VMware Horizon

Omnissa Unified Access Gateway Certificate Install

Omnissa Unified Access Gateway Certificate Install

Installing your own certificate is one of the first things you’ll need to do when setting up the Omnissa Unified Access Gateway appliance (formerly the VMware Unified Access Gateway appliance).

In this post, I will detail step-by-step how to install a certificate on the VMware UAG.

Prerequisites

The Process

  • Login to the UAG
  • Select Configure Manually.
  • Under Advanced Settings, click on TLS Server Certificate Settings.
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Omnissa Horizon Desktop Pool without vCenter

Omnissa Horizon Desktop Pool without vCenter

You usually want to connect Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon) directly to VMware vCenter, but it can make sense to leave them disconnected from each other in some situations.

In this post, I’ll show you step-by-step how to install the VMware Horizon Agent without using the VMware vCenter integration. You can do this on persistent VDIs and Physical Machines.

The Process

The configuration will be divided into two sections. The first section covers the steps needed on the system that you will install the VMware Horizon agent on, and the second section covers the steps needed on the VMware Horizon Connection Server.

VMware Horizon Agent

  • Launch the VMware Horizon agent install with the command line argument /v VDM_VC_MANAGED_AGENT=0
  • Click Next
  • Agree to the general terms and click Next.
  • Select IPv4 and click Next.
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VMware Horizon Enable Copy Paste

VMware Horizon Enable Copy Paste

I’m a big fan of using copy paste as it helps me reduce typos and allows me to paste links or other information quickly between systems. Previously I wrote a post that covers how to enable copy paste with VMRC (VMware Remote Console) however that’s not super useful for the users that are using Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon). If you want to know how to enable copy paste with VMRC you can read my post about it called VMware Copy Paste Enabler.

The default configuration of VMware Horizon is that copy paste only works in one direction. You can paste items into VMware Horizon but you can’t copy items out, from an end-user perspective they may report that as broken. Thankfully there’s an easy way to enable full copy paste in both directions in Omnissa Horizon.

In this post, I will detail step-by-step how to enable copy paste in both directions in VMware Horizon.

Perquisites

  • Have the Horizon GPO templates deployed to your Central Store.

Here’s how to deploy the VMware Horizon GPO Templates.

The Process

  • Create a new GPO.
  • Go to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > VMware View Agent Configuration > Clipboard Redirection
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VMware Horizon GPO Templates

VMware Horizon GPO Templates

In this post, I will detail step-by-step how to install the Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon) GPO templates.

Technically speaking you can fully use Horizon without any of the GPO templates however there are a lot of useful settings in them that you can configure.

Before installing the Horizon GPO templates I recommend you create a Central Store. Here’s how to Create Active Directory Central Store.

I recommend making a note that you’ve added an extra GPO template to the Central Store.

The Process

  • Download the Horizon GPO Bundle from Omnissa.
Horizon GPO Bundle Download
  • Extract the contents of the VMware Horizon Extra Bundle zip file.
Extracting Horizon GPO Bundle
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Install VMware Horizon Connection Server

Install VMware Horizon Connection Server

In this post I’ll show you step-by-step how to install the VMware Horizon Connection Server on-premises specifically version 2303 (other versions will follow a very similar process).

Prerequisites

  • A domain joined Windows Server that will be the Horizon Connection Server.
  • A static IP on the Windows Server.
  • An Active Directory Group for Horizon Administrators.
  • A password for Horizon data recovery backups.

The Process

  • Login to the server that you will be installing the Horizon Connection Server on, this should be the only function of that server.
  • Download a copy of the Horizon Connection Server installer from VMware.
  • Run the Horizon Connection Server installer that was just downloaded.
  • Click Next
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VMware Horizon Customize Web Portal

VMware Horizon Customize Web Portal

VMware Horizon’s web portal has a decent appearance out of the box. However, I wanted to customize it to make it look like my own.

If you have a customized login background on your Microsoft 365, it could be beneficial to create a consistent end-user experience by making them look similar.

I couldn’t find any official documentation from VMware about this. I suspect the customizations might break when you upgrade to a new version of VMware Horizon. With all of that aside altering the images on the HTML portal is actually really straightforward.

Here’s how to change the default background and the default logo on the VMware Horizon HTML web portal.

  • Go to your current VMware Horizon web portal and right click on the VMware Horizon logo and select Open image in new tab
  • You will now have a new tab that has a URL that looks something like this horizon.yourwebsite.com/portal/webclient/icons-21414280/logo.png
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geoSCOUT published remote access

geoSCOUT published remote access

I needed to get geoSCOUT working in Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon) but geoLOGIC doesn’t officially support publishing geoSCOUT to systems like Citrix, RD Web, and Horizon. Due to the way that geoSCOUT works you can’t just launch the geoSCOUT exe and have it work.

On the first launch a user would normally run the geoSCOUT Desktop_Build_NonAdmin_v8.exe installer which will create the App Data and the document files for the user. The creation of the App Data part is important because that is when it creates the reference to the geoSCOUT license file. If you try to just run the geoSCOUT Desktop_Build_NonAdmin_v8.exe install file outside of the path of your geoSCOUT license file it won’t install correctly.

Now a way to get around the issue is to have the user RDP into your session host that is publishing the application and have them run the non admin installer but that isn’t very seamless and is very time consuming.

My solution was to write a PowerShell script that launches before the user launches geoSCOUT.

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