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Horizon 7.5

• Link – 7.5 Release Notes
• Connection Server
  • Horizon Console
    • Horizon Console is the latest version of the Web interface through which you can create and manage virtual desktops and published desktops and applications.
  • Horizon Console also integrates VMware Horizon Just-in-Time Management Platform (JMP) Integrated Workflow features for managing workspaces. For more information, see the VMware Horizon Console Administration document.
  • Deployment on VMware Cloud for AWS
    • You can deploy desktop pools that contain full virtual machines on VMware Cloud on AWS to scale Horizon 7 desktops and applications on an elastic cloud platform.
  • Virtual Desktops
    • You can create a virtual machine in vSphere to use Virtualization-based security (VBS). Using a virtual machine enabled with VBS provides better protection from vulnerabilities within and malicious exploits to the operating system.
    • For an automated desktop pool that uses full virtual machines, if you use a virtual machine enabled with VBS, you can add a vTPM device for enhanced security.
    • Horizon 7 supports vSphere 6.7.
  • Instant Clones
    • Multiple vGPU profiles are supported for instant clones.
    • You can select either PCoIP or VMware Blast (non h264 hardware encode) as a display protocol with NVIDIA GRID vGPU for an instant-clone desktop pool.
    • You can change the 3D vSGA or 3D software settings for instant-clone pools.
    • Horizon 7 version 7.5 supports instant-clone API in vSphere 6.7.
  • Cloud Pod Architecture
    • The total session limit is increased to 200,000 and the total site limit is increased to 10.
    • You can configure desktop shortcuts for global entitlements.
  • Horizon Help Desk Tool
    • Horizon Help Desk Tool is integrated into Horizon Console
    • You can troubleshoot Linux desktop sessions in Horizon Help Desk Tool in Horizon Console.
    • Horizon Help Desk Tool displays the following metrics:
      • Skype for Business pairing status
      • State of the application or desktop session
      • Disk IOPS data
• Horizon Agent
  • HTML5 Multimedia Redirection support for the Edge browser
    • You can now use the Edge browser with the HTML5 Multimedia Redirection feature. Previously, only the Chrome browser was supported.
  • Support for subdirectories with URL Content Redirection
    • URL Content Redirection now supports subdirectories. For example, if you specify .*.acme.com/software in a rule, all URLs that include the text acme.com and the subdirectory /software are redirected. For example, http://www.acme.com/software is redirected.
  • Simple Device Orientation (SDO) Sensor Redirection
    • The SDO sensor redirection can sense changes in the screen orientation of a client device and accordingly display a different view on the device.
  • VMware Logon Monitor
    • VMware Logon Monitor monitors Windows user logons and reports performance metrics intended to help administrators, support staff, and developers to troubleshoot slow logon performance.
  • VMware Horizon Performance Tracker
    • VMware Horizon Performance Tracker runs in a remote desktop and monitors the performance of the display protocol and system resource usage. You can also create an application pool and run Horizon Performance Tracker as a published application.
•  Security
  • Horizon 7 supports TLS 1.2.
• JMP Server
  • Horizon JMP Server installer and JMP Integrated Workflow features
  • The new JMP (Just-in-Time Management Platform) Integrated Workflow features in Horizon Console allow you to easily define and manage desktop workspaces that consist of a desktop operating system, applications, and settings.
  • These features integrate the JMP technologies (Instant Clones for rapid image creation, VMware App Volumes™ for real-time application delivery, and VMware User Environment Manager™ for policies and personalization) into a single workflow.
  • For more information, see Getting Started with JMP Integrated Workflow in the VMware Horizon Console Administration document and the VMware Horizon JMP Server Installation and Setup Guide document.

