Month: January 2019

Horizon View – How to add a second Connection server (Replica server)

~ admin ~ Leave a comment

Looking at the design from the previous post we want to have a degree of redundancy and to do that we’ll need a second Connection server also known as a replica server.

We’ve already built our first connection server here and done some configuration here and some certificate stuff here.

Continuing on I’ll be using Horizon View 7.7, it is the latest and greatest (at the time of writing). I did redeploy my lab with 7.7, and the previous posts are still relevant if you’d like to back and inst all your own lab.

Before we begin make sure you have a Windows 2018 or 2019 server ready to go with a certificate installed.

Installing the 2nd Horizon View Connection server (Replica Server).

  1. Connect to the server you will be using as your Replica server.
  2. Copy across the installer and double click to run.
  3. Click Yes. To accept the UAC warning.
  4. Click Next.
  5. Select “I accept the terms in the license agreement” and click Next.
  6. Here you can change the installation location if you prefer. Click Next.
  7. On the Installation Options window:
  8. Select “Horizon 7 Replica Server as the install.
  9. Select  “Install HTML Access”, this is technically not necessary but I would recommend it, especially if you have enabled it on the first server.
  10. Select the IP protocol you use. IPv4 would be the most common I expect
  11. Click Next.
  12. Enter in the name of the first installed Horizon View server. Click Next.
  13. Select whichever is appropriate for your environment, bearing in mind that most companies will have the servers firewall controlled via GPO. So check with your Windows and Security guys. In this case I want the firewall of this server to be configured automatically. Click Next.
  14. Select whether you’d like the local Administrators Group to have Admin rights to view. This can be changed later but I generally prefer not to from the start. Click Next
  15. Click Install.
    At this point the installer will go off and install all the same bit and pieces that is needed for the connection server and then goes through a process of setting up synchronisation  between the two servers. Hat off to VMware here, this process is really well done.
  16. Click Finish
  17. If you log into your Connection servers and take a look under View Configuration you’ll see both Connection servers.

Now that we have the two connection servers, we can move on to the next topic and we’ll setup two App Volume servers and the post after that we’ll put together some apps.

Horizon View – Design and Considerations

~ admin ~ 1 Comment

During the last few posts we put together a SQL server, Connection Server, Linux desktop, setup certificates, and created a working Manual working desktop pool.. A Basic working deployment of Horizon View that’s good for kicking the tires but very labour intensive to maintain in production.

In a production environment there is much more to consider than just what we’ve thrown together. Availability, security, logging, monitoring, alerting, desktop pool. Desktop OS, budget, to name a few.

Before jumping in and creating an awesome design you’ll always want to find out exactly what the requirements are. “Because” is not an answer. For example, you should be asking questions along the lines of:

  • What do the different stake holders think they are getting?
  • What does your network look like?
  • What kind of security do you have between your networks and/or VLANs
  • Is redundancy and resilience a factor to consider, and yes, they can be different things.
  • Do you have approved Windows or Linux builds?
  • Patching schedule?
  • Do you have a standard user base, or is this intended for users with differing requirements? e.g. dev, eng, admin?
  • Does this service need to be available externally, or is it an internal service only?
  • Have you met with security?
  • Apart from the requirements, have you evaluated the risks and constraints?
  • In the absence of concrete answers have you made your clients/manager aware of any assumptions you’ve made? e.g. “The project plan assumes that the current in server disk controllers will be replaced with HPE P416ie controllers for VSAN compliance.”

When working out the Requirements, constraints, risks, and assumptions be specific. Ambiguous or open ended answers will lead to scope creep and make your job more difficult.

However for the next set of posts we’ll be going through and fleshing out the environment with these (very) high level requirements

  • n+1 redundancy of the VDI deployment.
  • External Access
  • Load balanced (If possible)
  • Two different types of users. Dev and technical admins
  • Two different desktop OS’s available.
  • Profile to persist between sessions.
  • Security – no copy and paste, 2FA, logging, only applicable ports open between VLAN’s
  • Monitoring

This is more that enough to get us going back and asking many, many questions but for now we’ll pretend that most of them have been answered.

So that we don’t go off piste too much I’ll be mostly sticking to a stripped down version of VMware’s reference Architecture for the mobility suite that can be found here but slightly modified. The diagram below is partially from the linked page and modified to fit into my lab (hopefully). I’ll also make sure I reference any other blogs that i pull info from.

P.S. For the ESXi servers, I’ll be using William Lam’s most excellent ESXi servers that can be deployed via OVA onto either ESXi or Workstation/Fusion