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.
- Introduction to Horizon DaaS – Horizon DaaS 8.0 – Introduction
- What’s New in Horizon DaaS 8.0 – Horizon DaaS – What’s New?
- 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.
| 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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