Horizon Cloud on Azure – Introduction [Part-1]

At this moment while writing this post VMware Horizon cloud having 2 offerings

• Horizon Cloud on Azure
• Horizon Cloud on IBM cloud (Hosted Infrastructure)

For this blog, we will concentrate on the Horizon Cloud on Azure.
Horizon cloud-primarily used to deliver desktops & apps using scalable deployment architecture.
By using horizon cloud one can leverage fast provisioning of desktops and apps in the Azure.

The deployment won’t take more than 2 hours if all the DNS & Ports pre-requisites are met.

The administrator can manage the environment from one console with respect to Horizon Cloud

Before starting with deployments, one should know the key components of this service.

• PODs
• Control Plane
• Gateway
• Horizon Agent
• Horizon Client
• App Volumes
• Management VM
• Jumpbox

With respect to Azure

• Load Balancer
• vNET
• Resource Group
• Subscription
• Service Principal
• Resource Providers
• Service Endpoints
• Virtual Machines
• Active Directory & DNS

PODs: – In the Horizon cloud every deployment is called a POD and a POD consists of Management VM’s, UAG’s, VDI’s and etc.

Control Plane: – One location to manage the entire deployment, in other words, a central place/location to perform all administrative tasks.

Gateway: – These are VMware UAG’s used for secure remote access to the environment

Horizon Agent: – An agent installed in Guest Operating system (Windows/Linux) used for VDI connectivity and management from Horizon POD’s

Horizon Client: – Installed on Client machine used for accessing the remote desktop or applications

App Volumes: – Application delivery system used to deliver & manage apps dynamically

Management VM: – A Linux based appliance used for creating, managing and brokering VDI’s and apps

Jumpbox:- A Linux-based VM created and used for temporary purposes at the time of deployment and upgrades.

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Load Balancer: – A Layer-4 Load balancer used for high-availability and distributing traffic. Horizon Cloud deployments mostly uses Basic load balancers

vNET:- A representation of Network with subnets and etc

Resource Group: – Container where all the related resources are present

Subscription: – Used to provision resources in Azure and all the components mentioned in the article reside in this.

Service Principal: – Like a service account used to connect your subscription

Resource Provider: – Used for creating various resources in the subscription

and etc