VMware Horizon View

VMware’s popular VDI solution has been renamed from simply “VMware View” to “VMware Horizon View” to make it a core piece of the new Horizon Suite (nothing else has changed, however). If you are unfamiliar with Horizon View, it provides:

• Pooled virtual desktops that run on VMware vSphere
• The PCoIP remote display protocol for WAN-optimized, compressed display of virtual desktops
• Application virtualization with ThinApp for packaging apps so that they don’t have to be installed and can be easily updated

 

End users can access their virtual desktop — running in the data center — using Horizon view clients such as zero client hardware devices and Mac, Android, and iPad clients. While mass pools of identical desktops are used at some companies, more typically Horizon View virtual desktops are usually 1:1, VM to end user, but based on a “golden” template for the OS (and perhaps applications) with changes to the base image stored in a “linked clone” for each virtual machine. Users can access their desktops using Horizon View clients over the LAN securely over the Internet, or they may even take their desktops in an offline mode for traveling when off network (say, if they’re on an airplane).

Horizon View requires a VMware vSphere virtual infrastructure and typically looks like this:

Figure 1 – Horizon View Infrastructure

Here’s what it might look like to access your virtual desktop using an iPad with the iPad client for View:

Figure 2 – Horizon View Client for iPad