VMware Horizon v6.5.2 Upgrade to v7.8

Business Requirements

The client was running a legacy version of VMware Horizon View (v6.5.2) and had a requirement to upgrade to the latest version at the time (v7.8). The existence of an Imprivata One Sign SSO solution in front of their Horizon View deployment, coupled with the fact that a large portion of the endpoints where shared amongst multiple users, prevented a side-by-side implementation of the old and new environment. Instead an in-place upgrade was required.

The Delivery

We met with the client for multiple workshops and planning sessions. We carried out a health check and discovery exercise to ensure that the environment was suitable for an upgrade and that we had all the information available to help plan a successful implementation. We also assisted the customer in liaising with 3rd parties whose technologies were in the Horizon desktop stack and could be potentially impacted by the upgrade.

What Did We Do?

Asystec provided project management and technical resources to successfully plan and execute the upgrade of the VMware Horizon environment. The tasks involved were:

• Facilitate the planning, discovery and design workshops
• Produced design documentation for sign-off
• Produced project plan
• Performed environment health check
• Liaised with 3rd party vendors and the client to assist with health check remediation tasks
• Planned upgrade execution sequence and back-out process
• Executed upgrade sequence over two consecutive change weekends
• Provided hyper-care post-upgrade to ensure any issues were resolved immediately
• Provided documentation and handover to operation teams

Core Technology

VMware Horizon View

Client Benefits

• The upgrade improved the Horizon environment stability which reduced incident numbers coming through the client’s Help Desk.
• The upgrade introduced several features which would helped reduce environment operation overheads. VMware AppVolumes helped streamline application maintenance and delivery, Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM) improved end-user experience (UX) through shorter login times and Instant Clones helped reduce storage overhead.
• The environment upgrade enabled the support for Windows 10 which was a key objective for the client in modernising the virtual desktop and to move away from a legacy Windows 7 desktop.
• The upgrade enabled the use of the Cloud Pod Architecture feature which allows the seamless presentation of resources across the Horizon block and pod construct. This feature would be a key enabler in a future Horizon expansion.

If you would like to know more about the above project or any other Asystec projects please feel free to reach out to our team on info@asystec.ie.