VMware Released Horizon View 7.3 and Other

This week VMware has released new version of different product in there Horizon Suite.

VMware Horizon View 7.3

What's new: 

Horizon Connection Server

• Horizon Help Desk Tool
  
  • View application and process names and resource use within a virtual or published desktop to identify which applications and process are using up machine resources.
    
  • View event log information about the user's activities.
    
  • View updated metrics such as Horizon Client version and the Blast protocol.
    
  • View additional session metrics such as the VM information, CPU, or memory usage.
    
  • You can assign predefined administrator roles to Horizon Help Desk Tool administrators to delegate the troubleshooting tasks between administrator users. You can also create custom roles and add privileges based on the predefined administrator roles.
    
  • You can verify the product license key for Horizon Help Desk Tool and apply a valid license.
    
• Monitoring
  
  • If the event database shuts down, Horizon Administrator maintains an audit trail of the events that occur before and after the event database shutdown. 
    
• Instant Clones
  
  • You can create dedicated instant-clone desktop pools.
    
  • Windows Server operating systems are supported for instant clones in this release. For an updated list of supported Windows Server operating systems, see the VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article  2150295. 
    
  • You can copy, paste, or enter the path for the AD tree in the AD container field when you create an instant-clone desktop pool.
    
  • If there are no internal VMs in all four internal folders created in vSphere Web Client, these folders are unprotected and you can delete these folders.
    
  • You can use the enhanced instant-clone maintenance utlity IcUnprotect.cmd to unprotect or delete template, replica, or parent VMs or folders from vSphere hosts.
    
  • Instant clones are compatible with Storage DRS (sDRS). Therefore, instant clones can reside in a datastore that is part of an sDRS cluster.
    
• Cloud Pod Architecture
  
  • The total session limit is increased to 140,000.
    
  • The site limit is increased to 7.
    
  • You can configure Windows Start menu shortcuts for global entitlements. When an entitled user connects to a Connection Server instance in the pod federation, Horizon Client for Windows places these shortcuts in the Start menu on the user's Windows client device.  
    
• Published Desktops and Application Pools
  
  • You can restrict access to entitled desktop pools, application pools, global entitlements, and global application entitlements from certain client computers.
    
  • You can configure Windows start menu shortcuts for entitled desktop and application pools. When an entitled user connects to a Connection Server instance, Horizon Client for Windows places these shortcuts in the Start menu on the user's Windows client device.
    
• Virtual Desktops and Desktop Pools
  
  • Blast Extreme provides network continuity during momentary network loss on Windows clients.
    
  • Performance counters displayed using PerfMon on Windows agents for Blast session, imaging, audio, CDR, USB, and virtual printing provide an accurate representation of the current state of the system that also updates at a constant rate.
    
• Customer Experience Improvement Program
  
  • Details regarding the data collected through CEIP and the purposes for which it is used by VMware are set forth at the Trust Assurance Center.
    
• Security
  
  • With the USB over Session Enhancement SDK feature, you do not need to open TCP port 32111 for USB traffic in a DMZ-based security server deployment. This feature is supported for both virtual desktops and published desktops on RDS hosts.
    
• Database Support
  
  • The Always On Availability Groups feature for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is supported in this release of Horizon 7.
    

Horizon Agent for Linux
Horizon Agent for Linux desktops now support the following features:

• UDP based Blast Extreme connectivity
  
  • User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is enabled by default in both the client and the agent.  Note that Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connectivity will have a better performance than UDP on the Local Area Network (LAN). UDP will have better perforance than TCP over Wde Area Network (WAN). If you are on a LAN, disable the UDP  feature to switch to using TCP to get better connectivity performance.
    
• KDE support
  
  • K Desktop Environment (KDE) support is now also available on CentOS 7, RHEL 7, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, and SLED 11 SP4 platforms.
    
• MATE support 
  
  • MATE desktop environment is supported on Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 virtual machines.
    
• Hardware H.264 Encoder
  
  • The hardware H.264 encoder is now available and used when the vGPU is configured with the NVIDIA graphics card that has the NVIDIA driver 384 series or later installed on it.
    
• Additional platforms support
  
  • RHEL 7.4 x64 and CentOS 7.4 x64 are now supported.
    

Horizon Agent

• HTML5 Multimedia Redirection
  
  • You can install the HTML5 Multimedia Redirection feature by selecting the HTML5 Multimedia Redirection custom setup option in the Horizon Agent installer. With HTML5 Multimedia Redirection, if an end user uses the Chrome browser, HTML5 multimedia content is sent from the remote desktop to the client system, reducing the load on the ESXi host. The client system plays the multimedia content and the user has a better audio and video experience.
    
• SHA-256 support
  
  • Horizon Agent has been updated to support the SHA-256 cryptographic hash algorithm. SHA-256 is also supported in Horizon Client 4.6 and Horizon 7 version 7.2 and later.
    
• Improved USB redirection with User Environment Manager
  
  • The default User Environment Manager timeout value has been increased. This change ensures that the USB redirection smart policy takes effect even when the login process takes a long time. With Horizon Client 4.6, the User Environment Manager timeout value is configured only on the agent and is sent from the agent to the client.
    
