VMware Horizon (formerly called Horizon View) is a commercial desktop and app virtualization product developed by VMware, Inc for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

operating systems. It was first sold under the name VMware VDM, but with the release of version 3.0.0 in 2008 it was changed to "VMware View". The name was updated to "Horizon View" with the launch of version 6 in April 2014 and is now referred to as "VMware Horizon" to represent desktop and app virtualization.

Features

VMware Horizon provides virtual desktop and app capabilities to users utilizing VMware's virtualization technology. A desktop operating system - typically

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

- runs within a

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

on a

hypervisor A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is calle ...

. VMware Horizon product has a number of components which are required to provide the virtual desktops, including: *

VMware vSphere VMware vSphere (formerly VMware Infrastructure 4) is VMware's cloud computing virtualization platform. It includes an updated vCenter Configuration Manager, as well as vCenter Application Discovery Manager, and the ability of vMotion to move m ...

Hypervisor (

ESXi VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that is installed on an operating system (OS); ...

with a vSphere license) * VMware vCenter Server (management of virtualization environment) * View Composer (advanced View management, with automation and cloning) * View Manager (administration of the View Environment) * View Client (communication between View and the desktop OS) * VMware ThinApp (application virtualization) * View Persona Management (user profile management) * vShield Endpoint (offloaded desktop antivirus) Although VMware licenses vSphere

per physical CPU-socket, it licenses VMware View per concurrent desktop.http://www.vmware.com/products/view/howtobuy.html The bundled hypervisor, vSphere for Desktops, is functionally equivalent to vSphere Enterprise Plus. VMware View has two licensing options, Enterprise and Premier. Enterprise comes with vSphere for Desktops, vCenter Server, and View Manager, and has an

MSRP The list price, also known as the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), or the recommended retail price (RRP), or the suggested retail price (SRP) of a product is the price at which its manufacturer notionally recommends that a retailer ...

of $150 per concurrent desktop. View Composer, Persona Management, vShield Endpoint, and ThinApp are included in the Premier edition at an

of $250 per concurrent desktop. In order to transport the desktop resources to users, keyboard, video, mouse and other interactions travel over a network connection. VMware View supports the VMware Blast Extreme, Microsoft RDP, and the

Teradici Teradici Corporation was a privately held software company founded in 2004, which was acquired by HP Inc. in October 2021. Teradici initially developed a protocol (PCoIP) for compressing and decompressing images and sound when remotely accessing ...

PCoIP Teradici Corporation was a privately held software company founded in 2004, which was acquired by HP Inc. in October 2021. Teradici initially developed a protocol (PCoIP) for compressing and decompressing images and sound when remotely accessing ...

protocols.

VMware Horizon Client

Users establish client connections to VMware View sessions by running the VMware View Client, through a web browser using HTML5, or using a

thin client In computer networking, a thin client is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as ''network computers'', or in th ...

that supports the protocols in use. The VMware View client supports Windows, macOS, Android, and Linux, while ChromeOS is able to connect through the web browser. Ubuntu 12.10 can login to VMware View desktops directly from the login screen. The Client software is known as Client Agent Release Train (CART). CART it is on a separate release cycle than VMware View/Horizon but often coincides with it. Horizon Clients *CART 5.0 (Mar 18, 2019) *CART 5.1 (Jul 02, 2019) *CART 5.2 (Sep 17, 2019) *CART 5.3 (Dec 12, 2019) *CART 5.4 (March 17, 2020) *CART 5.5 (Oct 15, 2020) Horizon Clients - Naming convention changed to denote the year and month of build release *CART 2006 (Aug 11, 2020) *CART 2009 (Oct 15, 2020) *CART 2012 (Jan 07, 2021) *CART 2103 (Mar 23, 2021) *CART 2106 (Jul 15, 2021) *CART 2111 (Nov 29, 2021) *CART 2203 (Apr 04, 2022) *CART 2206 (July 19, 2022) *CART 2209 (Oct 20, 2022)

Versions

VMware View/Horizon

Version release history: VMware View 3.1.3 (May 5, 2009) VMware View 4 (November 9, 2009) *VMware View 5.1 (May 16, 2012) *VMware View 5.1.1 (August 16, 2012) *VMware View 5.1.2 (December 13, 2012) *VMware View 5.1.3 (March 14, 2013) *VMware View 5.2 (October 4, 2012) *VMware View 5.3 (November 21, 2013) *VMware View 5.3.1 (March 11, 2014) *VMware View 5.3.2 (June 24, 2014) *VMware View 5.3.3 (November 25, 2014) *VMware View 5.3.4 (March 17, 2015) *VMware View 5.3.5 (September 10, 2015) *VMware View 5.3.6 (March 1, 2016) VMware Horizon 6.0 (June 19, 2014) *VMware Horizon 6.0.1 (September 9, 2014) *VMware Horizon 6.0.2 (December 9, 2014) *VMware Horizon 6.1 (March 12, 2015) *VMware Horizon 6.1.1 (June 4, 2015) *VMware Horizon 6.2 (September 3, 2015) *VMware Horizon 6.2.1 (December 8, 2015) *VMware Horizon 6.2.2 (February 4, 2016) *VMware Horizon 6.2.3 (July 21, 2016) VMware Horizon 7.0 (March 22, 2016) *VMware Horizon 7.0.1 (June 16, 2016) *VMware Horizon 7.0.2 (September 15, 2016) *VMware Horizon 7.0.3 (December 8, 2016) *VMware Horizon 7.1 (March 16, 2017) *VMware Horizon 7.2 (Jun 20, 2017) *VMware Horizon 7.3.2 (November 20, 2017) *VMware Horizon 7.4 (Jan 04, 2018) *VMware Horizon 7.5 (May 29, 2018) This is the first Extended Service Branch (ESB). ESBs will receive three planned periodic Service Updates (SPs) – 6 months, 9 months and 15 months after the base version release. *VMware Horizon 7.5.1 (July 19, 2018) *VMware Horizon 7.6 (Sep 6, 2018) *VMware Horizon 7.7 (Dec 13, 2018) *VMware Horizon 7.8 (March 14, 2019) *VMware Horizon 7.9 (Jul 02, 2019) *VMware Horizon 7.10 (Sep 17, 2019) This is an ESB release. *VMware Horizon 7.11 (Dec 12, 2019) VMware announces that Horizon Administrator (FLASH based) will be deprecated in early 2020. VMware recommends using Horizon Console (HTML5 based). *VMware Horizon 7.12 (March 17, 2020) *VMware Horizon 7.13 (Oct 15, 2020) This is the last significant release of Horizon 7. The end of general support for Horizon 7 is March 2021. *VMware Horizon 7.13.1 (May 25, 2021) VMware Horizon 8.0 (Announced Aug 6, 2020) *VMware Horizon 8.0 2006 (Aug 11, 2020) Naming convention changed to denote the year and month of build release in the format (YYMM). *VMware Horizon 8.1 2012 (Jan 7, 2021) *VMware Horizon 8.2 2103 (March 23, 2021) *VMware Horizon 8.3 2106 (July 15, 2021) *VMware Horizon 8.4 2111 (Nov 29, 2021) This is an ESB release. *VMware Horizon 8.5 2203 (April 5, 2022) This release does not include updates for Horizon Connection Server. *VMware Horizon 8.6 2206 (July 19, 2022) *VMware Horizon 8.7 2209 (Oct 20, 2022)

References

External links