What’s New in This Release of Horizon 6

VMware Horizon 6 version 6.1 provides the following new features and enhancements:

• NVIDIA GRID vGPU (shared GPU hardware acceleration)
  Available with vSphere 6.0 and later, this feature allows a physical GPU (graphical processing unit) on an ESXi host to be shared among multiple virtual desktops. With this new capability, Horizon 6 enables a wide variety of graphics use cases at significantly lower costs compared to physical workstations or previous releases of Horizon. The use cases enabled range from lightweight 3D task workers to high-end workstation graphics power users.
• Smart Card for RDS desktops and Hosted Apps
  This feature enables users to authenticate to RDS-based desktops and RDS-based applications using smart cards.
• Support for IPv6 networks
  Horizon 6 supports IPv6 networks in addition to IPv4 networks. The Horizon environment must be operated in either an IPv6 or IPv4 configuration; a mixed mode of operation is not supported. This release supports key components such as Horizon 6 servers, Horizon 6 VDI desktops and RDS hosts, and Horizon Client for Windows, as well as many Horizon 6 features. Not all Horizon 6 features that are supported in an IPv4 environment are supported in an IPv6 environment.
• Support for Virtual SAN 6.0
  The Virtual SAN feature available with vSphere 6.0 and later releases contains many performance improvements over the feature that was available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1. With vSphere 6.0, this feature also has broader HCL (hardware compatibility) support. Leveraging the new capabilities of Virtual SAN 6.0, Horizon 6 is able to double the number of virtual machines that can run per ESXi host and deliver cost reductions and improved performance for virtual desktop workloads.
• Support for Virtual Volumes
  Available with vSphere 6.0 and later releases, the Virtual Volumes feature allows vSphere to offload intensive storage operations such as snapshot creation, cloning, and replication. With this feature, virtual disks and their derivatives, clones, snapshots, and replicas are mapped directly to virtual volumes on the storage system. Implementation of Virtual Volumes depends on the availability of certified storage vendors.
• View Administrator (UI) support for configuring Cloud Pod Architecture
  Administrators can use View Administrator (in addition to the lmvutil command) to configure and administer a Cloud Pod Architecture environment. Customers can also use View Administrator to view pod health and desktop session information.
• USB Redirection of mass storage on RDS desktops and Hosted Apps
  This feature enables users to redirect their USB flash drive and hard disks to RDS Hosted Desktops and Applications. USB redirection of other types of USB devices, and other types of USB storage devices such as security storage drives and USB CD-ROM, is not supported. This feature is supported on Windows clients and Windows Server 2012 RDS hosts.
• Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system support for VDI desktops
  Windows Server 2012 R2 (Datacenter edition) is now supported as a guest operating system for single-user, VDI desktops.
• 3rd-Party SSO credential handling
  This feature enables 3rd-party SSO providers to access credential information when SSO is performed during a login to Horizon 6, allowing the 3rd-party solutions to be tightly integrated with Horizon 6.
• Enhanced Message Security Mode
  With the new Enhanced message security mode, instead of signing and encrypting individual messages, messages are delivered through secure channels, bringing performance benefits by reducing the load on View Connection Server instances, security servers, virtual desktops, and RDS servers. Enhanced message security mode is enabled by default on new installations.
• vSphere Transparent Page Sharing in Horizon 6
  In View Administrator, you can set the level of Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) that takes place on the ESXi host. The ESXi host can be set to eliminate redundant copies of memory pages at a virtual machine, pool, pod, or global level. This feature lets you determine how broadly to share pages (and hence reduce total memory consumption) based on the use case and the need to isolate users’ virtual machines.
• Virtual hardware version 11 graphics memory configuration
  Horizon 6 now supports virtual hardware version 11, available in vSphere 6.0 or later versions. This feature is required for virtual machines that use NVIDIA GRID vGPU.
• ViewDbChk utility to resolve database inconsistencies for Horizon 6 virtual machines
  Administrators can resolve inconsistencies in the databases (View LDAP, View Composer, and vCenter Server) that store information about desktop virtual machines. The utility can automatically identify and resolve configuration issues that previously could require manual intervention.
• Supportability of Windows XP and Windows Vista guest operating systems as desktop virtual machines
  The versions of View Agent that ship with Horizon 6 (version 6.1) and later releases do not support Windows XP and Windows Vista desktops. The Horizon 6 (version 6.1) servers will work with Windows XP and Windows Vista desktops if you continue to use the older View Agent 6.0.2. The older agent, of course, does not offer all of the features of the new agent. For more details, see Retiring Old OSes: XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.6 & 10.7.