VMware Horizon Install Guide (part 1)

January 28, 2013 0 By Eric Shanks

I recently decided to give VMware Horizon a shot and found the install to be a little confusing so this gives me a good opportunity to lay it all out so that others can try it out for themselves. A big “thank you” goes out to Raj Jethnani for a helping hand with this post. If you’d like to follow him on twitter his link is here: @rajtech

For those of you who don’t know, Horizon is a nifty SAAS platform for you to present thinapp applications too. I could see many organizations benefit from this technology in the near future.

Before you start

Download the Horizon Connector, Horizon Service appliance, and Horizon Agent from the VMware site. If you plan to use thinapps (and you should really do this) you’ll also want to download this as well, but it’s outside of the scope of this guide.

Decide on two IP addresses that will be used for the Connector and the Horizon Service appliances.

Create two DNS records (one for each appliance). You should have both (A) and (PTR) records for each appliance as well. For the connector I use something generic like (horizonconnector.hollow.lab) but for the service appliance I would use an organization name like ITHollow.hollow.lab.

Create a couple of users, a group, and maybe even an OU in Active Directory. The Connector uses AD for authentication and will need an account to bind to AD to do lookups. A group to put users in is helpful as well. The OU is just nice for housekeeping.

Make sure any users that will use the Horizon service have a First name, Last name and email address configured in Active Directory. This goes for the Bind user as well. If any of this information is missing, Horizon won’t work.

Import the OVF Files

I’m not going to go through the process of importing OVF files into vSphere, but if you need some assistance you can take a look at http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esx-vcenter/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.vmadmin.doc_41/vsp_vm_guide/working_with_ovf_templates/t_import_a_virtual_appliance.html

Horizon Service Appliance Setup

Power on the Horizon Service Appliance and open a VM Console. Set a password for both the root and sshuser. Then configure your networking.

This next step is crucial. Configure your hostname and it MUST match the organizational name you created in DNS earlier. Don’t think you can leave the hostname as is and just point the DNS record to this server. That won’t work, not that I did that or anything.

Set the Time Zone on your appliance. This was another step I skipped and then later realized that time is obviously a crucial element in authentication. Go into the Time Zone settings and follow the prompts.

Horizon Connector Appliance Setup

The Horizon Connector Appliance is setup in a very similar fashion to the Service Appliance. Power on the appliance and then open a VM Console to begin the setup.

Create a root password (I know at this point you’re using the same password you used in the appliance but I won’t tell on you!)

Configure the networking settings just as you did for the Service Appliance (with a different IP Address of course). Be sure to enter the correct hostname here as well. Remember that you created the DNS records already.

Just like you did with the Horizon Service Appliance, you must set the Time Zone when you are done.

The Appliances have now been setup. The next step is configuring them and you can find these instructions in my second post. https://theithollow.com/2012/01/vmware-horizon-install-guide-part-2

VMware Horizon Install Guide (part 2)