This documentation page describes specific considerations for Horizon Image Management Service (IMS) support when you create and manage images sourced from first-generation Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure deployments.

Attention: IMS provides this support only when all of the requirements for first-generation Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure deployments are met. Refer to First-Gen Tenants - IMS System Requirements.

For additional information about available functionality, see First-Gen Tenants - Understanding the Image Management Workflow within a First-Generation Horizon Cloud Tenant.

Using this Page

Important: Use this page solely when you have a first-gen tenant environment and will use IMS features in that first-gen environment. As of August 2022, Horizon Cloud Service - next-gen is generally available and has its very own Using Next-Gen documentation set available here.

When you have a next-gen tenant, you would naturally use IMS features in that next-gen environment. Those next-gen IMS features and how to use them are located inside the next-gen documentation set starting at the page Next-Gen Managing Horizon Images.

One indication of having a next-gen environment is after you log in to your environment and see the Horizon Universal Console label, the browser's URL field contains a portion like /hcsadmin/. The first-gen console's URL has a different section (/horizonadmin/).

General Considerations

Note the following:

  • Images from Microsoft Azure are only published to pods in your Microsoft Azure cloud capacity.
  • Images from pods on Microsoft Azure must be VDI desktop images.
  • The workflow in which you manually create a VM in one of your Horizon Cloud pods and import it into IMS for publishing is also referred to as the custom VM workflow. If you use a VM model for that custom VM that is not one of the IMS default ones listed in the section Requirements for Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure Deployments, then when you subsequently use IMS to publish that image, the images that IMS creates and replicates to the other pods are always of the IMS default VM models.
Warning: After you publish an image sourced from a pod on Microsoft Azure and it is in its sealed state in Horizon Cloud, do not use the Microsoft Azure Portal to perform actions on that image VM or copies of it. Using the Microsoft Azure Portal to perform direct actions on a VM that is in the published state in Horizon Cloud is unsupported and will cause unexpected behavior. Always use the Horizon Universal Console to perform actions on sealed images.

Windows 11 Guest Operating Systems - Specific Considerations, Known Limitations, and Known Issues

The following considerations, limitations and issues have been identified for use of the Windows 11 Guest operating system with first-gen Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure deployments.

Considerations
  • Pod must be running the manifest from v2204 release or later.
  • Golden images must be running Horizon Agent Installer v22.1.0 or later.
  • Support matrix of the support combinations of Gen 1 and Gen 2, Windows 11 and Windows 10:
    Azure VM Model Windows 10 Windows 11
    Gen 1 VM Supported Not Supported
    Gen 2 VM Not Supported Supported
Windows 11 Specific IMS Known Limitations
  • Manual import, also referred to as custom import, of a Windows 11 image requires you import the image from Azure Marketplace as the direct source. Importing from any other sources such as Shared Image Gallery (SIG), Azure Managed Images, Azure VM snapshot, and the like are currently unsupported.
  • vTPM is currently unsupported.
  • Use of Windows 11 with VMs running AMD drivers is currently unsupported.
Windows 11 Specific IMS Known Issues
  • When time zone redirection is enabled using GPO, flickering desktop and explorer process crashing occurs. See KB 88086 for details.

    Avoid the known issue by not enabling time zone sync GPO for Windows 11 multi-session VMs.