VMware Horizon uses desktop pools as its basis of centralized management. In Horizon 8, you create pools of virtual machines and select settings that give all the machines in a pool a common desktop definition. Horizon 8 can then deliver the desktops to end users via Horizon Clients. Horizon 8 can deliver desktops from single-user virtual desktop machines, which can be virtual machines that are managed by vCenter Server, virtual machines that run on another virtualization platform, or physical computers.
You create a desktop pool from one of the following sources:
- A virtual machine that runs on a virtualization platform other than vCenter Server that supports Horizon Agent.
- Physical desktop PC.
- A virtual machine that is hosted on an ESXi host and managed by vCenter Server.
- A session-based desktop on an RDS host. For more information about creating desktop pools from an RDS host, see the Windows Desktops and Applications in Horizon document.
You can create the following types of desktop pools:
| Desktop Pool Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Automated | Automated desktop pools use a vCenter Server virtual machine template or snapshot to create a pool of identical virtual machines. You can create these automated desktop pools:
|
| Manual | Manual desktop pools are a collection of existing vCenter Server virtual machines, physical computers, or non-vCenter virtual machines. For manual pools, Horizon 8 does not create and manage the life cycle of the desktops in the pool. The desktops are created outside of Horizon 8 and then imported into Horizon Console. |
