In Horizon Cloud, you provide access for your end users to a multi-session operating system by creating what are called session desktop assignments. After you create a session desktop assignment, the specified end users can have desktop sessions from a farm's RDS hosts simultaneously. For a Horizon Cloud pod in Microsoft Azure, farm hosts can be VMs running Windows Server operating systems or running Windows 10 or 11 Enterprise multi-session operating systems.

For general information about desktop assignments in Horizon Cloud, see A Brief Introduction to Your Tenant's Desktop Assignments Based on Horizon Cloud Pods in Microsoft Azure. If you happen to be familiar with the Horizon on-premises product, this type of session desktop is called a published desktop in that product documentation.

Prerequisites

Verify you have the following items:

  • In some deployments, you might see a message displayed on the console's assignment-related pages that states you must set up the broker configuration before you can create assignments involving your pods. If you see that message, follow the on-screen guidance.
  • The Farms page lists at least one farm of remote desktops type and that farm is based on the published image that you want to use for the session desktops. Only farms configured to deliver remote desktops can be used for a session desktop assignment.
  • The farm is not already used in an assignment. A farm configured to deliver remote desktops cannot be used in more than one session desktop assignment. To verify whether the farm you want to use is already used in a session desktop assignment, on the console page where your session-based desktop assignments are listed, examine the Farms column. If the farm you want to use is listed, then it is already being used in a session desktop assignment and you will have to create a new farm.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the assignments-related console page where you see that RDSH desktop assignments are created and start the workflow by clicking New.
    Tip: The console is dynamic and reflects the workflows and settings that are appropriate for the up-to-the-moment situation in your Horizon Cloud tenant environment. The labels displayed for the console's assignment-related pages will vary depending on factors such as the tenant's configured brokering setting, the types of cloud-connected pods in your fleet, the tenant's regional cloud plane, and features that are based on specific licensing.
  2. In the displayed screen, click the Desktops icon.

    New Assignment start screen showing the Desktop icon

    The New Desktop Assignment window opens to the first wizard step.
  3. Select the Session type.
  4. Make your selections and move to the next step.
    Option Description
    Location Select the location of the pod from which you want the session desktops to be provided.
    Pod Select the pod.
    Tip: If you do not see any pods to select, verify that the Location list is not displaying a location without pods. The Location field works on the Pod list to filter out pods that are not associated with the selected location. If you previously had a pod at a location and then deleted that pod or moved it to a different location, so that the displayed location no longer has any pods, the Pod list will display no entries. Because the locations are listed alphabetically, when the screen opens, it automatically selects the one that is first in the alphabet. If that location no longer has any pods associated with it, you must switch the location to a different entry.
    Farm Select the farm that has the host VMs that you want for the source of the desktop sessions.

    Only farms that are in the selected pod and which not already involved in existing session desktop assignments are available for selection.

    Assignment Name Type a friendly name for this assignment. The end users see this name when they go to access their assigned desktop. For example, when an end user launches Horizon Client to go to an assigned desktop, this name is the one displayed in Horizon Client.

    The name must contain only letters, hyphens, and numbers. Spaces are not allowed. The name cannot start with a non-alphabetic character.

  5. Search for users and groups in your registered Active Directory domains, select the ones you want accessing desktop sessions using this assignment, and then move to the next step.
  6. Review the configuration and complete the wizard.

Results

The system begins the process of configuring the farm's VMs to provide session desktops to the selected users. On the page that lists the assignments, the Status column reflects the current progress.