Omnissa Horizon 8 Release Notes

With Horizon 8, IT departments can run remote desktops and applications in the data center and deliver these desktops and applications to employees. End users gain a familiar, personalized environment accessible from any number of devices, anywhere within the enterprise or home. Administrators gain control, efficiency and security by centralizing data in the data center.

Important Notes

• The Horizon 2609 Agent is supported with both the 2603 ESB Server and the 2609 Server versions. See Compatibility Matrix for Various Versions of Horizon 8 Components for more details.

• For customers running Horizon 8 2512 with Nutanix automated pools or farms: A pairing mechanism change in 2603 requires that Connection Servers and Agents must both be updated to 2603 or later for ongoing provisioning operations to work. To prepare your environment for limited backward compatibility, see KB article 6001315. Does not apply if you have already upgraded to 2512.1 or later.

• Horizon 8 is not supported with vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7, which are both past the end of General Support. Horizon 8 Instant Clones are incompatible with these vSphere versions, and you must upgrade to vSphere 7.0 or later before upgrading to Horizon 8 to use Instant Clones.

What's New

Support for Red Hat OpenShift – Limited Availability

Horizon 8 support for Red Hat OpenShift is now in Limited Availability (LA) as part of the Horizon 8 2609 release. Limited Availability (LA) is a phase of our software release cycle that means the Horizon 8 support for Red Hat OpenShift is a production-ready feature that is fully supported by Omnissa and ready for customer consumption by select, qualified customers. It is a step on the path towards General Availability, and as it is fully supported by Omnissa it can be used for production environments.

Administrators can deploy Horizon 8 infrastructure on Red Hat OpenShift, including Connection Server, Unified Access Gateway, and Edge appliances, with automated and manual desktop pools. If you are a current Omnissa customer and you would like to request access to this feature, contact your sales representative or partner. If you are not a current Omnissa customer and you would like to request access to this feature, contact GetHorizon8onOpenShiftLA@omnissa.com

Horizon Delegate - Limited Availability

Horizon Delegate is an AI agent that runs multi-step tasks on a user’s behalf inside their Horizon virtual desktop. Users give it tasks through a chat interface built into the Horizon Client. The agent works with the user’s own identity, profile tokens and network entitlements. If you are a current Omnissa customer and you would like to request access to this feature, contact your sales representative or partner.

• Supported platforms: Horizon 8 on vSphere and Horizon Cloud on Azure.
• Supported desktops: Windows single-session and multi-session desktops.
• Supported client: Horizon Web Client 2609 and later. Other Horizon Clients are not supported yet.
• AI service: GitHub Copilot is the only supported AI agent. You need your own GitHub Copilot enterprise seats and must assign them to your users (Bring Your Own License).
• Licensing: All Horizon licenses support Horizon Delegate.
• No GPU needed: Horizon Delegate runs as an autonomous AI agent natively inside a user's secure VDI guest session.
• No End-User Endpoint GPU Needed: Because you interact with the agent using a lightweight text/chat interface directly built into the Horizon Client, endpoint devices (like a thin client, standard office laptop, or even an iPhone) require no GPU or processing power.
• No Guest VM vGPU Needed for the Agent:  GitHub Copilot processes all AI requests on its cloud-hosted servers. The agent itself does not run local LLM inference inside the Windows guest virtual machine. Instead, it is an orchestration agent. It handles multi-step workflows, runs background tasks, and processes commands. The foundational language model processing is still handled by a secure backend, meaning your VDI desktop pools do not need expensive NVIDIA vGPUs just to host the Delegate. Standard supported virtual CPUs (vCPUs) are completely adequate.
• Admin control: You turn Horizon Delegate on for individual pools or pool groups.
• Chat history: Chat history is saved in the user’s local profile.

Limitations

• Third-party or local AI models (such as OpenAI standalone, Anthropic Claude or Google Gemini) are not supported.
• Multi-session app mode and Linux desktops are not supported.
• Horizon Delegate cannot get past MFA or conditional access prompts while a task runs in the background.
• If a non-persistent desktop is refreshed unexpectedly or its pool is reset, any running tasks stop immediately. For long-running tasks, use persistent desktops and do not apply a log-off-after-disconnect policy.

Horizon Connection Server

• Horizon Connection Server now exposes server-side data to power the Process Manager feature within the Horizon Client, including session instance ID, application/desktop name, file or window name, and health status with a feature capability flag for administrative control.

