You can create published desktop pools and multi-session application pools based on farms of Linux virtual machines that have been configured as multi-session host machines. Each published desktop or multi-session application can support multiple user sessions at a time.
To establish multiple user sessions on a desktop or application, the BlastProxy process receives each connection request from a client and forwards it to a specific process on VMwareBlastServer. The BlastProxy process also forwards data traffic from VMwareBlastServer to the appropriate client.
The following sections describe the components that you must configure to provide your end users with multi-session Linux desktops and applications.
Multi-session Host Machines
You configure a multi-session host machine by following the steps described in Prepare a Linux Machine for Remote Desktop Deployment and ensuring that you install Horizon Agent with the --multiple-session parameter included. The machine hosts desktops and applications that users can access remotely.
Farms
A farm is a collection of multi-session hosts. Farms facilitate the management of hosts, along with the published desktops and multi-session applications provisioned from those hosts, across an enterprise.
Farms provide a common set of multi-session applications or published desktops to serve groups of users that vary in size or have different desktop or application requirements. You can create manual farms and automated instant-clone farms of Linux host machines.
When you create a multi-session application pool or a published desktop pool, you must specify one and only one farm. The hosts in a farm can host published desktops, applications, or both. A farm can support at most one published desktop pool, but it can support multiple application pools. A farm can support both types of pools simultaneously.
Farms can have a variable number of multi-session hosts. See VMware Configuration Maximums for the maximum number of host machines supported per farm.
Horizon 8 provides load balancing of the hosts in a farm by directing connection requests to the host that has the least number of active sessions.
For more information on farms, see Horizon 8 Administration on the VMware Horizon Documentation portal.
Published Desktop Pool
A published desktop pool is provisioned from a farm of multi-session Linux host machines. Each published desktop can support multiple user sessions at a time.
Multi-session published desktops require fewer virtual machine resources than single-session virtual desktops. However, multi-session desktops offer more limited support for VMware Horizon 8 features.
A published desktop is based on a session to a multi-session host. In contrast, a desktop in an single-session desktop pool is based on a virtual machine.
Multi-session Application Pool
A multi-session application pool runs on a farm of multi-session host machines.
With a multi-session application pool, you can deliver a single application to many users simultaneously. When you create a multi-session application pool, you deploy an application in the data center that users can access from anywhere on the network.
