Federated Architecture for Microsoft Azure: Download and Deploy the Horizon Edge Gateway

You can download and deploy the Horizon Edge Gateway into your Horizon 8 federated deployment in Microsoft Azure to pair with Horizon Cloud.

Download and deploy the Horizon Edge Gateway appliance for an Edge deployment that use federated architecture for Microsoft Azure AVS solution. In the federated architecture, you must deploy Horizon Edge Gateway into the native Microsoft Azure infrastructure within your edges's environment.

The following is a high-level overview of the steps required to deploy Horizon Edge Gateway into the native Azure infrastructure within your pod's environment:

• Download the Horizon Edge Gateway VHD file.
• Create an Azure storage container and upload the appliance VHD to that storage container.
• Create a virtual machine (VM) image from the uploaded VHD.
• Create the Horizon Edge Gateway VM from the VM image.

Prerequisites

You must meet the following prerequisites before continuing.

• Verify that you meet the Horizon Edge Gateway-related prerequisites described in Getting Started with a Horizon 8 Edge Deployment.

• Verify that you meet the conditions described in Make Appropriate Destination URLs Reachable to Deploy a Horizon Edge Gateway in a Horizon 8 Environment for using a Horizon Edge Gateway to pair a Horizon 8 pod with Horizon Cloud.

• Verify that you are using the appropriate version of the Horizon Edge Gateway. See the Omnissa Product Interoperability Matrix.

• The Horizon Edge Gateway virtual appliance must reach the Internet to communicate with to the Horizon Cloud control plane. If your environment requires use of a proxy server and proxy configuration for deployed appliances to reach the internet, verify that you have reviewed the proxy-related information, known limitations, and known issues when using proxy settings with the Horizon Edge Gateway appliance.

  Note: Update the proxy configuration in the Edge.

  /opt/horizon/bin/configure-edge-gateway.sh --configure-proxy --proxy-host 127.0.0.1 --proxy-port 3128 --proxy-username 'exampleUsername' --proxy-password 'examplePassword'
  
  

  To explore more options, run the script with -h option as shown below:

  /opt/horizon/bin/configure-edge-gateway.sh -h
  

• To use a proxy while pairing edge using configure-edge-gateway.sh script, you must first run the following command, specifying as true when ProxySSL is enabled and otherwise specifying as false:

  /opt/horizon/bin/configure-edge-gateway.sh -p 'Pairing_Code' -x -i 'IP_or FQDN_of Proxy' -r 'Proxy_Port' -m 'Proxy_User_Name' -a 'Proxy_Password' -s 'true_or_false'
  

Procedure

1. Download the Horizon Edge Gateway disk image by using the step to obtain the Horizon Edge Gateway Appliance binary in the middle of the procedure on page Add and Deploy a Horizon 8 Edge. Respond to all onscreen prompts.

   The Horizon Edge Gateway disk image/appliance is available as a VHD file. Download the VHD file to your local system as specified.

   Note: Download the latest version of the Horizon Edge Gateway disk image. We recommend that you use the latest version of the Edge Gateway appliance. For version information, see the Omnissa Product Interoperability Matrix.

   Save the downloaded binary to a location from which you will deploy it into the desired virtualization platform and then return to this step sequence to continue the required pairing process.

   Note: The following features and services are supported for Horizon pods in AVS when paired with Horizon Edge Gateway:

   • Licensing
   • Monitoring Before uploading the disk image file to your AVS environment, you must first create an Azure storage container and share it using a shared access signature.

2. In the Azure portal, navigate to your storage account and create a storage container for the VHD file. For more information, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-account-overview.

   During the creation of the shared access signature, a SAS token is generated. You must construct a storage account URL for the disk image file by appending the SAS token to the storage container URL.

   1. Open the storage container by navigating to Storage Account > Properties > URL. Take note of the storage container URL for the next steps.

   2. Create a shared access signature. Navigate to Storage Account > Shared access signature > Select Resource types and Generate SAS and Connection String. Take note of the generated SAS token for the next steps.