Horizon 7.4

• Link – 7.4 Release Notes
• Horizon Connection Server
  • Cloud Pod Architecture
    • The Cloud Pod Architecture feature now supports one-way Active Directory trust domains. Horizon administrators can implement one-way trust topologies in a Cloud Pod Architecture environment, and end-users can select and launch remote desktops and published applications across the trust.
    • Users can now launch remote desktops and applications on a later version pod when connected to an earlier version pod in a Cloud Pod Architecture environment.
    • You can enable the Session Collaboration feature for global desktop entitlements.
  • Published Desktops and Application Pools
    • You can use NVIDIA GRID vGPU for 3-D rendering when you create an instant-clone farm.
    • The “Empty session timeout (applications only)” option provides a new “immediate” timeout value in the farm settings to log off the session when the last application window is closed.
• Horizon Agent
  • Session Collaboration
    • With the Session Collaboration feature, users can invite other users to join an existing remote desktop session.
  • Fingerprint Scanner Redirection by Using the Device Bridge BAS Plugin
    • You can redirect biometric devices, specifically fingerprint scanners, that are plugged into a serial port on a Windows client system to virtual desktops, published desktops, and published applications by using the device bridge feature. You can install the Device Bridge BAS Plugin by selecting the Device Bridge BAS Plugin custom setup option in the Horizon Agent installer.
  • Secure boot enabled machines supported with URL Content Redirection
    • URL content can now be redirected from machines that have secure boot enabled.
  • URL Content Redirection with Chrome
    • URL content can now be redirected in the Chrome browser. Both agent-to-client and client-to-agent redirection are supported. To use this feature, the VMware Horizon URL Content Redirection Helper extension must be installed and enabled in Chrome.
• Horizon GPO Bundle
  • Configure Session Collaboration group policy setting
    • Use the Collaboration group policy setting in the VMware View Agent Configuration ADMX template file (vdm_agent.admx) to configure Session Collaboration on remote desktops.
  • Device Bridge BAS Plugin group policy setting
    • Use the Disable Device Bridge BAS Plugin group policy setting in the VMware View Agent Configuration ADMX template file (vdm_agent.admx) to disable the Device Bridge BAS Plugin.
  • Server clipboard memory size group policy settings for VMware Blast and PCoIP
    • Use the Clipboard memory size on server group policy setting for VMware Blast sessions, and the Configure clipboard memory size on server for PCoIP sessions, to specify the server’s memory size value for clipboard redirection in bytes or kilobytes. The VMware Blast setting is in the VMware Blast ADMX template file (vdm_blast.admx). The PCoIP setting is in the PCoIP ADMX template file (pcoip.admx).
  • H264 High Color Accuracy
    • The VMware Blast setting in the VMware Blast ADMX template file (vdm_blast.admx) increases color accuracy when using H.264 encoding by using the YUV 4:4:4 colorspace instead of 4:2:0.

Horizon 7.3.2

• Link – 7.3.2 Release Notes
• 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.
• 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 7.2

• Link – 7.2 Release Notes
• Horizon Help Desk Tool
  • You can use Horizon Help Desk Tool to get the status of Horizon 7 user sessions and to perform troubleshooting and maintenance operations.
• Authentication
  • The Recursive Unlock feature unlocks all remote sessions after the client machine has been unlocked.
• Workspace ONE Access Policies
  • You can configure Workspace ONE access policies in Horizon Administrator to enable end users to log in through Workspace ONE to access their published desktops and applications.
• Instant Clones
  • Previously, the maximum number of monitors for an instant-clone desktop pool was pre-configured to two monitors.
    • Now, the instant-clone desktop pool inherits video memory settings, such as the number of monitors and resolution of the vCenter parent VM snapshot.
    • Therefore, you have the flexibility to configure the number of monitors and maximum resolution of the pool on the parent VM snapshot.
  • The vGPU profile for an instant-clone desktop pool is automatically selected when you select the snaphot of the vCenter parent VM.
  • You can reuse existing AD computer accounts when the virtual machine names of new instant clones match the existing AD computer account names.
  • You can store instant clones on local datastores.
• Cloud Pod Architecture
  • The total session limit is increased to 120,000.
  • You can configure restricted global entitlements in Horizon Administrator.
  • You can configure the pre-launch policy for global application entitlements. When you enable the pre-launch policy, users can launch global application entitlements more quickly in Horizon Client.
• True SSO
  • You can configure LDAP URL filters for Connection Server to identify an AD user that does not have an AD UPN
• Connection Server Connections
  • Horizon 7 now supports 4,000 maximum simultaneous connections per Connection Server instance for direct connections, PCoIP Secure Gateway connections, and Blast Secure Gateway connections.
  • Each Horizon 7 pod supports 20,000 maximum simultaneous connections.
  • Horizon 7 now supports 4,000 full clones, instant clones, and linked clones per vCenter Server.
• Virtual SAN
  • You can now enable vSAN encryption capabilities for your Horizon 7 deployment.
• Published Applications and Application Pools
  • You can use Smart Policies to create policies that control the behavior of published applications.
  • You can add a tag to an application pool.
  • You can configure a published application so that an application session is launched before a user opens the application in Horizon Client. When a published application is launched, the application opens more quickly in Horizon Client.
• Virtual Desktops and Desktop Pools
  • You can rebuild a virtual machine in a full-clone desktop pool if you want to replace the virtual machine with a new virtual machine and want to reuse the machine name.
  • You can now select the Storage DRS cluster in addition to selecting individual datastores for an automated full-clone desktop pool.
  • You can choose to reuse existing machine accounts when you provision full-clone desktop pools.

