I have been a fan of VMware Horizon View since I was introduced to it back in the 5.x days. There was something about the simplicity of its components. One thing I thought Horizon View was missing was a feature that Citrix has had in XenApp/XenDesktop, in Citrix Director since the early 7.X days. There hasn’t been a good way to see what is going on with a users session. Sure, you could use vRops, but it wasn’t real time.
With VMware Horizon View 7.2, VMware has added what it calls “Help Desk”
Now, before I go much further with this post, you should know that VMware has only enabled this AMAZING feature for Horizon licensing, Advanced and Enterprise. If you remember, they did the same thing when they introduced “Instant Clones”, which made sense because most use cases for Instant Clones would be seen in larger environments. With the Help Desk tool, this is something even the smallest Horizon View environment could see a huge benefit from. Ok, I will stop venting, I don’t make those decisions.
So, lets look at how to access the tool, as well as a few features.
How to Access:
- You can access the Help Desk tool by connecting to your access link: https://<FQDN>/helpdesk | You will be prompted to login with your credentials.
- Open the Horizon View Admin Page, and click Help Desk – Using this method will automatically sign you in with the credentials you signed into the admin page with
Features
- Entitlements: I’ve seen in numerous environment where users are individually entitled to pools and applications. The Help Desk tool can quickly show you what a user is entitled to.
- Sessions Stats: Yes, you can now see session stats!
Hopefully VMware decides to open this up to the Standard licensing in the upcoming versions.
Enjoy!