VMware Horizon 2106 and More Released

VMware has released Horizon 2106, App Volumes 4, version 2103.3, Dynamic Environment Manager Release Notes 2106 and ThinApp 5.2.10.

Horizon 2106

What’s new:

VMware Horizon version 2106 provides the following new features and enhancements. This information is grouped by installable component.

Beginning with this release, version numbering is based on the planned year and the month of the release. The actual release date can vary based on business needs and engineering schedule changes to address critical customer requirements.

Horizon Connection Server

• Published Desktops and Applications
  • The Bypass Session Timeout setting allows application sessions to run forever. See Worksheet for Creating an Automated Instant-Clone Farm in Horizon.
• Virtual Desktops
  • When creating or editing a desktop pool with session type Application and Desktop or Application, you can select the Bypass Session Timeout setting to allow application sessions to run forever. See Worksheet for Creating an Instant-Clone Desktop Pool.
  • Microsoft Sysprep is now supported for customizing instant clone virtual machines. See Choosing ClonePrep or Sysprep for Customizing Your Virtual Desktops.
  • 5K and 8K client display resolutions are now supported (Blast only). See Estimating Memory Requirements for Virtual Machine Desktops.
  • Horizon supports 20,000 desktops and sessions per Pod. See VMware Configuration Maximums for detailed scalability metrics.
• Horizon Console
  • Users belonging to untrusted domains can use SAML authentication, True SSO, and smart card authentication. See Configuring Untrusted Domains.
  • You can now use smart card caching emulation for non-Microsoft Windows client connections. See Using Smart Card Caching Emulation.
  • Role creation and edit now offer two new privileges applicable to access groups. Both new privileges are children of the Manage Machine privilege: See Privileges for Managing Machines and Object-Specific Privileges.
    • Manage Machine Alias and User Assignment – used for machine user assignment and machine alias assignment.
    • Manage Machine Maintenance – used for toggling machines manually to and from maintenance state.
  • When adding a vCenter Server instance, you can now select a deployment type. Deployment type allows you to specify whether your vCenter is in a private data center or in a specific public cloud data center. See Add vCenter Server Instances to VMware Horizon.
• Security
  • Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is now enabled by default. See Cross-Origin Resource Sharing.
  • By default Horizon now uses the Microsoft Cryptography API: Next Generation (CNG) standard. If you have a use case requiring use of the legacy CryptoAPI standard, you can still do so. See Using the Legacy Microsoft CryptoAPI Standard.
  • You can now connect to the event database using SSL. See SSL Connection to Event Database.
• HTML Access
  • HTML Access is now supported in an IPv6 environment.
• Deployment Architecture
  • You can now deploy Horizon Connection Servers and Horizon Agents in different data centers across WAN, as long as the Horizon Agents are located within 120ms of the Connection Servers. This feature effectively extends a single Horizon pod across multiple locations and enables a single pod to manage virtual desktops and RDS hosts located in data centers that are different from where the Horizon Connection Servers are deployed, and applies to Horizon virtual desktops and RDSH deployed in private data centers as well as in public clouds.

Horizon Agent

• The HTML5 Multimedia Redirection feature now supports the Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browser. See Install and Configure HTML5 Multimedia Redirection.
• The Browser Redirection feature now supports the Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browser. See Install and Configure Browser Redirection.
• The Geolocation Redirection feature now supports the Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browser. See Install and Configure Geolocation Redirection.
• The USB Redirection feature now supports the Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browser. See Configuring USB Redirection for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and HTML Access Clients.
• The HTML5 Multimedia Redirection, Browser Redirection, and Geolocation Redirection features on Chrome extensions support the following locales: ES, FR, JP, KR, CN, TW, DE.
• Media Optimization for Microsoft Teams supports Linux Client. See Configuring Media Optimization for Microsoft Teams.
• When you configure a different sample rate from the default value for a recording audio device, the sample rate persists after disconnecting from and reconnecting to the session as well after logging off and logging on to the session.
• VMware Integrated Printing displays the session user name on the client side print queue. This way, the end user can monitor the print job and see who initiated the print job. See Configuring VMware Integrated Printing.
• You can redirect Microsoft Xbox One controllers that are plugged into a USB port on a Windows client system to virtual desktops. See Configuring Microsoft Xbox One Controller Redirection.
• The Clipboard Redirection feature enables and disables in session copy/paste functionality. See KB 84165.
• GPU encoding is enabled during session collaboration on physical machines for Windows 2004 and later if sufficient GPU resource is available for both primary and collaboration sessions.
• Horizon supports NVIDIA Ampere A40 and A10 GPUs with Blast supporting H.265, H.264, and Graphics offload.
• Blast Extreme implements High Dynamic Range (HDR) encoding, which expands the range of brightness in a digital image to provide a more realistic depiction of a scene. See VMware Blast Extreme.
• The Blast Extreme decoder supports 10-bit 4:4:4 video on Intel integrated GPUs.
• Physical machines support NVIDIA GPUs and encoders. Physical machines can also directly leverage GPU capability available to the Horizon Agent operating system. For a list of tested NVIDIA series, see Manual Pool of Registered Physical Machines.
• Copy and paste performance has been improved on slow networks.