Horizon 7.1

• Link – 7.1 Release Notes
• Flash Redirection
  • You can compile a black list to ensure that the URLs specified in the list will not be able to redirect Flash content. You must enable the GPO setting FlashMMRUrlListEnableType to use either a white list or black list.
• Horizon Agent Policy Settings
  • The VMwareViewAgentCIT policy setting enables remote connections to Internet Explorer to use the Client’s IP address instead of the IP address of the remote desktop machine.
  • The FlashMMRUrlListEnableType and FlashMMRUrlList policy settings specify and control the white list or black list that enables or disables the list of URLs from using Flash Redirection.
• VMware Blast Extreme
  • Extra mouse buttons such as the back and forward buttons on Logitech MX620 are supported.
  • Connections to physical machines that have no monitors attached are supported with NVIDIA graphics cards. This is a technical preview feature for Horizon 7 version 7.1.
  • The Blast Secure Gateway includes Blast Extreme Adaptive Transport (BEAT) networking, which dynamically adjusts to network conditions such as varying speeds and packet loss.
• URL Content Redirection Enhancements
  • You can configure and manage client-to-agent redirection settings by running vdmutil commands on the Connection Server host. You still configure agent-to-client redirection by using GPOs.
  • Client-to-agent redirection is supported for Mac clients when you configure client-to-agent redirection by running vdmutil commands.
  • If you have a Cloud Pod Architecture environment, you can use vdmutil commands to create global URL content redirection settings, which are visible across the pod federation. With global URL content redirection settings, you can redirect URL links in the client to global resources, such as global desktop entitlements and global application entitlements
  • The urlRedirection-enUS.admx template file contains settings that enable you to control whether a URL link is opened on the client (agent-to-client redirection) or in a remote desktop or application (client-to-agent redirection).
• Horizon for Linux 7.1 Desktops Enhancements
  • RHEL 7.3, CentOS 7.3, SLED 12 SP2, and SLES 12 SP2 are now supported.
  • Linux Agent Single Sign Support on Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 16.04 has been added.
  • The Client Drive Redirection (CDR) feature is now available as a technology preview.
  • The USB Redirection feature is available on Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 16.04 as a technology preview.
  • The Keyboard Layout and Locale Synchronization feature is supported for Horizon Client for Windows and only for English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese locales.
• Smart Card Authentication
  • Administrators can specify multiple Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs). For more information, see the VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 2149447, Configuring Multiple Certificate Revocation Lists.
• Published Desktops and Applications
  • You can create an automated instant-clone farm and schedule maintenance for the instant-clone farm.
  • You can select multiple vLAN networks to create a larger instant-clone desktop pool. Only the static port group is supported.
  • You can configure unauthenticated access for users to access published applications from a Horizon Client without requiring Active Directory credentials.
• Instant Clones
  • You can use NVIDIA GRID vGPUs with instant-clone desktop pools. Note that configuring PCoIP as the display protocol with NVIDIA GRID vGPU is a technical preview feature.
  • You can select multiple vLAN networks to create a larger instant-clone desktop pool. Only the static port group is supported.
  • You can use the internal VM debug mode to troubleshoot internal virtual machines in an instant-clone desktop pool or in an instant-clone farm.
  • Administrators can perform a restart or reset of the virtual desktops managed by the vCenter Server.
  • You can perform maintenance on instant-clone VMs by putting the ESXi hosts into maintenance mode. Use vSphere Web Client to put the ESXi host into maintenance mode. The ESXi host maintenance operation automatically deletes the parent VMs from that ESXi host.
• Virtual Desktop
  • Administrators can perform a graceful restart of the virtual desktops managed by the vCenter Server.
• Cloud Pod Architecture Enhancements
  • If you enable the multiple sessions per user policy when you create a global desktop entitlement, users can initiate separate desktop sessions from different client devices.
  • You can configure the restricted global entitlements feature to restrict access to global entitlements based on the Connection Server instance that users initially connect to when they select global entitlements.
• ADM and ADMX Template Files
  • The ADM template files are deprecated and the ADMX template files are added.
• IPv6 Environment
  • Virtual printing is supported for a Windows Client in the IPv6 environment.
• Horizon PowerCLI
  • You can use Horizon PowerCLI advanced functions to change the icon of a published application.
• Operating Systems for Instant-Clone Desktops on RDS Hosts
  • The following operating systems are now supported:  Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016
• Operating Systems for Horizon Connection Server and View Composer
  • The following operating system is now supported:  Windows Server 2016
• vSphere Platfom
  • vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption (in vSphere 6.5) for full clone desktop pools is supported.
• Access Point
  • Beginning with version 2.9, VMware Access Point is renamed to VMware Unified Access Gateway. This change is not yet reflected in the Horizon 7 version 7.1 and Horizon Client 4.4 documentation sets.
• Horizon Client Information Plug-In
  • You can use the Horizon Client Information (HCI) plug-in installer to get client information from both published applications and virtual desktops.
  • The HCI plug-in is available as an ActiveX plug-in and supports Internet Explorer.
  • For more information about the HCI plug-in installer, see the VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 2149400, Horizon Client Information Plug-In.

