VMware Horizon Version 8 or 2006 and more Released

VMware has released Horizon View 8 also known as version 2006 and Dynamic Environment Manager 10 also known as version 2006.

VMware Horizon version 2006

What’s new:

• Horizon Connection Server
  • Cloud Pod Architecture
    • Global entitlements appear in alphabetical order in Horizon Client.
    • To use Horizon Console or lmvutil to configure and manage a Cloud Pod Architecture environment, an administrator must have the new Manage Cloud Pod Architecture global privilege. See Security Considerations for Cloud Pod Architecture.
    • You can define the global entitlement name that appears to users in Horizon Client. When creating or modifying a global entitlement in Horizon Console, use the new Display Name option. When using lmvutil commands, use the new –aliasName option. See Worksheet for Configuring a Global Entitlement and Creating a Global Entitlement.
    • The –htmlAccess and –disableHtmlAccess options are removed from the –updateGlobalEntitlement and –updateGlobalApplicationEntitlement lmvutil commands. The –htmlAccess option is also removed from the –createGlobalEntitlement and –createGlobalApplicationEntitlement lmvutil commands.
    • When you create or modify a global entitlement in Horizon Console, the HTML Access option is removed.
  • Published Desktops and Applications
    • Provisioning of majority of instant clone farms no longer involve creation of parent VM. This improves the manageability of the instant clone farm and well as optimizing the memory requirement of the farm. For extremely large farms, parent VM will still be created.
    • When you create or modify a farm in Horizon Console, the Allow HTML Access to desktops and applications on this farm option is removed. To prevent HTML Access to a published desktop or application, either do not install HTML Access support when you install Connection Server, or use the client restriction feature to block access.
    • Horizon automatically chooses to provision instant clones directly from replicaVM, without creating any parentVM. This feature is called Smart Provisioning. See Creating an Automated Instant-Clone Farm.
    • You can view the Horizon Client version for a published desktop or application session. See Manage Published Desktops and Application Sessions in Horizon Console.
  • Virtual Desktops
    • Instant clones are available in more VMware Horizon license packages including Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise Edition license packages.
    • A high memory usage alert that is triggered during the instant clone provisioning process has been disabled. See the VMware KB article 2151438.
    • You can restrict access to entitled desktop pools from certain client computers. See Implementing Client Restrictions for Desktop Pools, Published Desktops, and Application Pools.
    • When you create or modify an instant-clone desktop pool or an automated pool that contains full-clone virtual machines in Horizon Console, the HTML Access option is removed. To prevent HTML Access to a desktop pool, either do not install HTML Access support when you install Connection Server, or use the client restriction feature to block access.
    • Horizon automatically chooses to provision instant clones directly from replicaVM, without creating any parentVM. This feature is called Smart Provisioning. See Instant-Clone Desktop Pools.
  • Horizon Console
    • When you select the network for an instant-clone desktop pool or farm, Horizon Console selects network type from the current master image configured in vSphere Client and displays networks based on the network type of the parent VM: DVS, NSX-t, and Standard. You can use the same network as the parent VM or select a network from the list of available options. Networks are filtered based on the parent VM network type. See Worksheet for Creating an Instant-Clone Desktop Pool and Worksheet for Creating an Instant-Clone Farm.
    • The View Storage Accelerator feature requires upto 32GB of RAM per ESXi host. You can specify a default host cache size between 100MB and 32,768MB. See Enable View Storage Accelerator Globally in Horizon Console.
    • You can click the Send Feedback icon in the Horizon Console header to send in-product feedback about features and functionality to the VMware Horizon team. See Send Feedback.
    • When you delete a desktop pool, the status of the desktop pool appears as “Deleting” on both the Desktops page and the Machines page. See Delete a Desktop Pool and Delete Virtual Machine Desktops in a Pool.
    • If you use an older Web browser such as Internet Explorer 11 to log in to Horizon Console, a pop-up windows appears that lists the Web browsers to use for the best user experience. See Log In to Horizon Console.
  • Horizon Connection Server Installer
    • The Connection Server installer has new branding.
    • The Connection Server installer has new icons.
    • You can select a deployment type to install Connection Server on premises or in a public cloud with VMware SDDC service.
    • You can perform a parallel upgrade of multiple Connection Servers. For more information about how to upgrade Connection Servers in parallel, see Upgrading Connection Servers in Parallel. For more information about troubleshooting errors in the Connection Server installer related to parallel upgrade of Connection Servers, see Troubleshooting Installation Errors During Parallel Upgrade of Connection Servers.
