In Horizon Cloud, you create a farm so that you can provision desktop sessions or remote applications to your end users from hosts that are capable of serving multiple user sessions simultaneously. When created, the farm consists of a pool of RDS-capable hosts. These RDS-capable hosts can be VMs running Microsoft Windows Server operating systems or running Microsoft Windows 10 or 11 Enterprise multi-session operating systems. You create farms using the console's Farms page.

By default, Horizon Cloud farms are configured with rolling maintenance. For an example of how rolling maintenance works for a farm, see Example of Farm Rolling Maintenance.
Prerequisites
- Verify that you have at least one image listed on the Images page, that image has an RDSH-capable Windows operating system, the Images page shows that image is in Published state, and that image is located in the Horizon Cloud pod in which you want to create the farm. You cannot create a farm in a pod without such an image available in that pod.
- Decide if you want this farm's VMs to be connected to a VM subnet that is different from the pod's primary VM subnet (also known as the tenant subnet). If your pod is running manifest 2298 or later and you have edited the pod to add additional VM subnets, you can specify use of those subnets for this farm. For this use case, you must verify that the VM subnet you want to use is listed on the pod's details page's Networking section in a Ready state so that the subnet will available for you to select in the workflow steps. For details, see Overview of Using Multiple Tenant Subnets with Your Horizon Cloud Pod for Your Farms and VDI Assignments.
- Decide whether this farm will serve session-based desktops or remote applications. In this release, the same farm cannot serve both.
Note: To have your end users use App Volumes applications with a Microsoft Windows 10 or 11 multi-session operating system, you must entitle those users to both an App Volumes applications assignment and to a session-based desktops assignment. For this scenario, create a desktops farm to provide those session-based desktops based on that farm. When creating that desktops farm, select the published image that you created with the Microsoft Windows 10 or 11 multi-session operating system.
- Decide whether you want the farm's RDSH VMs to have encrypted disks. You must specify disk encryption when creating the farm. You cannot later add disk encryption after the farm is created. For a description of the disk capability, see Using Microsoft Azure Disk Encryption with Your Farms and VDI Desktops in Your Horizon Cloud Environment.
- Decide whether you want the ability to use NSX Cloud features with the farm's RDSH VMs. You must enable NSX Cloud management when creating the farm. You cannot later enable the farm for NSX Cloud management after the farm is created. The published image you choose for this farm must have the NSX agent installed in it. You must have installed the NSX agent prior to publishing the image. See VMware NSX Cloud and Horizon Cloud Pods in Microsoft Azure and its subtopics.
- If the image's operating system contains Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications, decide on the method you want to use to ensure that your end users can use those UWP applications from the farm's RDSH VMs. An example is when the image has the Microsoft Windows 10 or 11 Enterprise multi-session operating system. The method you choose to enable use of those UWP applications might determine which Active Directory OU you use for the farm. For more information, see Enable a Horizon Agent Policy to Allow Running UWP Applications from RDSH VMs.
Procedure
Results
The system starts creating the farm. You can monitor the progress using the Activity page. When the farm's status shows a green dot on the Farms page, the farm is ready for use.
Also, when an image VM has a data disk, additional time is needed for creating an encrypted farm VM based on that image VM. The longest times occur for data disks of larger, terabyte sizes.
What to do next
If you created a desktops farm, you would next create a session-based desktop assignment for your end users by following the steps in Horizon Cloud Pods - Provide Desktop Sessions from RDS Hosts for Your End Users by Creating an RDS-Based Session Desktop Assignment.
- Ensure the App Volumes applications are added into your applications inventory using the import workflow. Alternatively, instead of the import workflow, you can use a different image that is based on a Windows 10 or 11 client operating system, and use the create workflow to capture applications from that Windows 10 or 11 client system into your inventory. You can entitle those applications to your users and they can be used with the session-based desktops based on this farm, even when those applications are captured from the client type of Windows 10 or 11 operating system.
- Entitle those applications to your users by creating an App Volumes assignment.
- Entitle a session-based desktop to those users, based on this farm by creating a session-based desktop assignment.
If you created an applications farm, you would next scan that farm to load applications into Horizon Cloud and then create an applications assignment so your end users can use the remote applications from that farm.
For more information, see Applications in Your Horizon Cloud Inventory, Remote Applications - Importing from RDSH Farms that are Provisioned by Horizon Cloud Pods in Microsoft Azure, and Remote Applications - Create a Remote Application Assignment for Remote Applications Provisioned By Horizon Cloud Pods in Microsoft Azure.
If the image for this farm has applications that require opening special ports, you might need to modify this farm's associated Network Security Group (NSG) in Microsoft Azure. For details about the NSG, see About Network Security Groups and Farms in a Horizon Cloud Pod.
If you specified NSX Cloud management for this farm, you can use your NSX Cloud environment's Service Manager (CSM) to see that the farm's VMs are managed in NSX Cloud. Log in to your environment's CSM and navigate to Managed for the farm's VMs, you can start implementing NSX policies on them.
. When that Instances page shows a status of