its information relating to the end users, desktop pools, and virtual desktop machines in an Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) database.

Then, using the Lightweight Directory...

Horizon View Composer and linked clones

The next component and feature that we are going to discuss is View Composer and what linked clones mean in a desktop environment. We will spend a bit more time concentrating on this subject, as it's a key part of delivering a successful and cost-effective VDI solution. It's also one of those things that often gets confused, so we need to give this subject the justice it deserves.

Let's start with why this is important. An all-too-often reason why a VDI project fails or doesn't even get started comes down to the perceived storage requirements, both from a capacity as well as cost perspective in deploying a storage platform that delivers the performance required for VDI. The reason we see this typically comes down to the fact that the VDI project is being approached in the same way as a physical desktop project would be.

This would mean that each user will get their own dedicated virtual desktop and the hard disk that comes with it...

View Persona Management

Starting with a little bit of background, View Persona Management was originally a technology product called Virtual Profiles, which was acquired by VMware from the company that produced it, which is RTO Software, back in 2010. It's designed to manage user profiles within a virtualized desktop environment.

VMware View Persona Management was first released with View 5.0 and allows you to configure a user's profile so that it dynamically synchronizes with a remote profile repository on a file server in the data center. It's a standard component and is part of the VMware View Standard Edition license.

Do we need to manage user profiles differently?

In short, yes we do, due to the way in which we can now manage the delivery of a virtual desktop machine and the fact that a user might not own their desktop, and we have a floating pool of desktop resources from which a user can be assigned any virtual desktop machine. If we have a dedicated desktop assigned...

The Horizon View core components

Let's start this section with a high-level overview of the complete VMware Horizon 6 solution and the components and functionality included in the overall solution, before focusing on the specific Horizon View 6.0 elements of the solution.

It's also probably worth mentioning that as part of the Horizon 6 licensing model, you are licensed to deploy the core hosting infrastructure with the VMware vSphere platform and the vSphere for Desktop license. You can deploy as many ESXi hosts and vCenter servers as you require in order to host only the desktop infrastructure. We will discuss this later in the The Horizon View Standard Edition licensing section of this chapter.

The following diagram depicts the Horizon 6 solution and its features:

Now that you now have a high-level picture of VMware Horizon 6 and the features it delivers, we are going to take a deeper look into the components that deliver this functionality and how they work in the following sections.

A high...

The Horizon View security server

The Horizon View security server is another role of the View Connection Server, but architecturally, it sits within your DMZ. The reason for this is that you can allow end users to securely connect to their virtual desktop machine from an external network or the Internet without necessarily needing to connect via a VPN first. The security server does not expose any internal network details to the Internet.

We will cover the installation process of the View security server in Chapter 4, Installing Horizon View 6.0, but it's almost identical to installing the View Connection Server. Instead, you select the View Security Server option from the drop-down menu of the different role options.

Note

You cannot install a View security server on the same machine that is running a View Connection Server or any of the other Horizon View components.

As part of the installation process, a View security server is paired with a View Connection Server on a 1:1 basis, so every...

The Horizon View replica server

As the name suggests, the Horizon View replica server is exactly that—a replica or copy of the original View Connection Server.

It is used to enable high availability for your Horizon View environment so that if your View Connection Server fails, the replica server takes over and users are still able to connect to their virtual desktop machines.

In line with the security server, the View replica server is another role of the View Connection Server. As you will see in Chapter 4, Installing Horizon View 6.0, the installation process is the same as the Connection Server and security server, but this time, you select the replica server role from the drop-down menu.

How does it work?

So, the first question that gets asked is what gets replicated? The View Connection Server stores all its information relating to the end users, desktop pools, and virtual desktop machines in an Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) database.

Then, using the Lightweight Directory Access...

Horizon View Composer and linked clones

The next component and feature that we are going to discuss is View Composer and what linked clones mean in a desktop environment. We will spend a bit more time concentrating on this subject, as it's a key part of delivering a successful and cost-effective VDI solution. It's also one of those things that often gets confused, so we need to give this subject the justice it deserves.

Let's start with why this is important. An all-too-often reason why a VDI project fails or doesn't even get started comes down to the perceived storage requirements, both from a capacity as well as cost perspective in deploying a storage platform that delivers the performance required for VDI. The reason we see this typically comes down to the fact that the VDI project is being approached in the same way as a physical desktop project would be.

This would mean that each user will get their own dedicated virtual desktop and the hard disk that comes with it, albeit now a virtual...

