Configure an instance for this management pack.

Note:

You must have the administrative user credentials on the Horizon Connection Server while adding credentials for this adapter.

Prerequisites

The vCenter servers hosting the Horizon Pod environment must be monitored by the same VMware Aria Operations (SaaS) instance.

Management Pack for Horizon connects to Connection Server via Port 443.

Prerequisites to obtain Helpdesk related Metrics from Connection Server side:

  1. Obtain valid License for Helpdesk Tool.

  2. Enable Helpdesk API plugin in the Horizon agent.

Procedure

  1. From the left menu, click Data Sources > Integrations, and then click Repository.
  2. Click Add Account on the VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for Horizon tile.
  3. Configure the adapter instance.

    Option

    Description

    Name

    The name for the adapter instance.

    Description

    The description of the adapter instance.

    Horizon Connection Server

    Enter the FQDN or Host name of the Horizon Connection Server.

    Points to note when you add the Horizon Connection Server:
    • Connection Server Host must be the Primary Connection Server in the Horizon POD. Only configure one Horizon adapter instance per Horizon Pod.
    • Connection Server Certificates must have a valid hostnames where the FQDN must be the same the Common Name (CN) of the certificate.
    • Connection Server Host must not point to a Load Balancer.
    • Connection Server Host must not point to Unified Access Gateway (UAG).

    Credential

    Select the credential you want to use to sign on to the environment from the drop-down menu. To add new credentials to access this management pack environment, click the plus sign.

    • Credential Name. The name by which you are identifying the configured credentials.

    • User Name. The username of the Horizon service account with a Horizon Administrator role..

    • Password. The password of the Horizon account.

    • Domain Name. The Horizon domain name.

    Note:

    The service account must have an Administrator role in Horizon for the adapter to work.

    Administrator roles supported by different VMware Horizon version:
    • VMware Horizon versions 7.13 to 8.2 require the Administrators role.
    • VMware Horizon version 8.3/2106+ can use the Administrator (Read only) role

    If you have any other role, it will result in a validation error or Horizon API might fail due to restrictions on the Horizon REST APIs.

    Collector / Group

    Select the collector upon which you want to run the adapter instance. A collector gathers objects into its inventory for monitoring. The collector specified by default has been selected for optimal data collecting.
  4. Expand Advanced Settings to configure advanced settings.

    Option

    Action

    Enable True SSO and SAML Metric Collection

    		 This option will enable or deactivate the True SSO and SAML Authenticator Metric Collection for the Horizon Environment.

    Enable Application Metric Collection

    		 Enable this option to collect metrics from all the RDS Application sessions of Horizon. Disabling this flag will deactivate CPU, disk utilization metrics and turns off Helpdesk API calls for application session metrics.

    Enable Collection Load balancing across Connection Servers
    Enable this option to allow the adapter to communicate with all the available Connection Servers of the Horizon Pod. By default, the adapter communicates only with the configured server.
    Note: If you have Unique certificates configured for each of the Horizon Connection Servers and the data collection load balancing is enabled, then import all the certificates of the Horizon Connection Servers for successful data collection. The adapter will prompt you to accept each unique certificate that it detects for each Connection Server.

    Enable Performance Statistics Collection

    Enable this option to track the performance of the Management Pack for Horizon adapter instance resource.

    Enable Login Metric Collection

    Enable this option to collect Login Metrics for the horizon environment.

    Note:

    To enable Login metric collection, you have to configure an Horizon Events DB, enable the Timing Profiler service on each Connection server, and install/enable the Logon Monitor service in the desktop image.

    Timeout Seconds for Session Resource Collector

    Set the timeout value in seconds to make sure the collection will not wait due to Non Responding Horizon Server.

    Timeout Seconds for Horizon Events Queries

    Set the timeout value in seconds to ensure that the collection will not be blocked while waiting for a query response from the Horizon Collection Server.

    MP4H Inactive User Retention period

    Set the duration in days to clear inactive user objects. The objects clean-up is performed by the adapter instance as per the configured calendar intervals.

    MP4H Inactive VDI Session Retention period

    Set the duration in days to clear inactive VDI Session objects. The objects clean-up is performed by the adapter instance as per the configured calendar intervals.

    MP4H Inactive RDS Session Retention period

    Set the duration in days to clear inactive RDS Session objects. The objects clean-up is performed by the adapter instance as per the configured calendar intervals.

    Enable Protocol Performance Metric Collection

    Enable or deactivate this option Protocol Performance Metric Collection for the Horizon Environment. It deactivates Frame Rate, Latency, Packet Loss Receive, Packet Loss Transmit, Bandwidth Transmit Utilization metrics and turns off Helpdesk API calls for protocol metrics.

    Note: Enable Helpdesk plugin in the Horizon agent and ensure the Horizon Enterprise edition or the Horizon Apps Advanced edition licenses are available.

    Enable Historical Performance Metric Collection For RDS

    Enable or deactivate Historical Performance Metric Collection For the Horizon Environment. It deactivates overall CPU, overall Memory and Disk IOPS metrics and turns off Helpdesk API calls for historical performance metrics.

    Note: Enable Helpdesk plugin in the Horizon agent and ensure the Horizon Enterprise edition or the Horizon Apps Advanced edition licenses are available.

    Connection Server URLs

    Enter a comma separated list of Connection Server URLs for the POD that the adapter instance is configured for.

    Note:

    This field is required if certificates do not contain the Connection Server hostnames, but contain a different subject name as required by the Load Balancer.
    Enable Horizon Product Licensing and Usage Metric Collection Enable or deactivate the Horizon product licensing and usage metric collection for the Horizon environment.
    Note:

    For MP4H Inactive User Retention period, MP4H Inactive VDI Session Retention period, and MP4H Inactive RDS Session Retention period settings, from the epoch start time (January 1, 1970 12:00:00 AM), all the RP (retention setting) days are purged.

    The following formula shows the days passed from the last purging: 
    [epoc(now) - epoch(0)] % rp(retention period)

    You can also execute the following command to know the days passed from the last purging.

    Command in MacOS - echo $(($(date +%s) / 60 / 60 / 24 % rp)).

    If you do not use MacOS, then you can SSH login to VMware Aria Operations and execute this command from any VMware Aria Operations node.

    In this command, rp is the retention period that you set in Advanced settings.

  5. To initiate the authentication request, click Validate Connection.
  6. Accept certificates for each of the Connection Servers in the Horizon Pod.
  7. Click Add.

    The adapter instance is added to the list. It takes upto 3 collection cycles to collect the data.

What to do next

  • VMware vCenter needs to monitor all Horizon Desktops and Management Components:

    VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for Horizon still relies on the vCenter adapter to pull VM level and Guest OS metrics from the Management Servers and Desktops within the Horizon Service. If there are objects outside of VMware Aria Operations monitoring visibility they will not populate VM level performance metrics, or have the ability to calculate the DC% Performance calculation on those objects.

  • Unified Access Gateways and Connection Servers also need to be monitored by VMware Aria Operations:

    If these objects are not monitored by the vCenter adapter in VMware Aria Operations, their VM level performance data will not be collected. Some data will still be collected, but they will be based on the available Horizon API data.

  • If Horizon Management Servers and Desktops are located in a SDDC environment, then configure the VMC adapter. For more details, see Configuring VMware Cloud on AWS in VMware Aria Operations.