In part 4 we installed and configured two RDSH servers and installed our applications.

In this installment we will configure an application farm for our two servers along with a corresponding pool for the applications we wish to publish.

Other posts in this series:

1. Design
2. Installing the Connection Servers and Composer
3. Creating the templates
4. Configuring the RDS hosts
5. Pool configuration
6. Application farm configuration
7. Load-balancing
8. Remote access

Create an Active Directory Group

Before we can configure our View farm and pool, we need to create a security group for our entitled users.

In Active Directory, create a group for the remote users who will be granted access to use the applications. In this example I have created a group called:

VDI_RemoteApplications_ProjectViso

It’s not very imaginative but it’s easy for another administrator to work out what it’s for.

Add the remote users to the group.

Create the farm

Using a web browser, connect to the View Connection Server admin page at https://view1.nl.mdb-lab.com/admin (substitute accordingly):

On the left under Resources click Farms, then click Add:

Click Manual Farm:

Click Next >

In the ID field, type RDS_farm. In the Allow users to choose protocol drop-down box, select No.

Click Next >

Highlight your RDS servers and click Next >

Click Finish.

Create the application pool

On the left under Catalog click Application Pools, then click Add:

Select the applications you wish to publish:

Click Next >

Ensure the Entitle users after this wizard finishes box is check and click Finish.

Click Add…

In the Name/User name field, type the name of the group you created earlier and click Find:

Select the group and click OK.

Click OK. You should also see the farm appear in the View Administrator on the main dashboard:

Test the configuration

Download and install a VMware View Horizon client from http://www.vmware.com/go/viewclients. Be sure to use version 3.0 or later, as earlier versions will not work with published applications.

Launch the client:

Double-click the View Connection server to connect:

Enter your credentials and click Login:

Double-click any of your published applications to verify they work as expected.

Further reading

If you’re interested in knowing more about load-balancing RDSH connections on VMware Horizon View 6.2, check out http://incloudnet.com/2016/02/20/rdsh-load-balancing by Sivaprasad. It is an excellent write-up.

Coming up

In this part we installed and configured an application farm and pool for publishing our applications to our remote users. We also tested that these applications are available internally. Later on in the series will enable remote users to access these externally also.

In part 7 we configure load-balancing to ensure we can still provision desktops and applications in the event of our View Connection Servers suffer an outage.