Printing from a Virtual Desktop Machine

A question that often comes up when deploying a VDI solution is, how do you manage printing? As your virtual desktop is now effectively running on a server in the data center, does that mean that, when you hit the print button, your print job comes out there? What about printer drivers? Typically, your desktop has the driver installed for the printer that is nearest to you, or it might be a locally-attached printer. Does that mean you need to install every possible printer driver onto your virtual desktop machines? Luckily, the answer to these questions is no, and in this section, we will briefly cover how VMware Horizon View manages printing.

Bundled within Horizon View is an OEM virtual printing solution, ThinPrint, for which a company called Cortado is the OEM. ThinPrint allows your end users to print either to a network-based printer or to a local printer that is attached from the user's endpoint device to their virtual desktop machine via USB redirection...