Horizon 7.0.3

• Links – 7.0.3 Release Notes
• Flash Redirection
  • You can compile a black list to ensure that the URLs specified in the list will not be able to redirect Flash content. You must enable the GPO setting FlashMMRUrlListEnableType to use either a white list or black list.
• Horizon Agent Policy Settings
  • The VMwareViewAgentCIT policy setting enables remote connections to Internet Explorer to use the Client’s IP address instead of the IP address of the remote desktop machine.
  • The FlashMMRUrlListEnableType and FlashMMRUrlList policy settings specify and control the white list or black list that enables or disables the list of URLs from using Flash Redirection.
• Horizon PowerCLI
  • View PowerCLI is deprecated. Horizon PowerCLI replaces View PowerCLI and includes cmdlets that you can use with VMware PowerCLI.
• Horizon Agent and Horizon Client can now leverage H.264 codec technolog
  • Previously, Horizon Agent and Horizon Client supported only a single monitor. This feature has been enhanced to support multiple monitors.
• Remote Desktop Operating System
  • The following remote desktop operating systems are now supported:
    • Windows 10 version 1607 Long-Term Servicing Branch (LTSB)
    • Windows Server 2016
• View Composer
  • For enhanced security, you can enable the digest access authentication method for View Composer.
• View Persona Management
  • View Persona Management supports guest operating systems that use the “v6” version of the user profile.
  • You can use the migration tool to migrate the “v2” and “v5” user profiles versions to the “v6” user profile version. The tool is installed with the Persona binary file.

