VMware Horizon View 6.0 is now availble for download.

VMware has also released a VMware vCenter Orchestrator Plug-In, for Horion View 6.0.

From the Horizon View Release notes:

What's New in This Release of View

This release of View delivers a number of important new features and enhancements.

Hosted Apps and Desktops

• Delivers Hosted Apps and desktops (remote applications and desktops) through expanded integration with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) on Windows Server operating systems.
• Provides a robust way to access one or more remote applications seamlessly from any Horizon Client 3.0 or later using PCoIP.
• Provides the ability to remote shared session desktops from RDS hosts using PCoIP.

Cloud Pod Architecture

• Lets you deploy View in multiple datacenters that you can manage as a single deployment.
• Provides global entitlements to desktops in multiple datacenters.
• Provices the ability to scale up to 20K desktops across two sites and four View pods.

View integration with VMware Virtual SAN technology

• Aggregates local server-attached storage to satisfy performance and capacity requirements of virtual desktops.
• View recognizes the Virtual SAN storage type and automates the creation of Virtual SAN storage policies based on the type of desktops being deployed.
• If you intend to use Virtual SAN, download vSphere 5.5 U1, which is required to support the Virtual SAN feature.

Additional Features

• View Connection Server, security server, and View Composer are supported on Windows Server 2012 R2 operating systems.
• Ability to send View logs to a Syslog server such as VMware vCenter Log Insight.
• Support for RDS remote applications and desktops with the View Agent Direct-Connection Plug-in.
• Enhanced smart card authentication for View Administrator.
• Integration of remote applications with Workspace. Users can launch View applications from the Workspace user portal.
• Real-Time Audio-Video installs a new kernel-mode webcam driver on View desktops that provides better compatibility with browser-based video apps and other 3rd-party conferencing software.
• The Remote Experience Agent is now integrated with View Agent. Previously, you had to install View Agent and the Remote Experience Agent to use features such as HTML Access, Unity Touch, Real-Time Audio-Video, and Windows 7 Multimedia Redirection. Now you obtain these features by installing View Agent only.
• Virtual machine space reclamation is supported for Windows 8 and 8.1 linked clone machines in a vSphere 5.5 or later environment.
• View Persona Management is supported on Windows 8.1 desktops. It is also supported on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 desktops that are based on physical or virtual machines.
• The Blast Secure Gateway (BSG) now supports up to 800 connections to remote desktops from clients using HTML Access. This connection limit applies to a BSG on one View Connection Server instance or security server.

For information about the issues that are resolved in this release of View, see Resolved Issues.

Local Mode Removal

In this View release, the View Local Mode capability has been removed from the Windows client. The feedback that VMware has received is that the Local Mode capability is incredibly valuable for customers who cannot always access an online desktop, but that our implementation needed improvement.

This experience has led VMware to invest in providing a better offline virtual desktop solution leveraging our award-winning desktop products, VMware Fusion Professional, VMware Player Plus, and VMware Mirage. We believe that this new containerized desktop strategy will give our customers the best local virtual machine experience in the industry.

Over the past several years, VMware has added Virtual Machine Restrictions to our desktop products, which allow an administrator to encrypt the virtual machine and prevent a user from modifying virtual machine settings that affect the integrity of the secure container. We have also added features such as expiration, so that the policies available in VMware Fusion Professional and VMware Player Plus are comparable to the existing Local Mode feature set. Including Mirage in this picture eliminates the need for users to check in or check out their desktops to receive updates and enables administrators to utilize the Mirage layering capability, backup features, and file portal.

Overall, we believe that this change will deliver a great end user experience and make the management of offline virtual machines much easier. It also extends the offline capability to run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX!

New customers interested in offline virtual desktops should purchase Horizon Mirage (which includes VMware Fusion Professional and VMware Player Plus) or one of the suites that includes both the Mirage product and Fusion Professional.

Existing customers should be confident that VMware will continue to provide support for the Local Mode feature in VMware Horizon View 5.x until at least 2017, which will provide plenty of opportunity to evaluate the new offering and plan their migration.

Key Features of the Horizon vCenter Orchestrator Plug-In

The Horizon vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) plug-in allows interaction between vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Horizon 6. The plug-in contains a set of standard workflows that accomplish basic goals that are ordinarily performed in View Administrator or other View interfaces.

You can use this plug-in to expand the settings and methods for provisioning remote desktops and applications.

• Self-service – For end user enablement, the Horizon vCO plug-in integrates with vCloud Automation Center to provide self-service access to applications and desktops. The plug-in workflows can be integrated with the request and approval processes that are built into the vCloud Automation Center service catalog.
• Automation – Automating and distributing tasks for delegated administration reduces the need for email correspondence and exception handling. The requests are routed into processes that are pre-defined and only flagged for approval if justification is needed.

These standardized controls and processes allow administrators to deliver Desktops-as-a-Service (DaaS) with a one-to-many model of administration across multi-tenant or highly distributed environments.

Complete Release Notes: https://www.vmware.com/support/horizon-view/doc/horizon-view-60-release-notes.html

Download at: https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VIEW-600-GA&productId=420&rPId=5770

Complete Release Notes for vCenter Orchestrator Horizon View Plug-in: https://www.vmware.com/support/horizon-view/doc/horizon-vco-plugin-10-release-notes.html

Download vCenter Orchestrator Horizon View Plug-in: https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=HVCO-100-GA&productId=420&rPId=5782