Together with VMware Horizon View 7.8 VMware has released VMware Unified Access Gateway 3.5, User Environment Manager 9.7.0 and App Volumes 2.16.

Let’s see what is new in these products…

I will start with VMware Unified Access Gateway, User Environment Manager and App Volumes. At the end Horizon 7.8 follows with the biggest bunch of new or enhanced features.

VMware Unified Access Gateway 3.5

The official release notes can be found here at vmware.com.

  • Powershell support for Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS cloud deployments
  • Statistics API for monitoring
  • Support for PSG (PCoIP Secure Gateway) SSL certificate replacement.
  • External load balancer monitoring of Unified Access Gateway using HTTP(s) GET or favicon.ico has been enhanced to cover all the edge services on Unified Access Gateway.
  • Now all features of UAG have been made available for all the Workspace ONE or Horizon editions with Unified Access Gateway 3.5.
  • After deploying the UAG 3.5 via OVF, the License Edition setting no longer appears in the vSphere Client.

VMware User Environment Manager 9.7.0

The official release notes can be found here at vmware.com.

  • The updated User Environment Manager SyncTool now supports application blocking and privilege elevation on endpoints that use the SyncTool.

What’s New in VMware App Volumes 2.16


The official release notes can be found here at vmware.com.

  • SQL Server 2008 is no longer supported. Customers must upgrade to a supported version of SQL Server prior to upgrading.
  • Administrators can now see a list of all the App Volumes Managers of their instance from with-in the App Volumes Manager console.
  • App Volumes Manager secure registration is automatically activated for new installations of 2.16 and later. Customers upgrading to the latest version of App Volumes are encouraged to activate the new registration feature.
    Note: Secure registration is automatically activated on environments with only one manager.
  • Support for App Volumes Manager on Windows Server 2019.

VMware Horizon 7.8

The official release notes can be found here at vmware.com
The list of the Resolved Issues ist long, the list of the Known Issues is even longer but has a lot of workarounds to solve many of this issues temporary. So please read it before you do anything.

So let’s start with all “What’s New Things”

Management Console

The new HTML5-based management console replaces the “old flash-client”.

Horizon 7.8 Platform Support

Windows Server 2019 is now supported for Connection Server and View Composer.

VMware Horizon 7.8 Scaling

The following topology limits have been validated for Horizon 7 version 7.8:

  • 250,000 total sessions
  • 50 pods
  • 10,000 sessions per pod
  • 15 sites
  • 7 Connection Server instances per pod
  • 350 total Connection Server instances

Horizon 7 Cloud Connector

  • You can set a password expiry policy for the root user for the Horizon Cloud Connector virtual appliance.

VMware Cloud on AWS -VMC

  • NSX-T network segments are now supported for Instant clone desktop pools.
  • You can manage Horizon Cloud in AWS as it would on premises.

Horizon 7.8 RDSH

  • With this new version, VMware provides new improvements to RDSH that are available with Horizon 7.8.
  • Client restrictions for published desktops and applications on RDS hosts are expanded to support Organizational Units (OU).
  • You can use CPU, memory, disk statistics, and session counts to define the load balancing policy for published desktops and applications on RDS hosts.

Horizon GPO Bundle

  • The new URL Content Redirection Url Redirection IP Rules Enabled group policy setting enables you to configure IP address and IP address range filtering for the URL Content Redirection feature.
  • The new VMware Horizon Client Drive Redirection ADMX template file (vdm_agent_cdr.admx) contains group policy settings related to the client drive redirection feature. The Display redirected drive with drive letter setting enables you to configure drive letter behavior, and the Timeout for drive letter initialization setting enables you specify how long to wait for Windows Explorer to initialize and display drive letters for redirected drives.
  • The Session Collaboration group policy setting allows you pass input control to collaborators.
  • The VMware Integrated Printing group policy settings allow you to specify a filter to redirect a client printer and set print preview options.

Virtual Desktops

  • Instant clones support the vSphere TRIM and UNMAP features for vSAN datastores.
  • You can reuse existing computer accounts to deploy instant clone desktop pools on the domain.

Horizon 7.8 Agent

  • You can now use regular expressions with URL redirection rules.
  • Smart card authentication with UWP apps, such as Microsoft Edge, in remote desktops.
  • Helpdesk plugin is included in the Horizon Agent installer.
  • VMware Integrated Printing finishing option such as staple or booklet for specific redirected printers.
  • When an administrator enables the read-only mode for session collaboration, a client user can invite additional users to join a Windows remote desktop session in read-only mode. Only the primary user can access controls on the remote desktop. Additional users can view the desktop but cannot control or make changes to it.

Horizon Agent for Linux

  • Expanded support for RHEL and CentOS 7.6
  • Multi-monitor support for HTML Access 5.0
  • Smart card redirection for RHEL 7.1 or later
  • Expanded OS support for True Single Sign-On (SSO)
  • Read-only mode for Session Collaboration – Session collaboration, a client user can invite others in read-only mode.
  • Expanded NVIDIA vGPU support for SLED 12.x

True SSO

  • Horizon 5.0 client redesigned to align with Workspace One.
  • After users use True SSO to login to the desktop, they can unlock the desktop after re-authentication from the Workspace ONE portal using the same True SSO login credentials.

Domain Security

  • When users log in to a Horizon 7 version 7.8 Connection Server from Horizon Client, they might need to enter a domain in the User name text box, for example, domain\username or username@domain.com. Depending on the server configuration, the Domain drop-down menu might be hidden, or it might contain *DefaultDomain*. For details, see the information about the Send domain list and Hide domain list in the client user interface global settings in the VMware Horizon 7 Security document.
  • When users log in to a Horizon 7 version 7.8 Connection Server from Horizon Client for Windows, they might need to enter credentials even though they have enabled the Logon as a current user setting. A new configuration setting determines whether a Connection Server will accept the Logon as a current user setting. For details, see the information about the Accept logon as current user setting in the Horizon 7 Administration document.
  • For more information on configuring Horizon Connection Server version 7.8 domain settings to work with Horizon Clients earlier than version 5.0
  • This release contains new user authentication security improvements that resolve CVE-2019-5513

Clients

Windows Client

  • Windows Client maximum number of monitors has been extended to 6.

MAC OS Client

  • When in dark mode, the MAC client will reflect this.

IOS Client

  • IOS Client – camera redirection with Real-time audio View (RTAV)
  • Screen rotation in presentation mode