VMware Horizon 6 editions

As we touched on in the previous section, there are a number of different components that make up the Horizon 6 portfolio, and these features are divided into three different Horizon editions—Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise editions—each building on the functionality of the previous edition.

In the next section, we will take a walk-through of each of the available editions.

Horizon View Standard Edition

Horizon View Standard Edition delivers the core VDI solution and all of its associated features, including the licensing for vSphere and vCenter for desktop. Also included is ThinApp, VMware's application virtualization and packaging solution, which allows you to abstract applications from the underlying operating system and deliver them independent of the OS. You can read more about ThinApp in VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials, Peter Bj?rk, Packt Publishing.

Horizon Advanced Edition

With Horizon Advanced Edition, we add application publishing, image management, vSAN, and Horizon Workspace.

This is the first edition that includes the application publishing feature that is integrated into Horizon View 6. It allows an application running on a Microsoft RDSH server to be published via the VMware View client using the PCoIP protocol. You can also publish desktop sessions in the same way. For a user, this means that they can access all three delivery methods from one place.

Image management is delivered using VMware Mirage with the ability to manage persistent View desktops and also deliver offline desktops to a Mac or Windows laptop. For a detailed overview of VMware Mirage, you can read VMware Horizon Mirage Essentials, Peter von Oven, Packt Publishing.

In keeping with the theme of consistent access from one place using any device, Advanced Edition includes the Horizon Workspace Portal solution. Horizon Workspace gives an end user their own virtual workspace, which is accessible via a single URL from any device with a compatible browser. Being context-aware, only the applications appropriate for that device and location are shown on the workspace, based on the user's entitlements. Users can also select applications from a central catalog of entitled applications.

Horizon Workspace is sometimes referred to as a universal services broker or the switchboard of the solution. This is because it's the central place you go to in order to access the tools you need, whether that's just an application or a virtual desktop. As it's a universal broker, it's not just about delivering the VMware technology. It allows for the brokering of ThinApp packages, SaaS-based cloud applications, XenApp-published applications, and Microsoft Office 365.

Horizon Enterprise Edition

The final edition is Horizon Enterprise Edition, which builds on the previous two versions and adds features that deliver the operational management and automation functionality. This includes products such as vCenter Operations for View, which delivers capacity planning, health monitoring, and proactive troubleshooting features.

The final component is vCenter Orchestrator with the desktop plugin, which allows you to build desktop workflows for automated provisioning.

The following diagram details the features available in each edition: