About Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon)
Omnissa Horizon (formerly known as VMware Horizon) is a commercial desktop and application virtualization product. It was developed by VMware and is now a core product of Omnissa, a company that was formed from the End-User Computing division of VMware after its acquisition by Broadcom.
It allows businesses to deliver virtual desktops and applications to users from a central location, whether on-premises or in the cloud. This means that instead of running software and an operating system directly on a user’s computer, those resources are hosted in a data center and streamed to the user’s device.
While the application name has changed, the product itself is a continuation of the Horizon 8 line. Any version of Horizon 8 that was released after the rebrand is now officially known as Omnissa Horizon.
Key benefits of load balancing
Loadbalancer.org specializes in providing application delivery controllers (ADC). Load balancing Horizon ensures:
- optimized performance
- resilience (high availability)
- scalability
How to load balance VMware Horizon
Connection Servers broker client connections, authenticate users, and direct incoming requests to the correct endpoint. Although the Connection Server helps form the connection, it typically does not act as part of the data path after the connection is established.
Security Servers are installed in the DMZ and add an additional layer of security between the Internet and the internal network for external users. Each Security Server must be paired with a Connection Server and forwards all traffic to that instance. This pairing requires the Connection Server to be in tunnel mode, which means it is not suitable for internal client connections, so two sets of Connection Servers are needed – one to handle connections from the paired Security Servers, the other to handle internal clients.
Access Point is a hardened SUSE Linux based appliance introduced in v6.2 as an alternatively to Security Server. Access Point was renamed Unified Access Gateway (UAG) in Horizon v7.0. UAG is now the preferred option over Security Server. Access Point / UAG is not paired, so only one set of Connection Servers is needed for both external and internal clients.
For high availability and scalability, VMware recommends that multiple Connection Servers and multiple Unified Access Gateways are deployed in a load-balanced cluster.
The load balancers can be configured in various ways to support internal and external clients as detailed in the deployment guides referenced below.
VMware Horizon Protocol Table
| Protocol | Port | Use |
|---|---|---|
| TCP | 443 | Various HTTPS traffic |
| TCP/UDP | 443 | Blast |
| TCP/UDP | 4172 | PColP |
| TCP/UDP | 8443 | Blast |
