Horizon Agent Direct-Connection Plug-In (formerly View Agent Direct-Connection Plug-In) is packaged in an installer file that you can download from the VMware website and install. You can install Horizon Agent Direct-Connection Plug-In on a Windows or Linux machine where Horizon Agent is already installed.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that Horizon Agent is installed on the machine.
    • For information on installing Horizon Agent on a Windows machine, see Desktops and Applications in Horizon 8. If your environment does not include Connection Server, install Horizon Agent from the command line and specify a parameter that tells Horizon Agent not to register with Connection Server. See Windows - Set Up the Desktop for HTML Access.
    • For information on installing Horizon Agent on a Linux machine, see "Install Horizon Agent on a Linux Virtual Machine" and "Command-Line Options for Installing Horizon Agent for Linux" in Desktops and Applications in Horizon 8. To support direct connections to single-session desktops, install Horizon Agent with default installation parameters. To support direct connections to multi-session desktops and applications, install Horizon Agent with the --multiple-session parameter included.
  • Enable the screen DMA setting for virtual machines on vSphere 6.0 and later. If screen DMA is not enabled, users see a black screen when they connect to the remote desktop. For more information on how to set the screen DMA, see the VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 2144475 http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2144475.

Windows Installation Procedure

  1. Download the Horizon Agent Direct-Connection Plug-In installer file from the VMware download page at https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/downloads.

    Navigate to the download page for your release of VMware Horizon and then to the download page for Horizon Agent Direct-Connection.

    The installer filename is VMware-viewagent-direct-connection-x86_64-y.y.y-xxxxxx.exe for 64-bit Windows or VMware-viewagent-direct-connection--y.y.y-xxxxxx.exe for 32-bit Windows, where y.y.y is the version number and xxxxxx is the build number.

  2. Double-click the installer file.
  3. (Optional) Change the TCP port number.

    The default port number is 443.

  4. (Optional) Choose how to configure the Windows Firewall service.

    By default, Configure Windows Firewall automatically is selected and the installer configures Windows Firewall to allow the required network connections.

  5. (Optional) Choose whether to deactivate SSL 3.0.

    By default, Disable support for SSLv3 automatically (recommended) is selected and the installer deactivates SSL 3.0 at the operating system level. This option is not displayed and the installer performs no action if SSL 3.0 is already explicitly enabled or deactivated in the registry. If this option is deselected, the installer also performs no action.

  6. Follow the prompts and finish the installation.

Linux Installation Procedure

  1. Install the nginx package using the appropriate commands for your operating system.
    Linux Distribution Commands for Installing nginx
    Ubuntu/Debian 
    apt-get install nginx

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Workstation or Server

    CentOS

    		 
    yum install epel-release
yum install nginx

    SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop or Server (SLED/SLES)
    Note: In the first command line, replace <download URL> as follows:
    • For SLED/SLES 15.x, replace with 'http://nginx.org/packages/sles/15'.
    • For SLED/SLES 12.x, replace with 'http://nginx.org/packages/sles/12'.
    sudo zypper addrepo -G -t yum -c '<download URL>' nginx
wget http://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
sudo rpm --import nginx_signing.key
sudo zypper install nginx
  2. Download the Horizon Agent Direct-Connection Plug-In installer file from the VMware download page at https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/downloads.

    Navigate to the download page for your release of VMware Horizon and then to the download page for VMware Horizon for 64-bit Linux.

    The installer filename is VMware-horizonagent-linux-vadc-x86_64-YYMM-y.y.y-xxxxxx.tar.gz, where YYMM is the marketing version number, y.y.y is the internal version number, and xxxxxx is the build number.

    Note: Ensure that you download the version of the Horizon Agent Direct-Connection Plug-In installer that matches the version of Horizon Agent installed on the Linux machine.
  3. Unpack the installer tarball.
    tar -xvzf VMware-horizonagent-linux-vadc-x86_64-YYMM-y.y.y-xxxxxx.tar.gz
  4. Navigate to the tarball folder and run the install_vadc.sh script as a superuser.
    sudo ./install_vadc.sh

    Allow the installation to proceed without interruption until it is complete.

  5. Configure entitlements for the users authorized to access the direct-connection desktop or applications based on the machine. In the following command, vmwvadc is the default entitlement group for Horizon Agent Direct-Connection Plug-In. Replace <username> with the name of the user that you want to add to the vmwvadc entitlement group. 
    usermod -a -G vmwvadc <username>

    Repeat this step for all users that you want to add to the entitlement group. For more information, see Authorizing Horizon Client to Access Desktops and Applications.

  6. Restart the Linux machine for the changes to take effect.