Complete the following tasks to prepare your Horizon pod's components for connecting with Horizon Cloud. Ensure that every step is completed as described in the following sections to complete a successful deployment.
The sections in this documentation topic are:
- Horizon Cloud Control Plane Requirements
- Active Directory Requirements
- Horizon Pod and Horizon Cloud Connector Requirements
- DNS, Ports, and Protocols Requirements
- Universal Broker Requirements
- Licensing for the Microsoft Windows Operating Systems
This checklist is primarily for Horizon Cloud customer accounts that have never had a pod deployed from or cloud-connected to their tenant environment prior to the March 2021 service release date. Such environments might be referred to as clean-slate environments or greenfield environments.
Some of the requirements listed in the following sections are the ones needed for successfully onboarding a Horizon pod to Horizon Cloud. Some requirements are those needed for the key tasks that are performed after onboarding the Horizon pod to get a productive tenant environment, able to provide multi-cloud assignments to your end users.
Horizon Cloud Control Plane Requirements
☐ | Active My VMware account to log in to the Horizon Cloud control plane. |
☐ | Valid Horizon Universal License. For more information, see the Horizon Universal License page. |
Active Directory Requirements
☐ | Supported Microsoft Windows Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) domain functional levels:
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☐ | All cloud-connected pods in the same Horizon Cloud customer account must have line-of-sight to the same set of Active Directory domains at the time you deploy those pods. This requirement applies not only to additional Horizon pods that you subsequently cloud connect using the Horizon Cloud Connector after the first pod, but also to pods deployed into Microsoft Azure using the same customer account. You can see the checklist for Microsoft Azure pods at VMware Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure Requirements Checklist For New Pod Deployments - Updated As Appropriate for Pods That Deploy Starting From the March 2021 Service Release. |
☐ | Domain bind account
You should also set the account password to Never Expire to ensure continued access to log in to your Horizon Cloud environment. For additional details and requirements, see Service Accounts That Horizon Cloud Requires for Its Operations |
☐ | Auxiliary domain bind account — cannot use the same account as above
You should also set the account password to Never Expire to ensure continued access to log in to your Horizon Cloud environment. For additional details and requirements, see Service Accounts That Horizon Cloud Requires for Its Operations |
☐ | Domain join account
Note:
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☐ | Auxiliary domain join account (Optional, cannot use the same account as above)
Note:
|
☐ | Active Directory groups
Note: If your tenant environment has any
Horizon Cloud pods in Microsoft Azure running manifests older than manifest 1600.0, the domain join account and any auxiliary domain join accounts must also be in
Horizon Cloud Administrators group — or in an Active Directory group which is granted the
Super Administrator role in
Horizon Cloud.
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Horizon Pod and Horizon Cloud Connector Requirements
☐ | Horizon pod running a minimum of version 7.10 or later. To obtain use of the latest cloud services and features with the cloud-connected pod, it must be running the most currently available version of the Horizon pod software. |
☐ | Horizon Cloud Connector virtual appliance, a minimum of version 1.8 or later. To obtain use of the latest cloud services and features with the cloud-connected pod, it must be running the most current version, Horizon Cloud Connector version 1.10.
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☐ | Resource requirements for the Horizon Cloud Connector virtual appliance:
Important: Along with reserving capacity for the Horizon management components such as the Connection Server VMs, Unified Access Gateway VMs, and other components, you should plan on reserving capacity for the
Horizon Cloud Connector component. The
Horizon Cloud Connector is an infrastructure component that is deployed into your
Horizon pod environment to connect a
Horizon pod to
Horizon Cloud for the use cases of using Horizon subscription licenses and cloud-hosted services with that pod.
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☐ | Active Directory user used in the pod-onboarding process, when pairing the Horizon Cloud Connector with the pod's Connection Server. This Active Directory user must have the pod's predefined Administrators role on the root access group, as displayed in the pod's Horizon Console in . In other words, the Active Directory user specified for the pod-onboarding process is a super user for that pod, as described in the Horizon documentation's Horizon Administration guide or Horizon Console Administration guide that is applicable for your pod's software version. |
DNS, Ports, and Protocols Requirements
☐ | Specific ports and protocols are required both for onboarding a Horizon pod to Horizon Cloud and for ongoing operations of the pod, the Horizon Cloud Connector paired with that pod, and your Horizon Cloud tenant environment. See DNS, Ports, and Protocols Requirements When Using Horizon Cloud Connector and a Horizon Pod. |
Universal Broker Requirements
After you complete onboarding your first pod, you can set up use of Universal Broker as the brokering method for your Horizon Cloud environment. When you choose to configure Universal Broker for your environment, at a high level, the following items are needed. For additional specifics, Configure Universal Broker and System Requirements for Universal Broker.
☐ | To use Universal Broker with a cloud-connected Horizon pod, the pod must have Unified Access Gateway configured. |
☐ | Universal Broker has specific DNS, port, and protocol requirements to work with participating Horizon pods. See Horizon Pods - Port and Protocol Requirements for Universal Broker. |
☐ | Optional: Configure your pod's gateways for two-factor authentication to a RADIUS authentication server, if you want Universal Broker to use two-factor authentication for the pod.
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☐ | Optional: A custom FQDN that your end users will use to access the Universal Broker service and the certificate based on that FQDN (optional) |
Licensing for the Microsoft Windows Operating Systems
Horizon Cloud does not provide any guest operating system licensing required for use of Microsoft Windows operating systems that you use in the course of using the Horizon Cloud workflows. You, the customer, have the responsibility to have valid and eligible Microsoft licenses that entitle you to create, perform workflows on, and operate the Windows-based desktop VMs and RDSH VMs that you choose to use in your Horizon Cloud tenant environment. The required licensing depends on your intended use.
☐ | Licensing for one or more of the following types: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 10 |
☐ | Licensing for one or more of the following types: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Server 2016, Microsoft Server 2019 |
☐ | Microsoft Windows RDS Licensing Servers — for high availability, redundant licensing servers are recommended |
☐ | Microsoft RDS User or Device CALs or both |