  • You can now bypass User Environment Manager control of USB redirection by setting a registry key on the agent machine. This change ensures that smart card SSO works on Teradici zero clients. For more information, see VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 2151440 Smart card SSO fails when you use User Environment Manager with a zero client.
    

Horizon GPO Bundle

• VMware Horizon Printer Redirection ADMX template file
  
  • This new ADMX template file (vdm_agent_printing.admx) contains policy settings for filtering redirected printers.
    
• "Enable VMware HTML5 Multimedia Redirection" group policy setting
  
  • Use this new VMware View Agent Configuration ADMX template file (vdm_agent.admx) group policy setting to enable the HTML5 Multimedia redirection feature.
    
• "Enable URL list for VMware HTML5 Multimedia Redirection" group policy setting
  
  • Use this new VMware View Agent Configuration ADMX template file (vdm_agent.admx) group policy setting to specify which websites redirect HTML5 multimedia content.
    
• "Enforces Wallpaper Setting from GPO" group policy setting
  
  • Use this new Persona Management ADMX template file (ViewPM.admx) group policy setting to apply the wallpaper specified in the AD group policy setting.
    

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon-7/7.3/rn/horizon-73-view-release-notes.html

VMware Horizon Client 4.6

What's new:

• Support for pre-launched applications
  
  • A Horizon 7 administrator can configure a published application so that an application session is launched before you open the published application in Horizon Client. When a published application is pre-launched, the application opens more quickly in Horizon Client. This feature requires Horizon 7 version 7.2 or later on the server.
    
• Support for server-created Start menu shortcuts for remote desktops and published applications
  
  • A Horizon 7 administrator can configure Start menu shortcuts for remote desktops and published applications. If you are entitled to remote desktops or published applications that have shortcuts, Horizon Client places the shortcuts in the Start menu on your local system when you connect to the server. This feature requires Horizon 7 version 7.3 or later on the server.
    
• HTML5 multimedia redirection with Chrome
  
  • A Horizon 7 administrator can configure the HTML5 Multimedia Redirection feature to redirect HTML5 multimedia content from a remote desktop to your local system when you use the Chrome browser. Because your local system plays the HTML5 multimedia content, you have a better audio and video experience. The HTML5 Multimedia Redirection feature is enabled by default in Horizon Client during installation. A Horizon 7 administrator must enable HTML5 Multimedia Redirection in the remote desktop during Horizon Agent installation. Horizon Agent 7.3 is required.
    
• New command-line properties for the Horizon Client for Windows installer
  
  • The following command-line properties have been added to the Horizon Client for Windows installer:
    
    • INSTALL_HTML5MMR – specifies whether to install HTML5 Multimedia Redirection support.
      
    • REMOVE – specifies the features not to install.
      
    • STARTMENU_SHORTCUT – specifies whether to create a Start menu shortcut for Horizon Client on your local system.
      
• Support for UNC paths with client drive redirection
  
  • You can now use the client drive redirection feature to redirect mapped drives that have UNC (Universal Naming Convention) paths.
    
• USB redirection support in nested mode
  
  • The USB redirection feature is now supported when you use Horizon Client in nested mode.
    
• SHA-256 support
  
  • Horizon Client has been updated to support the SHA-256 cryptographic hash algorithm.
    
• OpenSSL 1.0.2l support
  
  • The OpenSSL library is updated to version openssl-1.0.2l.
    

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon-Client-for-Windows/4.6/rn/horizon-client-windows-46-release-notes.html

VMware vRealize Operations 6.5

What's New:

VMware has expanded the vRealize Operations for Horizon dashboards for the following use cases:

• The Horizon Overview dashboard provides the administrator an overall view of their Horizon and NVIDIA deployment. In addition to performance metrics for the Horizon pod, participants will also gain insight into NVIDIA GRID trends as well as alerts from NVIDIA GRID.
  
• The Horizon Help Desk dashboard provides session-specific GPU utilization, GPU memory usage and encode metrics, GPU type, and user-specific alerts from GRID.
  
• The User Experience Monitoring dashboard includes a “weather map” or “heat map” for GPU use cycle and memory, warning administrators of performance degradation before users are impacted. 
  

Additional features:

• Nvidia vGPU Monitoring — VMware vRealize Operations for Horizon supports monitoring the usage of Nvidia vGPU on ESXi hosts. To use this feature, you must have the Nvidia vGPU adapter installed, then import the integrated dashboards for vGPU monitoring. With this feature, you can check the usage of vGPU for each session and the usage and health of each vGPU in your environment.
  
• Additional Aggregation Metrics on User/Pool Level — vRealize Operations for Horizon provides out-of-box metrics on the usage information at User/Pool level, such as historical records of users accessing the desktop pool, historical pool access records for a selected user. You can download the record as a csv report.
  
• Cloud Pod Architecture Support — vRealize Operations for Horizon provides more information on the Cloud Pod Architecture. You can see whether a pool is a global pool, if a global entitlement is assigned to the pool, and whether a session is a global session.
  
