[VMware] VMware Horizon What’s New

VMware Horizon 2111 – What’s new?

Back on November 30, 2021, VMware released VMware Horizon 2111, which we now have tested extensively over the last weeks and have implemented in some customer environments. What’s new in this release that we think would be useful? A complete list can be found here.

Predictable support for Horizon

VMware is introducing a 30-day grace period for expiring runtime licenses to provide sufficient time to renew and maintain access to the Horizon console and prevent access loss.
Additionally, this includes an Extended Service Branch (ESB) Maintenance Release to extend support for Horizon 8 2111 for 36 months and provide customers with scheduled maintenance updates.

Security with Instant Clones

Instant Clone integration with VMware Carbon Black – How cool is that?
Carbon Black performs a scan of a golden image or entire pool in the background before cloning to make sure there are no security issues such as malware, viruses or even pool configuration problems. Once the scan is complete, a “ready to clone” status is displayed so administrators can be confident they are cloning a clean golden image or pool.

Optimizing the Windows operating system for a virtual environment

The popular OS optimization Fling is now integrated directly into Horizon View.
This Fling optimizes golden images through automatic removal of unnecessary settings and disabling of needless features that are commonly included in a physical Windows machine.

VMware Horizon Recording

Now VMware Horizon Recording expands support to RDSH.

Microsoft Teams available on Google Chrome OS and HTML Access.

Using collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams in a virtual environment is a requirement, not a “nice to have.” Horizon continues to provide features that help ensure end users have the right experience when making audio calls or using video. In this latest release, Microsoft Teams Optimization is also supported for the Horizon Chrome client and HTML Access. This enables Microsoft Teams for any of your end users on Chromebooks. It also gives end users greater call quality when making Horizon Teams calls from a Chrome or Microsoft Chromium Edge browser. For the full list of newly supported Teams features, including live captioning, custom scene in Together mode, and E911 and location-based routing, see the Horizon 8 2111 release notes. (Text provided by VMware)

Agent and client version independence – Yes!

Normally, Horizon Agent and Client versions had to match in order to work. Now Horizon provides nested connection independence where the agent and client can be one version, plus or minus one, of each other. This gives administrators more flexibility in choosing which version of the Horizon client or agent to use, especially when managing failures or tests. (Text provided by VMware)

Storing user profiles on Microsoft OneDrive for Business

In this release, DEM integrates with Microsoft OneDrive for Business to store profile archives in the user’s OneDrive. This feature facilitates access to user profiles and improves the end-user experience when moving between on-premise and cloud or between public clouds. Storing profiles in OneDrive eliminates the need to manage an on-premises SMB share for Profilarchive and allows end users to access their profiles from anywhere, providing a more personalized experience.

Interested? Good!

If this has spiked you interest – great! We are more than happy to help you in getting this release into your production environment. Don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll support you in every way we can.