With the Cloud Pod Architecture feature, you can link together multiple pods to provide a single large desktop and application brokering and management environment.

A pod consists of a set of Connection Server instances, shared storage, a database server, and the vSphere and network infrastructures required to host desktop and application pools. In a traditional Horizon implementation, you manage each pod independently. With the Cloud Pod Architecture feature, you can join together multiple pods to form a single Horizon implementation called a pod federation.

A pod federation can span multiple sites and data centers and simultaneously simplify the administration effort required to manage a large-scale Horizon deployment.

The following diagram is an example of a basic Cloud Pod Architecture topology.

Figure 1. Basic Cloud Pod Architecture Topology
A diagram of a basic Cloud Pod Architecture topology.

In the example topology, two previously standalone pods in different data centers are joined together to form a single pod federation. An end user in this environment can connect to the New York pod and receive a desktop or application in either pod.

When using Cloud Pod Architecture with Unified Access Gateway appliances, each appliance must be associated with a single pod.