Horizon 8 Reviews

Use as a test center for medical students was the primary purpose of the launch. The number of users seen included was about two hundred. The model was kiosk-mode. Each time, after the end of the virtual machine exam, it was presented. It had to change on the user.

Organizing and integrating is perhaps the most important feature.

Reducing maintenance costs as well as reducing end-time service to end users can be another feature.

Infrastructure equipment and Zero Client. It also has great flexibility in infrastructure changes, both in software and in hardware. You can increase the resources needed by the user or software needed in a few seconds.

Managing all operating systems in a single environment helped a lot in organizing and integrating it. Also, there is no operating system on the user-side hardware.

There is no worry that it will crash and you will be able to recover it in seconds.

Using this solution in medium to large organizations can be justified. Since virtualization is widespread in many organizations today, launching this solution may not require much infrastructure change.

Offices that do not require much processing are a good place to use this solution.

Places such as universities are not suitable for this solution.

The initial startup costs for this solution are relatively high.

Because it's more focused on integration, it's much more flexible and easier to manage.

This solution is Very Scalable

The technical support for this solution is very satisfying.

We tried solutions from Parallels, but it didn't seem right for the organization.

Most organizations have gone to virtualization and VMware clustering. Most of the work is already done.

Our in-house team handled the deployment.

We have seen ROI between two and three years.

The initial startup costs for this solution are relatively high.

Licensing and hardware outsourcing is expensive, but can be cost-effective in the three to five-year range.

We were spread across several offices and with the main production software tool and the weak WAN infrastructure, it was impossible to share data reliably. It seemed the only solution was to centralize the data and make it so the people using the data - the workers - could be anywhere. With past experiences in server virtualization, I investigated VMware View. It was the missing key that made this all work.

At this stage, a couple of iterations later, workers now only come to the office a couple of days a week. The company has been able to eliminate two offices entirely, and in addition, we have a much wider base of operations because employees can live practically anywhere in our "territory".

The ability to reliably virtualize desktops and support them. Simple to say, but complicated nonetheless. 

Almost all VMware products are "designed" for the enterprise and it sometimes takes some wise wrangling to make it financially viable. And VMware doesn't make that easy. I think the SMB market is largely untapped and maybe even ignored.

VMware is incredibly stable. Even when you don't know what you're doing. And for the times you get stuck - that's why they offer support. VMware support is pretty good.

VMware products are almost infinitely scalable. 

Tech support by and large is excellent. There is some swapping out between internal VMware groups sometimes, they are very compartmentalized but they generally can get you out of just about any hole you dig yourself into. 

No. I had used VMware in a "past" life and didn't even consider other solutions as viable.

It's not shake the box easy but if you do your homework, do some rudimentary testing and do a lot of research it's possible, viable - you can even do it yourself.

I did it all in house on my own.

It's not cheap but compared to constant hardware refreshes it doesn't take long to pay itself back. 

Don't be afraid to search out your own solution. It's not that hard to architect a viable virtual desktop environment. You don't have to implement each and every feature. 

No, as stated above.

• Horizon-linked clone desktops
• App Volumes
• UEM

With Horizon view, it requires less administration from us and it provides much more flexibility for our users.

Integration of app volumes with Horizon View and integration of App Volumes with UEM would be nice additions.

I've used it for three years.

App volumes introduces longer login times, printer mapping issues (print spooler crashes), and short cut configuration timing issues.

We didn't encounter any issues with stability.

We didn't encounter any issues with scalability.

Customer service is good.

Horizon: good. App Volumes and UEM: bad. Their support does not have good knowledge of the product.

We previously used Citrix. VMware is a better integrated solution for virtual desktops.

The initial setup was straightforward, but minimal. It takes time to configure all details. The default configuration should be better.

We are a consultancy partner. We implement it.

We evaluated Citrix XenDesktop.

Always use VMware Horizon Enterprise Suite. It has deep integration with the hypervisor. It is total solution.

The ability to spin up desktops as quickly as possible. You just build one image and then set multiple images and be ready quickly.

If you have a training session, you can spin up more very quickly, which helps in the training ability for end-users.

I wish there were more standardized instructions and rules. There are too many gotchas.

We're moving to 6.1 from 5.x, so far it's been good. An older version was unstable, but that was before I got there.

There's some little gotchas with moving some up, and you can only have so many VMs, so it does have limitations.