• New Design for Logon Time — vRealize Operations for Horizon provides a new way to calculate the logon time. To use this feature you must upgrade your Horizon environment to provide you with a more accurate value for logon duration.
  
• New Process Alerts — vRealize Operations for Horizon enables you to monitor processes by triggering an alert and offering a recommendation for any process abnormalily in your VM.
  

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vRealize-Operations-for-Horizon/6.5/rn/vrealize-horizon-65-release-notes.html

VMware vRealize Operations for Published Applications 6.5

What's new:

vRealize Operations for Published Applications focuses on the following features.

• Nvidia vGPU Monitoring — VMware vRealize Operations for Published Aplications supports monitoring the usage of Nvidia vGPU on ESXi hosts. To use this feature, you must have the Nvidia vGPU adapter installed, then import the integrated dashboards for vGPU monitoring. With this feature, you can check the usage of vGPU for each session and the usage and health of each vGPU in your environment.
  
• New Process Alerts — vRealize Operations for Published Applications enables you to monitor processes by triggering an alert and offering a recommendation for any process abnormalily in your VM.
  

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vRealize-Operations-for-Published-Applications/6.5/rn/vrealize-operations-for-published-applications65-release-notes.html

VMware User Environment Manager 9.2.1

This is bug fix release, see the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-User-Environment-Manager/9.2.1/rn/VMware-User-Environment-Manager-Release-Notes-921.html

VMware Identity Manager 3.0

What's new:

VMware Workspace ONE App.

• Improved End-User Experience on Sign-in Screens. The sign-in screens have been improved with additional animations, improved displays on mobile devices, and improved error messages.
  
• App Reordering. Users can now rearrange bookmarked applications on their Workspace ONE app portal Bookmarks page.Users start with an alphabetized app view but can move app tiles around to create a custom, personalized view. The new user curated view is saved for future sessions.
  
• Note: Application reordering capability is available only from the desktop browser view. The reordered apps display on mobile devices but users cannot rearrange them from a mobile device.
  
• Enhanced In-App search.  Search applications by description in addition to name and category.
  
• Support Horizon HTML Access on Android Devices. Users can now launch Horizon apps in a browser on Android devices from the Workspace ONE app. Available for Android 7 and later.
  
• Refresh Token Timeout. Now users do not have to re-login to the Worksapce ONE application every few days if they are regularly using the app. This is enabled through a configuration called “Idle Token Time-toLive (TTL)” that can be set on the OAuth client for the Workspace ONE application. This feature is not limited to the Workspace ONE app and can be used by any other OAuth client of VMware Identity Manager.
  

VMware Identity Manager.

• Secure Certificate Authentication in the DMZ.
  
  • VMware Identity Manager can now perform certificate authentication in the DMZ without requiring inbound communication to the VMware Identity Manager Connectorwithin the corporate network. This improvement allows organizations to securely perform certificate authentication in the DMZ (before traffic enters their internal networks) while maintaining their Identity Manager Connector in outbound-only mode. In this configuration, VMware Identity Manager handles certificate authentication in the DMZ, but all other types of authentication are handled by the VMware Identity Manager Connector in outbound only mode. This ensures that outside traffic does not enter the internal corporate network. 
    
• Support for Multiple Office 365 Tenants from VMware Identity Manager Catalog.
  
  • VMware Identity Manager now supports multiple Office 365 tenants. Organizations that have multiple tenants from acquisitions or line of business adoption of Office 365 can manage those tenants using one VMware Identity Manager instance, simplifying Office 365 adoption and management.
    
• Support for Multiple Apps from the VMware Identity Manager Catalog.
  
  • VMware Identity Manager now supports adding apps from the Catalog multiple times. Admins can add multiple copies using the templates in the Global Catalog. This simplifies the adoption of multiple instances of web applications such as Salesforce that might be used by different lines of business or for different purposes within the organization.
    
• Support for Forced Authentication in SAML. '
  
  • VMware Identity Manager allows applications to request that a user must log in again, even if the user already has a valid session with VMware Identity Manager. This feature allows applications and admins to force users to log in again before performing sensitive actions, such as accessing important data or signing forms that require a high level of authentication assurance. Specifically, VMware Identity Manager now supports the ForceAuthn attribute in SAML and the prompt=login parameter in OpenID Connect.
    
• Encrypted SAML Assertions.
  
  • VMware Identity Manager allows organizations to choose whether to encrypt the SAML assertions sentby by the service. Encryption decreases the risk of user data being discovered through a compromised SAML assertion and increases security.
    
• Application Sources.
  
  • If your applications are already federated using an access management system such as ADFS, PingFederate, or Okta, the Application Sources feature can be used to easily bring these applications into the Workspace ONE catalog. You define the external access management system as an application source type, and then add multiple apps of this type to the catalog. The application source definition contains the SAML contract details between VMware Identity Manager and these external access management systems.
    
• VMware ThinApp User Access Changes for an Improved User Experience.
  
  • Users can now view and launch individual applications in the ThinApp package from the Catalog page, bookmark individual apps in the ThinApp package, and search for apps in the ThinApp package.
    

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-AirWatch/9.2/rn/VMware-Identity-Manager-30-Release-Notes.html