Automating the installation of Horizon View Composer

In this recipe, we will learn how to perform a silent installation of Horizon View Composer, which is used in environments that will host linked-clone-based virtual desktops. One instance of Composer is required for each VMware vCenter Server linked to a pod.

Getting ready

When performing a silent installation of Horizon View Composer, the target server will be automatically rebooted. Ensure that this reboot operation will not impact the availability of any key services, particularly if Composer is being installed directly on the vCenter Server.

The installation of Horizon View Composer is performed directly on the Windows Server that will host the Composer role using the Horizon View Composer installation executable.

How to do it...

The following command shows you a sample syntax for a command-line installation of Horizon View Composer:

VMware-viewcomposer-y.y.y-xxxxxx.exe /s /v"/qn DB_DSN=DSNname DB_USERNAME=DBusername DB_PASSWORD=DBpassword SSL_DEFAULTS=2 SSL_CERTIFICATE=CertificateThumbprint
"

In this example, we have elected to use an existing SSL certificate already installed on the server which hosts our Composer Server. We can perform this by setting SSL_DEFAULTS=2 and providing the thumbprint for the target SSL certificate to the SSL_CERTIFICATE= command-line option.

Note

As with the other command-line installations, if the password contains a space, you must place the password value within quotes. In the example provided, the Composer data password command-line switch will appear as follows:

DB_PASSWORD="four word db password"

The SSL certificate must be installed in the Personal certificate store in Certificates (Local Computer), as shown in the following screenshot. The certificate thumbprint can be obtained by double-clicking on the certificate, selecting the Details tab, and then selecting the Thumbprint field as shown:

Refer to Configuring SSL Certificates for View Servers (https://pubs.vmware.com/horizon-view-60/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.horizon-view.installation.doc%2FGUID-80CC770D-327E-4A21-B382-786621B23C44.html) for additional information how to obtain and manage SSL certificates for both Horizon View Connection Servers and Horizon View Composer.

The following screenshot shows this command being used to perform a silent installation of a Horizon View Composer. In this example, we are configuring Composer to use a previously installed SSL certificate and have specified the required Composer database information. As shown in the screenshot, the spaces must be removed from the SSL thumbprint when including it in the command-line options:

In the event that we want to make Composer create and use a self-signed SSL certificate, we would simply need to exclude the SSL_DEFAULTS and SSL_CERTIFICATE command-line options.

How it works...

The following table provides a detailed list of the different command-line options that can be provided when performing a command-line installation on Horizon View Composer: