VMware Horizon 8: Skills for Virtual Desktop Management

This three-day, hands-on course gives you the skills to deliver virtual desktops and applications through a single virtual desktop infrastructure platform. This course builds your skills in configuring and managing VMware Horizon® 8 through a combination of lecture and hands-on labs. You learn how to configure and deploy pools of virtual machines and how to provide a customized desktop environment to end-users.

Product Alignment

• VMware Horizon 8 V2006

Customers attending this course should have, at a minimum, the following VMware infrastructure skills:

• Use VMware vSphere® Web Client to view the state of virtual machines, datastores, and networks
• Open a virtual machine console on VMware vCenter Server® and access the guest operating system

Attendees should also have the following Microsoft Windows system administration experience:

• Configure Active Directory services, including DNS, DHCP, and time synchronization
• Restrict user activities by implementing Group Policy objects
• Configure Windows systems to enable Remote Desktop Connections
• Build an ODBC connection to an SQL Server database

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Recognize the features and benefits of Horizon
• Use VMware vSphere® to create VMs to be used as desktops for Horizon
• Create and optimize Windows VMs to create Horizon desktops
• Install and configure Horizon Agent on Horizon desktop
• Configure and manage the VMware Horizon® Client™ systems and connect the client to a VMware Horizon desktop
• Configure, manage, and entitle desktop pools of full VMs
• Configure, manage, and entitle pools of instant-clone desktops
• Create and use Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and application pools
• Monitor the Horizon environment using Horizon Console Dashboard and Horizon Help Desk Tool

Certification

VMware Horizon 8: Skills for Virtual Desktop Management is the first half of a two-course requirement for the following certification:

• VMware Certified Professional – Desktop and Mobility 2020 (VCP-DTM 2020).

VMware Horizon 8: Infrastructure Administration satisfies the second requirement. The courses are also available as a single, bundled offering, VMware Horizon 8: Deploy and Manage, which meets the certification requirement on its own.

Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

Introduction to VMware Horizon

• Recognize the features and benefits of Horizon
• Describe the conceptual and logical architecture of Horizon

Introduction to Use Case

• Define a use case for your virtual desktop and application infrastructure
• Convert customer requirements to use-case attributes

vSphere for Horizon 8

• Explain basic virtualization concepts
• Use VMware vSphere® Client™ to access your vCenter Server system and VMware ESXi™ hosts
• Create, provision, and remove a virtual machine

VMware Horizon Desktops

• Create a Windows and a Linux virtual machine using vSphere
• Optimize and prepare Windows and Linux virtual machines to set up Horizon desktop VMs

VMware Horizon Agents

• Outline the configuration choices when installing Horizon Agent on Windows and Linux virtual machines
• Create a gold master for Windows Horizon desktops

VMware Horizon Pools

• Identify the steps to set up a template for desktop pool deployment
• List the steps to add desktops to the VMware Horizon® Connection Server™ inventory
• Compare dedicated-assignment and floating-assignment pools
• Outline the steps to create an automated pool
• Define user entitlement
• Explain the hierarchy of global, pool-level, and user-level policies

VMware Horizon Client Options

• Describe the different clients and their benefits
• Access Horizon desktop using various Horizon clients and HTML
• Configure integrated printing, USB redirection, and the shared folders option
• Configure session collaboration and media optimization for Microsoft Teams

Creating and Managing Instant-Clone Desktop Pools

• List the advantages of instant clones
• Explain the provisioning technology used for instant clone desktop pools
• Set up an automated pool of instant clones
• Push updated images to instant clone desktop pools

Creating RDS Desktop and Application Pools

• Explain the difference between an RDS desktop pool and an automated pool
• Compare and contrast an RDS session host pool, a farm, and an application pool
• Create an RDS desktop pool and an application pool
• Access RDS desktops and application from Horizon Client
• Use the instant clone technology to automate the build-out of RDSH farms
• Configure load-balancing for RDSHs on a farm

Monitoring VMware Horizon

• Monitor the status of the Horizon components using the Horizon Administrator console dashboard
• Monitor desktop sessions using the HelpDesk tool