View Persona Management

Starting with a little bit of background, View Persona Management was originally a technology product called Virtual Profiles, which was acquired by VMware from the company that produced it, which is RTO Software, back in 2010. It's designed to manage user profiles within a virtualized desktop environment.

VMware View Persona Management was first released with View 5.0 and allows you to configure a user's profile so that it dynamically synchronizes with a remote profile repository on a file server in the data center. It's a standard component and is part of the VMware View Standard Edition license.

Do we need to manage user profiles differently?

In short, yes we do, due to the way in which we can now manage the delivery of a virtual desktop machine and the fact that a user might not own their desktop, and we have a floating pool of desktop resources from which a user can be assigned any virtual desktop machine. If we have a dedicated desktop assigned to a user, we might...

Managing USB devices in a virtual desktop

We are all used to plugging USB devices such as memory sticks into our laptops and desktops, but now that your desktop is a virtual desktop machine, how do you continue to use your USB devices? Horizon View has the ability to redirect your USB device from the physical endpoint into which you plug the USB device to your virtual desktop machine using the PCoIP protocol. The USB device appears as if it's connected to the virtualized desktop and will appear in the device manager, for example. Don't forget, you will still need to have the drivers installed for this device if Windows cannot detect them.

USB device support in Horizon View

There isn't an exhaustive list of devices that work within Horizon View, as that would be a very long list.

In general, most devices should work, as all that Horizon View is doing is redirecting the USB traffic from the View Client on the endpoint device to the View Agent running on the virtual desktop machine. There could...

ThinApp application virtualization

As part of the Horizon View Standard Edition license, ThinApp is also included. Discussing ThinApp in great detail is a whole book in itself, so in this section, we are just going to skim the surface and give you a very high-level overview of the product.

ThinApp is an application virtualization or application-packaging solution that abstracts applications from the underlying operating systems, which is a bit like how a hypervisor decouples an operating system from the physical hardware. However, now we have moved up a level and are looking at separating applications from the operating systems.

So, why do I need ThinApp?

It's designed to eliminate the application conflict and streamline the application delivery and management. One of the key use cases is to deliver applications that might not run or be supported on your operating system version.

An example of this is running Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 7, where IE6 will only run on Windows XP. However, by...

Antivirus for virtual desktop machines

Let's start by looking at a traditional desktop antivirus scanning model where an agent is installed and runs on every desktop in the environment. The job of the agent is to perform the antivirus scan and also update the definition file that contains information on the latest malware.

For a desktop PC environment, this model works well, but in a VDI infrastructure, there will be a few challenges. When a scan starts on every virtual desktop, its resource usage will significantly increase, but if you think about the VDI model, these desktops are running on a single ESXi host server, and it's the server that will buckle.

For example, you had a host server running 100 virtual desktop machines, and at 12 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, they all kicked off a virus scan. This host is likely to become 100 percent utilized very quickly, both for the CPU and storage I/O. The result will be unresponsive desktops. Instead of affecting one user's desktop, you have now...

The PCoIP protocol – delivering the desktop experience

So far, we have really only talked about building the virtual desktop machines and some of the features that help you build a solid infrastructure, but the most important task in any VDI solution is how do you get the screen contents of the virtual desktop machine running in the data center delivered to the users endpoint device you are remotely connecting from.

This is where the delivery protocol comes in. VMware Horizon View 6, like previous versions, uses PC-over-IP (PCoIP). In this section, we are going to cover what the PCoIP protocol is and how it works to deliver the end user experience.

An introduction to PCoIP

PCoIP is a high-performance, UDP-based display protocol designed by a company called Teradici and has been purpose-built to deliver virtual desktop machines over a LAN or WAN to provide end users with a feature-rich desktop experience.

With PCoIP, the entire screen content is compressed, encrypted, and encoded on the virtual...

Hardware-accelerated graphics in Horizon View

Before we get into the fine details, let's start with a brief background of the high-end graphic features in Horizon View.

The support for high-end graphics has been released in phases, with the first phase supporting 3D graphics, which shipped with vSphere 5 and View 5.0, using a software-based rendering solution. This allowed support for Windows Aero, for example, but was still not up for some of the real high-end use cases such as CAD applications.

If we had been having this conversation previously, and you had a use case that required high-end graphics capabilities, virtual desktops at that time would not have been a viable solution. As we just discussed, in a VDI environment, graphics would be delivered using software. We are also using the graphics card on the server, which typically has limited capabilities, as all it needs to do is show a local console.

In the next phase, a hardware-based GPU solution was released with vSphere 5.1, allowing...