   3. Construct the storage account URL using this format:

      <StorageContainerPath>/EdgeDiskImageName.vhd<SAS-Token>

      The following is an example of a storage account URL:

      https://azurestorage1.blob.core.windows.net/horizon/edge-gw-2.3.3.0-22720582.azure.vhd.zip?sv=2020-01-01&ss=bfqt&srt=sco&sp=rwdlapx&se=2020-01-01T12:00:00Z&st=2020-01-01T06:00:00Z&spr=https&sig=dUPul74l4K0ah%2FdoCpaTTjY4t2Js8kBY%3D
      

3. Upload the disk image file to the storage account URL that you created.

   1. Download and install the AzCopy utility on the local system where you extracted the VHD file containing the Horizon Edge Gateway disk image.

      For more information about the AzCopy utility, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-use-azcopy-v10.

   2. To upload the VHD file, run the following command in the AzCopy utility:

      azcopy cp <Path to extracted VHD file> “<StorageAccountURL>” --blob-type PageBlob

      The following shows an example of an upload command issued from a local Windows computer:

      azcopy cp c:\edge-gw-2.3.3.0-22720582.azure.vhd.zip "https://azurestorage1.blob.core.windows.net/horizon/edge-gw-2.3.3.0-22720582.azure.vhd?sv=2020-01-01&ss=bfqt&srt=sco&sp=rwdlapx&se=2020-01-01T12:00:00Z&st=2020-01-01T06:00:00Z&spr=https&sig=dUPul74l4K0ah%2FdoCpaTTjY4t2Js8kBY%3D" --blob-type PageBlob
      

4. Create a virtual machine (VM) image from the uploaded VHD file.

   1. In the Azure portal, navigate to Images and create a new VM image. Enter a name for the image, and specify the target location and resource group.

   2. Specify the following options:

      • Set the OS type option to Linux.
      • Set the VM generation option to Gen1.

   3. For the Storage blob, browse to the storage account and container that you created, and select the VHD file that you uploaded.

   4. Click Create to create the VM image from the VHD file.

5. Deploy the Horizon Edge Gateway appliance by creating the appliance VM from the VM image.

   1. In the Azure portal, open the VM image that you created in the previous step. Click Create VM.

   2. Specify the following settings:

      • Enter a name for the new VM. This will be the hostname of the Horizon Edge Gateway appliance.
      • For VM Sizing, see Make Appropriate Destination URLs Reachable to Deploy a Horizon Edge Gateway in a Horizon 8 Environment

   3. For the Administrator account, specify ccadmin as the user name. You must create this ccadmin user account in order to allow SSH access to the appliance.

   4. For SSH Access, specify the SSH Public Key authentication method.

      Note: Both SSH Public Key and Password authentication methods are supported. However, SSH Public Key provides stronger security and is the preferred method.

   5. For Firewall settings, configure the following ports:

      • Port 443 for HTTPS
      • Port 22 for SSH If you intend to configure a firewall and proxy server for the appliance, you must also configure the appliance to allow certain public URLs.

   6. For Network settings, specify a public IP Address allocation if you need to allow access to appliance over a public network. Also, specify the public inbound ports for HTTPS and SSH.

   7. Navigate to VM Properties and take note of the IP address and FQDN of the appliance VM. You will need this information later to access the browser-based Horizon Edge Gateway configuration portal.

6. If your environment requires use of an HTTP proxy server for your virtual appliances to access the Internet, configure proxy-related settings for the appliance as described in the Prerequisites section of this topic.

7. Allow for SSH access to the Horizon Edge Gateway by using a command line interface. For related information, see Enable SSH Access for Horizon Edge.

8. If you want to use a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for the Horizon Edge Gateway appliance and resolve the host name, create a forward and reverse lookup record in your DNS server that maps that FQDN to the Horizon Edge Gateway virtual appliance's static IP.

9. SSH to the Horizon Edge Gateway VM Microsoft Azure instance.

For related information, see [Enable SSH Access for Horizon Edge](EnableSSHAccessforHorizonEdge.md). Also see the Microsoft Azure documentation for details about connecting to your instance. We recommend SSH to allow copy-paste of the pairing key.

11. Run a pair edge script using the following command format, where pairing_code is the pairing code that you copied from the 6. Deploy and Pair Horizon Edge Gateway user interface page described in Add and Deploy a Horizon 8 Edge.

    sudo su -
    /opt/horizon/bin/configure-edge-gateway.sh -p <pairing_code>
    

12. To improve security, consider deactivating SSH when you have completed these steps.

13. Go back to the Horizon Universal Console to complete the configuration of the Horizon Connection Server detail. See Add and Deploy a Horizon 8 Edge.