When you create a manual farm, the Add Farm wizard prompts you to configure certain settings.

You can print this worksheet and write down the values you want to specify when you run the Add Farm wizard.

Table 1. Worksheet: Configuration Settings for Creating a Manual Farm
Setting Description Fill in Your Value Here
ID Unique name that identifies the farm in View Administrator.
Description Description of this farm.
Access group

Access group in which to place all the pools in this farm.

For more information about access groups, see the role-based delegated administration chapter in the Horizon 7 Administration document.

Default display protocol Select VMware Blast, PCoIP or RDP. RDP applies to desktop pools only. The display protocol for application pools is always VMware Blast or PCoIP. If you select RDP and you plan to use this farm to host application pools, you must set Allow users to choose protocol to Yes. The default is PCoIP.
Allow users to choose protocol Select Yes or No. This setting applies to RDS desktop pools only. If you select Yes, users can choose the display protocol when they connect to an RDS desktop from Horizon Client. The default is Yes.
Pre-launch session timeout (applications only) Determines the amount of time that an application configured for pre-launch is kept open. The default is 10 minutes.

If the end-user does not start any application in Horizon Client, the application session is disconnected if the idle session times out or if pre-launch session times out.

If you want to end the pre-launch session after timeout, you must set the Log off disconnected session option to Immediate.

Empty session timeout (applications only)

Determines the amount of time that an empty application session is kept open. An application session is empty when all the applications that run in the session are closed. While the session is open, users can open applications faster. You can save system resources if you disconnect or log off empty application sessions. Select Never, Immediate, or set the number of minutes as the timeout value. The default is After 1 minute. If you select Immediate, the session logs off or disconnects within 30 seconds.

You can further reduce the time the session logs off or disconnects by editing a registry key on the RDS Host on which Horizon Agent is installed. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\Plugins\wssm\applaunchmgr\Params and set a value for WindowCheckInterval. The default value is 20000. This means that the poll for the empty session check is every 20 seconds, which sets the maximum time between the last application session close and session log off to 40 seconds. You can change this value to 2500. This means that the poll for the empty session check is every 2.5 seconds, which sets the maximum time between the last application close and session log off to 5 seconds.

When timeout occurs Determines whether an empty application session is disconnected or logged off after the Empty session timeout limit is reached. Select Disconnect or Log off. A session that is logged off frees up resources, but opening an application takes longer. The default is Disconnect.
Log off disconnected session Determines when a disconnected session is logged off. This setting applies to both desktop and application sessions. Select Never, Immediate, or After ... minutes. Use caution when you select Immediate or After ... minutes. When a disconnected session is logged off, the session is lost. The default is Never.
Allow HTML Access to desktops and applications on this farm Determines whether HTML Access to RDS desktops and applications is allowed. Check the Enabled box to allow HTML Access to RDS desktops and applications. When you edit this setting after a farm is created, the new value applies to existing desktops and applications as well as new ones.
Allow Session Collaboration Select Enabled to allow users of desktop pools based on this farm to invite other users to join their remote desktop sessions. Session owners and collaborators must use the VMware Blast protocol.
Note: Unlike an automated farm, a manual farm does not have the setting Max sessions per RDS server, because a manual farm can have RDS hosts that are not identical. For RDS hosts in a manual farm, you can edit individual RDS hosts and change the equivalent setting Number of connections.