    • Note: At the last step of the installation or upgrade process, the Connection Server waits for all the services to start.This can result in a longer installation time than earlier versions of Connection Server installations or upgrades.
    • You can configure load balancers for Connection Server health monitoring. See Configuring Load Balancers for Horizon Connection Server Health Monitoring.
  • Role-Based Delegated Administration
    • Two new privileges are added. See Global Privileges.
    • Manage Cloud Pod Architecture
    • Manage Access Groups
• Horizon Agent
  • The Horizon Agent installer splash screen is updated.
  • You can create and display a digital watermark on remote sessions. See Configuring a Digital Watermark.
  • You can use an integrated pen on a Windows tablet. See Configuring Pen Redirection.
  • You can configure registry settings for mouse event handling. See Configuring Windows Registry Settings for Cursor Event Handling.
  • Blast Codec is enabled by default.
  • VMware Blast uses the client’s current topology when starting a connection to the agent machine.
  • The Microsoft Edge browser is supported with URL Content Redirection for Windows clients. You must install the VMware Horizon URL Content Redirection Helper extension in the Edge browser. See Install the URL Content Redirection Helper Extension for Edge on Windows.
  • You use the LBP Setting UI group policy setting to set up location-based printing. See Configure Location-Based Printing.
  • VMware Integrated Printing is supported on mobile client devices. See Configuring VMware Integrated Printing.
  • With the VMware Blast protocol, you can use two 8K displays. See Monitors and Screen Resolution.
  • Windows and Linux clients connecting to the agent use the H.264 video codec for real-time audio-video for improved performance, especially CPU usage in the client machine.
• Horizon Agent for Linux
  • Horizon Agent supports the following new Linux operating systems:
    • RHEL/CentOS 7.8
    • RHEL/CentOS 8.2
    • SLES 12.x SP5
  • Horizon Agent no longer supports the following Linux operating systems:
    • SLED/SLES 12.x SP1 and SP2
    • RHEL/CentOS 6.x
    • NeoKylin 6 Update 1
  • You can configure RHEL 8.x/7.x and Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machines as multi-session Linux host machines. You can add these Linux host machines to manual or automated instant-clone farms on which you can base published desktop pools and published application pools. Each published desktop or published application can support multiple user sessions at the same time. See Setting Up Linux Published Desktops and Applications for Multi-Session Use.
  • vDGA graphics are no longer supported on Linux desktops.
• Horizon GPO Bundle
  • The Blast Codec Quality group policy setting enables you to set the minimum and maximum values of the Quantization Parameter (QP), which controls the image quality of the remoted display when using Blast Codec compression. See VMware Blast Policy Settings.
  • With the Cursor warping group policy setting enabled, the remote agent detects sudden cursor movements and reflects them to the client by moving the local cursor. See VMware Blast Policy Settings.
  • The Configure maximum latency for mouse coalescing group policy setting enables you to configure the maximum latency allowed, in milliseconds, when coalescing mouse move events. See General Settings for Client GPOs.
• Horizon Client
  • For information about new features in Horizon Client 2006, including HTML Access 2006, see the release notes on the VMware Horizon Client Documentation page.

See the full release notes here.

VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 2006

What’s new:

• Elevated Tasks. VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 2006 expands on privilege elevation with the new elevated-tasks feature. Elevated tasks simplify elevation of an application at logon or logoff, or when another application starts or exits.
• ADMX-Based Computer Settings. You can now also use ADMX-based settings to apply computer policy registry settings.
• VMware Dynamic Environment Manager releases follow a new versioning format. VMware Dynamic Environment Manager is moving from a major-minor version-number model to a date-driven model represented by a year and month (yymm). This release is version 2006. The previous release was version 9.11. Product filenames and version numbers continue to contain the major-minor versioning. For 2006, the major-minor version is 10.0.
• VMware Dynamic Environment Manager Editions. Starting with version 2006, VMware Dynamic Environment Manager is available in both Standard and Enterprise editions. DEM Standard Edition assists VMware Horizon® Standard Edition and VMware Horizon® Advanced Edition customers with user profile management. DEM Enterprise Edition is the full-featured version of VMware Dynamic Environment Manager.
• Additional Windows Support.
• Windows 10 Version 2004 (May 2020 Update). See KB 57386 for the VMware Dynamic Environment Manager and Windows 10 Versions Support Matrix.

See the full release notes here.