• The Omnissa Horizon Advisor tool now supports installing, upgrading, and running pre-checks for Horizon Connection Server, Replica Server, and Enrollment Server, with telemetry data collection.

• Horizon Connection Server now supports federation-level TLS version and cipher suite settings for Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA) inter-pod communication. These settings are stored in Global LDAP and replicate to every Connection Server in the federation, preventing CPA connectivity problems caused by different TLS or cipher suite configurations on different pods.

Horizon Console

• Administrators can now configure custom certificate lifetimes for vdm.ec and vdm.enc certificates directly from the Horizon Console, using REST APIs available starting with this release.

• The Horizon Admin Console now supports SAML 2.0 authentication with enterprise Identity Provider integration (Okta, PingFederate, Microsoft Entra ID, Secret Double Octopus), supporting both SP-initiated and IdP-initiated flows with per-POD or shared-IdP topology and a mandatory break-glass access mechanism.

• Horizon 8 application pools now support "Cloud Managed" and "Cloud Assigned" flags for Universal Broker integration, achieving feature parity with desktop pools. Entitlement management for Cloud Managed application pools transfers to the Horizon Universal Console.

• The Horizon Admin Console now displays security advisory notifications. Advisories cover UAG, the Horizon Agent, and the Connection Server.

• The Horizon Console now provides certificate management for SAML signing and encryption certificates, allowing administrators to view details, monitor expiration dates, and rotate certificates from a centralized interface.

• Horizon Console now features inline, column-level filtering across all data grids, replacing the previous modal-based Advanced Filter and free-text search. This change reduces the number of clicks required for multi-condition queries and provides a more responsive, industry-standard filtering experience. The update also resolves sorting on previously unsortable grid columns.

Horizon Agent for Linux

• The "Automatically Synchronize the keypad, scroll and caps lock keys" feature is now supported for the Linux Agent, synchronizing key states between the client endpoint and the Linux desktop session. Scroll Lock synchronization is not effective on GNOME-based Linux agents.

• Client drive redirection on Horizon Agent for Linux now caches directory listings, substantially improving folder-browsing responsiveness when connecting from Horizon Client for Windows. Caching is active by default and can be deactivated with the cdrserver.FolderCacheDisabled option.

• The VHCI driver for USB redirection on the Horizon Linux Agent now includes DKMS integration, eliminating manual build steps and custom patching and automatically recompiling the driver when the Linux kernel is updated, simplifying installation and maintenance.

• Users can now copy-paste clipboard images (screenshots, charts, and other visual content) between Windows/Mac Horizon Clients into Linux VDI sessions, extending clipboard redirection to support image data alongside existing text.

Horizon Agent for Windows

• Smart card SSO with ECDSA certificates: Horizon Agent for Windows now supports smart card single sign-on with ECDSA certificates. Horizon Agent now uses the Windows CNG Key Storage Provider (KSP) by default for both RSA and ECDSA smart card certificates. Smart card minidrivers that support only the legacy CryptoAPI provider (CSP) can still use the CSP path by setting UseCryptoAPI, but ECDSA certificates require the KSP path. For more information, see Using ECDSA Smart Card Certificates.

Horizon Agent for Mac

• Horizon Agent for Mac is now generally available.

Horizon 8 on Nutanix

• Nutanix pools using on-demand provisioning will now shrink to honour pool minimum and spare parameters when needed. Previously, unassigned VMs were not automatically deleted.

• Individual Nutanix pools and farms now support selection of multiple Networks, reducing the number of pools and farms that need to be created when smaller subnets are in use.

• Nutanix pools are now supported with Horizon kiosk mode.

• Nutanix capacity providers now support launching desktops and published applications through Omnissa Access On-premises, alongside existing Omnissa Access Cloud support.

Remote Desktop Features

• Horizon now supports client-side clipboard controls, allowing administrators to enforce clipboard redirection policies on the Horizon Client endpoint in addition to the Horizon Agent side for environments with strict security requirements where policies must be enforced on the client to prevent override from the virtual desktop zone. This feature is disabled by default and is enabled through a registry setting on the client.

• The Blast networking components now support ECDSA certificates for TLS identity verification.

• Horizon now supports a separate recording playback port, allowing administrators to use different ports for session recording and playback (previously both used port 9443), enabling tighter firewall policies in security-sensitive environments where recording servers must be isolated from playback access.

• Blast Extreme now auto-discovers the largest UDP packet size the network supports (up to 1500 bytes), reducing disconnects on networks with a lower MTU and improving performance. It is on by default and can be disabled via a registry value or config setting.

