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 8 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. |
