We unveiled the VMware Horizon Cloud next-generation platform at VMware Explore US 2022. The platform provides customers with modern virtual desktops and applications with a new hybrid desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) architecture built around reducing costs and increasing scalability. After the initial release, we announced at VMware Explore Europe 2022 that we will support hybrid cloud deployments, such as our recently released Horizon 8 version 2303. We are pleased to release new monitoring optimizations for Horizon Cloud next-generation environments. What follows is a look at five updates we've made to improve visibility into virtual desktops, application performance, and user experience.
1. Comprehensive visibility into resource usage and infrastructure monitoring
For IT administrators, managing DaaS infrastructure can be complex and time-consuming if you don't have enough information. Now, from the Horizon Universal Console you can get detailed infrastructure and resource usage information for the VDI components available in the Microsoft Azure environment. You have a wealth of information at your fingertips, including resource utilization, session information, virtual machine usage, and infrastructure errors. Can be used to sound an alarm. For example, knowing that some users are experiencing high CPU usage on their virtual desktops can help IT administrators determine which processes are consuming CPU on those desktops and then remediate the problem. All this information is consolidated in a default home view, filtered so you can get relevant information by supplier type or edge.
Additionally, you can monitor the health, usage, and topology information of key VDI infrastructure components that are managed by customers with Horizon 8 environments connected to Horizon Cloud next-gen. Infrastructure monitoring for connection servers and Unified Access Gateway (UAG) is now available for Horizon 8 deployments. This feature provides a single pane of glass for all infrastructure and resource usage information into what resources are being consumed, how they are performing, and whether they are being underutilized. This will help you make decisions such as balancing resource capacity and optimizing infrastructure costs without compromising user experience.
2. Simplified server monitoring
The Horizon Universal Console provides customers with a simplified way to manage desktops and applications, whether in a Horizon 8 Pod or hosted locally on Microsoft Azure. With Connection Server Monitoring specifically for Horizon 8 environments, IT administrators can monitor the status of their Connection Servers from the "Edge details/Infrastructure monitoring" section under "Capacity" in the Horizon Universal Console (see image below). This enables you to gather information about connection server availability status and certificate details very easily. You can simply double-click to access the health status of each connected server device, and get details such as virtual machine CPU, memory, number of connections, and connected users. Additionally, IT administrators can track services connected to Connection Server, such as vCenter services, Active Directory, and Security Gateway services. Having this information at your fingertips will help you understand the health of your servers and, if needed, shut down some servers based on performance requirements. All relevant information about connected servers is at your fingertips.
(monitoring infrastructure with Horizon Universal Console)
(service status of the connection server)
3. Unified Access Gateway cluster and device monitoring
Horizon Universal Console now enables IT administrators to monitor and manage UAG clusters and individual UAG devices. The new UAG infrastructure monitoring dashboard gives usage (eg, user session data) and UAG health information. You can now monitor the health of UAG devices and the health status of UAG services, such as CPU, memory utilization and certificate information of UAG virtual machines. This usage information can help you identify when UAG resources are idling, and then proactively manage UAG capacity needs. Note that to monitor UAG, IT administrators need to put their UAG on Horizon Cloud Next Generation Platform.
(UAG configuration information and status)
4. Access topology data from Horizon Universal Console
You can now access topology data from your Horizon Universal Console. Through a new dashboard, IT can access information such as sites, Horizon edges, pools, pool groups, permissions and more. This will help you improve the overall user experience with detailed topology information, such as which sites meet your performance expectations.
5. Send Agent monitoring information to Splunk for Horizon Plus customers
Horizon Cloud Next Generation customers leveraging Horizon Standard Plus Subscription or Horizon Enterprise Plus Subscription licenses now have the option to integrate with Splunk for observability. This will help these customers use the Splunk dashboard to display various information such as Horizon logs, metrics and Agent information. Many organizations use Splunk for monitoring. For example, any critical Agent errors that affect a user's connection to a virtual desktop can be sent to Splunk Enterprise. IT administrators can use this information to identify various errors, such as Agent connection problems, and resolve them in a timely manner.
This article was written by Nilesh Deo, a member of the End-User Computing product marketing team supporting VMware Horizon products; and Debasis Patra, a member of the Product Management team at VMware.
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