Horizon DaaS 8 explained – Chapter 2 – What’s New?

Introduction

This article is part of a series of blog posts which will explain more about VMware Horizon DaaS.
In this chapter I will go over the main benefits to run or upgrade to VMware Horizon DaaS 8.0.

1. Introduction to Horizon DaaS – Horizon DaaS 8.0 – Introduction
2. What’s New in Horizon DaaS 8.0 – Horizon DaaS – What’s New?
3. What about networking in Horizon DaaS 8.0 – Networking

Version support

VMware Horizon DaaS 8.0 – Release notes

The best starting point is the release notes. Below you will find the up-to-date release notes from VMware:

VMware Horizon DaaS 8.0 Release Notes

VMware Horizon DaaS 8.0 Interoperability matrix

Key components for running VMware Horizon DaaS 8.0 are:

• ESXi
• vCenter / VSAN
• NSX
• Unified Access Gateway

In the link below you will be redirected to VMware’s Product Interoperability Matrix.
Before you starting implementing a new Horizon DaaS 8 environment, check the versions of each component.

VMware Horizon DaaS 8.0 Interoperability Matrix

Version support

For me, the main reason to upgrade from VMware Horizon DaaS 7 to VMware Horizon DaaS 8 is the version support.

Not only ESXi, vCenter Server, NSX and the Unified Access Gateway, but also the official support for Windows Server 2016 is important.

VDI’s running Windows Server 2016 gives the end-users a Windows 10 look and feel to the VDI environment.

Instant Clone integration

Another great improvement is the integration of Instant Clone capabilities.
In this article I won’t go into the details of Linked, Tradition or Instant Clone, but it’s a good thing is that it’s available now in Horizon DaaS 8.

However, I would strongly encourage you to read this article about the instant clone technologies written on VMware Blogs by Fred Schimscheimer in 2016.

Automatic Agent Pairing

A change in compare to VMware Horizon DaaS 7.0 is the way pairing process works.

In earlier versions you had to perform a manual process to add new images to your Horizon DaaS tenant. From Horizon DaaS 8.0 forward, the pairing is an automated process.

During the process of changing from an Imported VM to a new Image, the pairing is done automatically:

There is still a possibility to perform the bootstrapping manually, I’ve written an article on how to do that here: https://www.vblog.nl/manual-bootstrapping-in-vmware-horizon-daas/

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