When you create a manual farm, you can configure certain farm settings.

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

Select an access group for the farm, or leave the farm in the default root access group.

Default display protocol Select VMware Blast, PCoIP or Microsoft RDP. Microsoft RDP applies to desktop pools only. The display protocol for application pools is always VMware Blast or PCoIP. If you select Microsoft 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 published desktop pools only. If you select Yes, users can choose the display protocol when they connect to a published 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 sessions 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.
Bypass Session Timeout Enable this setting to allow application sessions to run forever.

Application sessions that run forever are supported on Windows and Linux clients.

This setting is not available for application pools in a cloud pod architecture environment.

Application sessions that run forever are not supported for unauthenticated users.

Do not enable this setting if the max session timeout value is set to Never.

When you restart Connection Server, existing forever running application sessions no longer run indefinitely.
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.
Use custom script Select this setting to use a custom script for load balancing. If this setting is enabled, Horizon does not consider other load balancing settings and reads the CustomLoadValue registry key in the following location to get the server load index: HKLM\Sofware\VMware Inc.\VMware VDM\Performance Stats\CustomLoadValue. See, Writing a Load Balancing Script for an RDS Host.
Include session count Select this setting to include the session count on the RDS host for load balancing. If none of the settings are selected for load balancing and if the custom script setting is not selected, Horizon uses the session count by default. Disable this setting if you do not need to consider the session count for load balancing.
Select RDS Hosts Select the RDS host from the list.
CPU usage threshold Threshold value for the CPU usage in percentage. Horizon uses the configured CPU threshold to calculate the CPU load index factor. You can set a value from 0 to 100. The recommended value is 90. By default, this setting is not considered for load balancing. The default value is 0.
Memory usage threshold Threshold value for the memory in percentage. Horizon uses the configured memory threshold to calculate the Memory Load Index factor. You can set a value from 0 to 100. The recommended value is 90. By default, this setting is not considered for load balancing. The default value is 0.
Disk queue length threshold Threshold of the average number of both read and write requests that were queued for the selected disk during the sample interval. Horizon uses the configured threshold to calculate the Disk Load Index factor. You can set the value to any positive integer. By default, this setting is not considered for load balancing.
Disk read latency threshold Threshold of the average time of read of data from the disk in milliseconds. Horizon uses the configured threshold to calculate the Disk Load Index factor. You can set the value to any positive integer. By default, this setting is not considered for load balancing. The default value is 0.
Disk write latency threshold Threshold of the average time of write of data to the disk in milliseconds. Horizon uses the configured threshold to calculate the Disk Load Index factor. You can set the value to any positive integer. By default, this setting is not considered for load balancing. The default value is 0.