VMware Horizon Install Guide (part 4)

January 28, 2013 2 By Eric Shanks

VMware Horizon Install Guide (part 1)

VMware Horizon Install Guide (part 2)

VMware Horizon Install Guide (part 3)

In the last part, we finished setting up the basics of Horizon Connector and the Service Portal.

Now we can login to the Service Portal to assign our applications.

Application Prerequisites

A couple of more prerequisites should be done before we log in.

First, install the Horizon agent on all (or a few test machines) clients that will be using the thinapp packages that are published with Horizon.

During the install make sure to enter the horizon service portal url (http://theithollow.hollow.lab)

You’ll see the agent on the bottom right hand corner of your task bar.

Next up, make sure that you have added both the horizon connector and the horizon service urls to your local intranet sites in Internet Explorer.

Lastly, since we’re not using a trusted certificate authority in this post, we’ll need to import the Horizon.cer file that we created earlier. Right click on the .cer file and choose “Install Certificate”. Add this to the Enterprise Trust keystore.

Manage Users and Apps

You will notice our sweet logo, but also that you have no applications listed. Since you’ve logged in with an Administrative Account, you can click Admin at the top left corner.

Go to the Users and Group tab at the top of the page. You’ll notice that your users have no application enrollments. Click Add on the right side of the page.

Choose which thinapp package to add. The deployment can either be automatic or user defined. I’ve chosen automatic so that the apps are immediately shown to users.

If we go back and login again, we’ll now see our thinapp package on the front page. Any users who’ve had this app published to them can then stream the app.

From here, you can open your apps from the Horizon Agent as well. A folder should be put on the desktop of the clients and their apps should appear. Users may think they’re launching local applications. Pretty sweet!

You can even publish your apps to mobile devices such as Android and iPhones.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vmware.horizon.android&hl=en

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vmware-horizon-workspace/id582810532?mt=8

Troubleshooting

I had several issues getting all of this to work correctly on my first install. Hopefully some of these tips will help out.

Be sure to always use the DNS names of your appliances. IP addresses can get you into trouble.
Check the time synchronization on your appliances.
If users are missing applications, make sure they have permissions to the thinapps repository that you pointed Horizon too. If you want everyone to be able to run these, add “Authenticated Users” to the share. Only read permission should be necessary.
If apps are still not appearing, right click on the Horizon Agent on the task bar and choose “Sync Now”
Make sure the Bind User is in the list of Horizon Users that can use the site.
Make sure the URLs are in the trusted sites list
Make sure to import the certificate into the Enterprise Trust keystore

I hope this post was useful to you. I think it could be a very valuable product to distribute apps to end users!