It’s a little advanced because more gotchas (certificates, different servers in different order).

Make sure you know the product, and do a POC first.

In the past, students had to physically go to labs to access software, but now they can access them from any device anywhere, and don’t have to login via VPN because of the security server part of Horizon.

View Persona, it’s been pushed to the wayside because they acquired UEM, and I’d prefer to use it, but have no budget for it. View Persona has less features than UEM, and it doesn’t seem updated, which makes a difference for standard edition users.

It is stable, but it depends on the use case. For us, we use it to allow students to access their desktops anywhere, at anytime. We just use the standard version, not the full enterprise one. We would like to go enterprise, but don’t the have budget for it. But, the standard version has been stable and addressed by support and updates. No issues that would cause us to turn away.

Recently had issue with the 3D application performance with the release of 6.1, and added VGPU support. All we had to do was add hardware (Nvidia K1 cards).

It's responsive, but a few times we had issues with their tech knowledge and troubleshooting steps. We had to escalate the issue and then it was resolved.

It was complex, and many facets on the networking side sit on top of vSphere, with multiple composer engines, and connection servers.

It loses points becuase I can’t take advantage of enterprise stuff. You should do a POC to make sure it fits the use case, three to four month period, and make sure you involve your networking team.

• Control
• Consolidated way of doing updates
• Security

We had to deal with re-imaging hard drives and managing PCs, so having images and desktops to deploy wherever people are without the hardware was really helpful.

I think that simplifying cross-platform use on different devices could be better. Different client versions sometimes don’t work quite as well.

It’s been great – we haven’t had too many issues at all.

Pretty good – we're a pretty small organization, and we have a few hundred desktops but it's been great for what we do.

It’s been good – no complaints at all.

Nope – we went from straight desktops to virtualization.

It’s a little complex, we missed the initial deployment. They were trying to get the most out of the resources on the servers and it undercut what some users needed.

When choosing VMware, we looked at the cost, and value. If they meet what we need, support is important as well. You should get a demo version and try it – see what it actually does before you buy it. I'd rather see it kick the tires than hear what other people have to say.

It’s easy to maintain with the recompose feature. It makes my job easier, as I can update and break the computers, and then rebuild them immediately.

It's basically setting up our training computers much more easily than before – once a user finishes, we can rebuild them again, and we don’t have to worry about security or viruses.

For what we are using it for, it's been very good. I see a lot of needs, but because our environment is constricted for now it meets our needs. If we can go into a cloud environment, then I see a lot of things I would need.

It's easy to deploy.

Very, very good. Reliable, so far I haven’t had any major issues or breakdowns.

I haven’t dealt with it since the product is so simple to use, and the deployment was not too complex. VMware support in general is very good.

We were using Citrix, and Horizon had better features and was easier to adapt. Our Citrix environment was getting old. Also, tech support was a key to change.

Very simple.

We only looked at VMware.

The ability to log in from anywhere is huge. Remote access is a third party product, but with them working together, it's is great.

I would say that it’s a more secure environment for desktops than a physical environment.

Right now, we use a third party product to do the VDI administration, which has been fairly good for us. We’re looking for one vendor to be able to manage all aspects of the stack to make it more efficient and stable.

Not so stable – there’s a lot of new issues that we have not experienced before on the physical desktop side that become challenges for us when trying to solve on the client side. This is really an infrastructure side product, so troubleshooting for us from the client side is more difficult, and we tend to need to escalate and get assistance from the infrastructure staff frequently.

We kind of halted everything simply because of several technical issues that needed to be resolved to make the old system more stable before we plan on rolling out more. We’re currently looking at going to a generation 2 VDI with vCenter 6 and Horizon View 6.

I've indirectly dealt with them. My staff have opened cases with VMware, and they’ve always been good to work with. However, sometimes our issues are in house, or caused by a third party, so it’s difficult to know how to divide and conquer, from where we sit at client support.

The CIO had a vision and wanted to push toward the anytime anywhere capability for our customers.

I wasn’t involved, but I’m sure they looked at Citrix.

We look at a products, the ability to respond quickly and completely are important. I would wait until the whole system matures a little more and comes together as far as where everything is under one vendor, so that it’s more stable and efficient. A few technical bugs need to be worked out, and we had some trouble with video display, and that could’ve been avoided.