Horizon DaaS 8 explained – Chapter 1 – Introduction

Introduction

This article is part one of a serie of blog posts which will explain more about Horizon DaaS.
In this article I will describe the basics of VMware Horizon DaaS and how it differs from Horizon View.

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

What is Horizon DaaS?

Horizon DaaS is a piece of software delivered by VMware to offer a multi-tenant VDI product used mainly by Service Providers.

Also, VMware Horizon DaaS is a niche product used by only little amount of companies.

History

First, a little bit of history: Horizon DaaS is the evolved Desktone product.
In 2006 Desktone was founded by Eric Pulier serving a multi-tenant remote desktop environment.
During the years, the company struggled with the business model.

The company was acquired by VMware late 2013. VMware renamed Desktone to VMware Horizon DaaS.

At the moment of writing this article, Horizon DaaS 8 is the current version, older versions are:

• 2014-09 – Horizon DaaS 6.1.0 – Release Notes
• 2014-10 – Horizon DaaS 6.1.1 – Release Notes
• 2014-11 – Horizon DaaS 6.1.2 – Release Notes
• 2015-01 – Horizon DaaS 6.1.3 – Release Notes
• 2015-04 – Horizon DaaS 6.1.4 – Release Notes
• 2015-09 – Horizon DaaS 6.1.5 – Release Notes
• 2016-07 – Horizon DaaS 6.1.6 – Release Notes
• 2017-03 – Horizon DaaS 7.0 – Release Notes
• 2018-04 – Horizon DaaS 8.0 – Release Notes

Below you will find a screenshot of the Horizon DaaS Service Center. Through the years, the VMware Horizon DaaS Service Center or Service Provider Admin Portal hasn’t changed, it looks the same in Horizon DaaS 6, 7 and 8.

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Horizon DaaS	Horizon View
Multi-tenant architecture	Single-tenant architecture
Based on Linux appliances	Installed on Windows
Built-in role separation with different portal for  Service Provider, IT Admin and End-Users	Single Management interface
Full desktop and Session-based (RDSH)	Full desktop and Session-based (RDSH)
Massive scale for thousands of desktops and tenants	Massive scale for thousands of desktops and sites
Multi-data center	Multi-data center
Published applications (RemoteApp)	Published applications (RDSH)
VSPP Licensing (Service Provider)	Named user or concurrent connection licensing

VMware Horizon DaaS Terminology

Desktop	Virtual desktops for end users
Management Appliance	Virtual appliances that host the DaaS platform, and are split into: Service Provider Resource Manager Tenant Manager Desktop Manager
Template	Base virtual machine (OVA) used to create management appliances (in HA pairs) as they scale out. Static content for all management appliances (Ubuntu, JBOSS, postgres, memcached, OpenSSL, etc.)
Gold Pattern	Base virtual machine for tenants to clone desktops
Organization	Service Provider or Tenant (customer)
Access Point	Linux virtual appliance that resides in the DMZ, providing remote access to desktops. Typically resides behind a load-balancer
DaaS Agent	Deployed in each virtual desktop along with View Agent and View Agent Direct Connect
Fabric	The fabric contains the DaaS platform configuration data and control logic

Technical

VMware Horizon DaaS is a Unix based product running in your own datacenter. 
Prerequisites for running VMware Horizon DaaS are:

• URL to Horizon DaaS binaries – My VMware download
• Networking
• Storage resources
• A separate cluster for Horizon DaaS management resources
• A separate cluster for Horizon DaaS tenant resources
• Active Directory / DNS
• NTP time server(s)
• Accounts with administrative privileges in VMware vCenter
• SSL Certificate

Example of Horizon DaaS networking architecture

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