VMware has released VMware Horizon 7.3.1  on 3rd October 2017. With this release, VMware has released Horizon Client 4.6.1 with new enhancements.

VMware Horizon 7.3.1 provides the following new Features and enhancements:

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 for 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 is 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 utility IcUnprotect.cmd to unprotect or delete a 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.

VMware Horizon Virtualization Pack for Skype for Business

Horizon Virtualization pack for Skype for Business now supports the following features:

• Features in Horizon 7.2
  Point-to-point audio and video calls
  PSTN calls using the dial-pad
  Remote connectivity through the Microsoft Edge Server
  Call-forward, transfer, hold and resume
  Voicemail integration
  Music on hold
  Support for Skype for Business 2015 and 2016 clients (see release notes)
  Support for Lync Server 2013, Skype for Business 2015 Server and Office365 deployments
  Support for VMware Blast Extreme and PCoIP
  Support for persistent and non-persistent desktops
  Support for Horizon desktops (on-premise and cloud)
• Features in Horizon 7.3 
  Multiparty audio and video conferencing
  RDSH Support
  Quality of Experience (QOE)

Horizon Agent for Linux

Horizon Agent for Linux desktops now supports 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 performance than TCP over Wide 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.

Reference Links:

Download Landing Pages:

VMware Horizon 7.3.1 – Click Here

VMware Horizon Clients – Click Here

Documentation:

VMware Horizon 7 Documentation

Instant-Clone Desktops and Instant-Clone RDSH Servers in Horizon 7

In my next blog, I will provide more detailed information about the enhancement and features.

Hope you find this useful. Thanks for reading, Keep sharing.