Horizon 7.0.2

• • Link – 7.0.2 Release Notes
  • Client Drive Redirection
    • For Horizon Client 4.2 or Horizon 7 version 7.0.2 or later, if VMware Blast Extreme is enabled, files and folders are transferred across a virtual channel with encryption.
  • Generic USB redirection for session-based desktops and remote applications
    • Customers can use generic USB redirection with Horizon RDS to redirect USB device peripherals to their session-based desktops and remote applications.
    • By default, all device peripherals are excluded from using generic USB redirection.
    • To enable USB redirection for USB peripherals, delete the following Windows registry key settings ExcludeAllDevices and IncludeFamily from the following path: HKLM\Software\Policies\VMware, Inc\VMware VDM\Agent\USB.
    • This feature is only supported with Windows clients and with RDS desktops and applications running on Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2.
  • Granular control of clipboard data formats
    • You can configure group policy settings to filter out specific data formats when users copy and paste data during PCoIP and VMware Blast sessions.
    • For example, you can enable the Filter images out of incoming clipboard data setting to prevent users from copying images to their remote desktops.
    • This feature provides added flexibility when you need to restrict copy and paste operations for security reasons.
  • Horizon 7 for Linux desktops enhancements 
    • Automated full-clone desktop pool
    • SSO for SLED 11 SP3 and SP4
    • Horizon Client 4.2.0 for Android
  • Horizon PowerCLI
    • Horizon PowerCLI includes cmdlets that you can use with VMware PowerCLI.
  • Real-Time Audio-Video for session-based desktops and remote applications
    • The Real-Time Audio-Video feature is supported with session-based desktops and remote applications.
    • This feature also requires Horizon Agent 7.0.2 or later. This feature is supported with Windows, Linux, Mac clients and HTML access.
  • Remote desktop operating systems
    • The following remote desktop operating systems are now supported
    • Windows 10 64-bit and 32-bit Enterprise and Professional; Build 1511
    • Windows 10 64-bit and 32-bit Enterprise Long Term Service Branch (LTSB); Fresh installation only; Build 1507
    • Windows 10 64-bit and 32-bit Anniversary Update; Fresh installation only; Tech preview only; Build 1607. Upgrade is not supported.
  • Restrict remote desktop access outside the network
    • View administrators can allow access to specific entitled users and groups from an external network while restricting access to other entitled users and groups.
  • Smart Cards for multiple user accounts
    • In some environments, a user’s smart card certificate can map to multiple Active Directory domain user accounts.
    • A user might have multiple accounts with administrator privileges and needs to specify which account to use in the Username hint field during smart card login.
    • To make the Username hint field appear on the Horizon Client login dialog box, the administrator must enable the smart card user name hints feature for the Connection Server instance in View Administrator. The smart card user can then enter a user name or UPN in the Username hint field during smart card login.
  • VMware Blast policy
    • View administrators can configure the H.264 Quality Blast policy settings to specify the image quality for the remote display configured to use H.264 encoding.
  • vSphere Platform
    • vSphere 6.5 is supported with Horizon 7.
    • vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption (new in vSphere 6.5) is not supported with Horizon 7.
  • Windows Media Multimedia Redirection (MMR) operating systems
    • The following Windows MMR operating systems are supported:
      • Windows 10
      • Windows Server 2016 is a tech preview feature
    • Windows registry keys for Flash Redirection
      • View administrators can set requireIECompatibility=true to enable Flash Redirection for Web sites that support HTML5 by default. This parameter is not required for the YouTube Web site. In certain situations, setting appMode=0 can improve performance, and setting appMode=1 can result in a better user experience.

Horizon 7.0.1

• Link – 7.0.1 Release Notes
• Configure the clipboard memory size for VMware Blast and PCoIP sessions
  • View administrators can configure the server clipboard memory size by setting GPOs for VMware Blast and PCoIP sessions.
  • Horizon Client 4.1 users on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X systems can configure the client clipboard memory size. The effective memory size is the lesser of the server and client clipboard memory size values.
• VMware Blast network recovery enhancements
  • Network recovery is now supported for VMware Blast sessions initiated from iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux, and Chrome OS clients.
  • Previously, network recovery was supported only for Windows client sessions.
• Configure View Administrator to not remember the login name
  • View administrators can configure View Administrator to not display the Remember user name check box and therefore not remember the administrator’s login name.
  • For more information, see KB 2145405: Configure View Administrator to not remember the login name.
• Allow Mac OS X users to save credentials
  • View administrators can configure View Connection Server to allow Horizon Client Mac OS X systems to remember a user’s user name, password, and domain information.
  • If users choose to have their credentials saved, the credentials are added to the login fields in Horizon Client on subsequent connections.