Horizon Agent for Linux

• Operating Systems
  This release adds support for the following Linux distributions:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Workstation 8.4
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Server 8.4
  • CentOS 8.4
• Printer Redirection
  This release adds support for Printer Redirection, which allows users to print from a Linux remote desktop to any local or network printer available on their client computer. This feature is supported on Linux desktops running RHEL 7.9, RHEL 8.3, or Ubuntu 20.04. See install_viewagent.sh Command-Line Options.
• Digital Watermarks
  With this release, you can add a digital watermark to a Linux remote session, to ensure the authenticity, content integrity, and ownership protection of your intellectual property. You can configure the digital watermark by using configuration options in the /etc/vmware/config file or by using Dynamic Environment Manager environment variables. See Features of Horizon Linux Desktops.
• Smart Card Redirection on RHEL Desktops with SELinux Enforcing
  This release supports smart card redirection on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) desktops with Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) enabled. In previous releases, smart card redirection required SELinux to be disabled on RHEL desktops. See Configure Smart Card Redirection on a RHEL 8.x Virtual Machine. 

Horizon GPO Bundle

• The Enable Microsoft Edge (Chromium) Browser for VMware HTML5 Multimedia Redirection group policy setting enables the HTML5 Multimedia Redirection feature for the Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browser.
• The Enable VMware Browser Redirection for Microsoft Edge (Chromium) Browser group policy setting enables the Browser Redirection feature for the Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browser.
• The Enable Edge Browser for VMware HTML5 Multimedia Redirection policy setting is renamed Enable legacy version of Microsoft Edge Browser for VMware HTML5 Multimedia Redirection.
• The Enable VMware Browser Redirection feature for Microsoft Edge (Chromium) Browser group policy setting enables the Browser Redirection feature for the Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browser.
• The Enable VMware Geolocation Redirection for Microsoft Edge (Chromium) Browser group policy setting enables the Geolocation Redirection feature for the Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browser.
• The Enable VMware Geolocation Redirection for Chrome Browser group policy setting enables the Geolocation Redirection feature for the Chrome browser.
• The Default settings for UPD printers group policy setting allows you to define default settings for UPD printers. See VMware Integrated Printing Policy Settings.
• The Agent Configuration Policy settings include settings for Remote Desktop Services sessions. See VMware View Agent Configuration ADMX Template Settings.
  • RDS Connection Time Until Disconnect
  • RDS Disconnected Time Until Logoff
  • RDS End Session When Time Limit Reached
  • RDS Idle Time Until Disconnect
• The Unity Touch and Hosted Apps Policy Settings includes a new policy setting: Redirect legal notice messages as a window. See VMware View Agent Configuration ADMX Template Settings. 
• The Screen-capture Blocking policy setting determines whether a user can take screenshots of the virtual machine or published application. See VMware View Agent Configuration ADMX Template Settings.
• The Sample Rate – Recording Audio Device sample rate policy sets the recording audio device sample rate for RDS hosts and published applications. See Real-Time Audio-Video Group Policy Settings.
• The Unity Filter rule list agent group policy setting now supports the matching of classname values based on regular expression (regex) entries. The policy setting also provides support for the new style characteristic, which lets you apply rules based on Microsoft window styles. See Managing Special Unity Windows.

Horizon Client

For information about new features in Horizon Client 2106, including HTML Access 2106, see the release notes on the VMware Horizon Client Documentation page.

See the full release notes here.

App Volumes 4, version 2103.3

The VMware App Volumes 4, version 2103.3 includes bug fixes and known issues.

See the full release notes here.

Dynamic Environment Manager Release Notes 2106

What’s New 

• VMware Dynamic Environment Manager integration with VMware Workspace ONE UEM (Unified Endpoint Management).
  • Removes the requirement for a VMware Dynamic Environment Manager configuration Server Message Block (SMB) share
  • Creates a VMware Dynamic Environment Manager config profile file, which contains all the VMware Dynamic Environment Manager configuration settings, using the VMware Dynamic Environment Manager Management Console
  • Stores the VMware Dynamic Environment Manager config profile file in Workspace ONE UEM
  • Delivers the VMware Dynamic Environment Manager configuration to endpoints using Workspace ONE UEM smart groups for flexible targeting
  • Supports integrating an existing VMware Dynamic Environment Manager deployment with Workspace ONE UEM without losing any of your existing VMware Dynamic Environment Manager configuration
  • Supports switching from integration mode, which uses a VMware Dynamic Environment Manager config profile file, back to standalone mode, which uses a VMware Dynamic Environment Manager configuration SMB share, without losing any of your existing VMware Dynamic Environment Manager configuration

See the full release notes here.

ThinApp 5.2.10

What’s New:

• Support for Microsoft Windows 10, version 21H1
• Security Updates

See the full release notes here.