Horizon 7.0

• Link – 7.0 Release Notes
• Instant Clones
  • A new type of desktop virtual machines that can be provisioned significantly faster than the traditional View Composer linked clones.
  • A fully functional desktop can be provisioned in two seconds or less.
  • Recreating a desktop pool with a new OS image can be accomplished in a fraction of the time it takes a View Composer desktop pool because the parent image can be prepared well ahead of the scheduled time of pool recreation.
  • Clones are automatically rebalanced across available datastores.
  • View storage accelerator is automatically enabled.
• Cloud Pod Architecture Improvements
  • The Cloud Pod Architecture feature now supports a pod federation of up to 25 pods across up to five sites for a scale of 50,000 sessions.
  • In the event that resources at a user’s home site are exhausted or otherwise not available, the user is now automatically directed to available desktops at other sites.
  • Home site administration is now fully supported in View Administrator.
  • The Cloud Pod Architecture feature now allows home site assignments for nested AD security groups.
  • VMware Identity Manager is now fully integrated with the Cloud Pod Architecture feature.
• Smart Policies
  • Control of the clipboard cut-and-paste, client drive redirection, USB redirection, and virtual printing desktop features through defined policies.
  • PCoIP session control through PCoIP profiles.
  • Conditional policies based on user location, desktop tagging, pool name, and Horizon Client registry values.
• VMware Blast Extreme
  • VMware Blast Extreme is now fully supported on the Horizon platform.
  • Administrators can select the VMware Blast display protocol as the default or available protocol for pools, farms, and entitlements.
  • End users can select the VMware Blast display protocol when connecting to remote desktops and applications.
  • VMware Blast Extreme features include:
    • TCP and UDP transport support
    • H.264 support for the best performance across more devices
    • Reduced device power consumption for longer battery life
    • NVIDIA GRID acceleration for more graphical workloads per server, better performance, and a superior remote user experience
• True SSO
  • For VMware Identity Manager integration, True SSO streamlines the end-to-end login experience.
  • After users log in to VMware Identity Manager using a smart card or an RSA SecurID or RADIUS token, users are not required to also enter Active Directory credentials in order to use a remote desktop or application.
  • Uses a short-lived Horizon virtual certificate to enable a password-free Windows login.
  • Supports using either a native Horizon Client or HTML Access.
  • System health status for True SSO appears in the View Administrator dashboard.
  • Can be used in a single domain, in a single forest with multiple domains, and in a multiple-forest, multiple-domain setup
• Access Point 2.5 Integration
  • Smart card authentication is now fully supported.
  • RSA SecurID and RADIUS authentication have been added.
  • Smart policies can be used with Access Point.
  • VMware Blast protocol can now be directed to port 443. Previously, port 8443 was required.
  • Note: Access Point 2.6 version serves as a reverse proxy for VMware Identity Manager only.
• URL Content Redirection for Windows Horizon Clients
  • For specific URLs, you can configure whether, when end users click a link to that URL in an Internet Explorer browser or an application, or if they type the URL into an Internet Explorer browser, that link gets opened always on a Windows-based client system or always in a remote desktop or application.
  • URL links can be links to Web pages, telephone numbers, email addresses, and more.
  • Configured through group policy
• Flash Redirection for Windows Horizon Clients (Tech Preview)
  • Flash content in an Internet Explorer browser is sent to the Windows-based client and played in a Flash container window, thereby offloading demand on the ESXi host.
  • Configured through an agent-side group policy that specifies a white list of Web sites to use Flash Redirection
• Windows Server 2016 Support (Tech Preview)
  • Windows Server 2016 can be used as an RDS host for providing remote desktops and hosted applications.
  • For this release, Windows Universal apps are not supported as hosted remote applications. For example, Universal apps do not appear in the list of apps provided by a Windows Server 2016 RDS farm. Universal apps, such as the Microsoft Edge browser or the Calculator included with Windows 10 or a Windows Server 2016 RDS host, are built on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Universal apps require Windows Explorer to be run. In addition, manually launching Universal apps through the Command Prompt will show an error message.
• Horizon 7 for Linux Desktops
  • Support for SLED 11 SP3/SP4. However, Single Sign-on is not supported.
  • Support for HTML Access 4.0.0 on Chrome.
  • Support for CentOS 7.1 Linux distribution.
  • Support to check the dependency packages unique to a Linux distribution before installing Horizon Agent.
  • Support to use the Subnet option of /etc/vmware/viewagent-custom.conf to specify the subnet used for Linux desktop connections with multiple subnets connected
• Additional Features
  • Support for IPv6 with VMware Blast Extreme on security servers.
  • View Administrator security protection layer. See VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 2144303 for more information.
  • Protection against inadvertent pool deletion.
  • RDS per-device licensing improvements.
  • Support for Intel vDGA.
  • Support for AMD Multiuser GPU Using vDGA.
  • More resilient upgrades.
  • Display scaling for Windows Horizon Clients. DPI scaling is supported if it is set at the system level and the scaling level is greater than 100.