Windows OS Optimization Tool for Omnissa Horizon

• The Omnissa OS Optimization Tool (OSOT) has been updated with new optimizations for Windows 11 23H2 and later, including the new Autologger Optimization Category, which disables Windows Event Tracing (ETW) autologgers that run continuously and consume disk I/O, CPU, and memory.

Resolved Issues

The numbers included before the resolved issues refer to the issues logged in the Omnissa internal issue tracking system.

• HZN-11610: After an upgrade to Horizon 2606, setting up a True SSO connection failed with the error "The enrollment server is not online," even though the Enrollment Server service was running.
• HZN-11491: Connection Server sometimes returned HTTP 500 errors to load balancer health checks that probe /favicon.ico.
• HZN-11416: When you picked a new golden image for an instant-clone farm, the list was empty unless you selected Show all golden images.
• HZN-11039: After a user shut down a physical machine in a manual desktop pool and then disconnected, Connection Server sent a Wake-on-LAN packet that turned the machine back on.
• HZN-10839: When smart card authentication was set to Required and username hints were turned on, users weren't asked for a username hint.
• HZN-10810: After the monthly Windows updates were installed, the Horizon Console on a Connection Server couldn't be reached.
• HZN-10753: Connection Server memory use kept growing over several days or weeks.
• HZN-10752: Thin client sessions were forcibly disconnected when a Connection Server was restarted while an image update was pending.
• HZN-10746: Instant-clone desktop pool creation failed when the Cores per Socket field didn't fill in automatically and was left empty.
• HZN-10725: The Farms, Applications, and Desktops pages in the Horizon Console took several minutes to load after an upgrade.
• HZN-10648: No Horizon adapter information appeared, so administrators couldn't see possible outages.
• HZN-10564: Connection Server sent several application verification requests to Horizon Agent at almost the same moment.
• HZN-10474: The client time zone didn't carry over from Ubuntu-based Horizon Client and thin client devices to Windows virtual desktops.
• HZN-9935: In Cloud Pod Architecture environments, encryption key rotations could run at the same time, so launches failed now and then through one Connection Server.
• HZN-9029: HTML Access connections failed when Connection Server was set up as a SAML service provider for Okta.
• HZN-6082: Log bundle files collected with support.bat contained garbled characters on systems set to a multibyte language such as Japanese.
• VCART-15265: Horizon desktop and application connections had intermittent black screens on connect, especially for users with NVIDIA GPUs.

Known Issues

The numbers included before the known issues refer to the issues logged in the Omnissa internal issue tracking system.

Before upgrading to this release, please review the information in KB 6000681 and Upgrading to Omnissa Horizon 8 2412 and Later.

Horizon Connection Server

• HZN-11875: After the upgrade of connection server to 2603 or later, users are unable to logon with the error message "Incorrect username or password" after launching the VDI.

  Workaround: At the desktop logon prompt, enter the username as DOMAIN\account name and the password.

• HZN-11399: When provisioning or refreshing instant-clone desktops at scale (above roughly 1,000 desktops) on vSphere 9.1, a subset of desktops may get stuck at the boot screen or enter an error state.

  Workaround: None.

• HZN-8048: After restarting a Connection Server, the error "Cannot look up datacenter from Virtual Center." is displayed in the Horizon Console.

  Workaround: See KB article 6001328.

• HZN-7443: If a VM is stuck in Customization state, delete the VM from Horizon Admin Console or Horizon REST API. Horizon will then recreate the VM.

• When there are more than ten global dedicated entitlements available to a user, the machine host name will sometimes not be visible in global entitlements if the "Show assigned host name" option is enabled.

• Scheduling an upgrade for an RDS host may complete successfully, but the upgrade itself can fail when the scheduled time is reached.

  Workaround: See KB article 6000992.

• If Horizon Events Database is hosted by an instance of Microsoft SQL Server (any version), do not disable TLS 1.2. This connection cannot be made over TLS 1.3.

• HZN-2542: When changing the browser locale and refreshing the Horizon Console UI, error alerts fail to display for the newly selected language.

  Workaround: Log in to Horizon Console in a new browser tab.

• HZN-19589: CPA join fails for a pod if the “Default First Site” is removed from the federation/pod it joins.

  Workaround: Perform the join after setting pae-LDAPSchemaVersion to a lower value than the current one under CN=common,OU=Global,OU=Properties,DC=vdiglobal,DC=horizon,DC=internal

• HZEC-2336: View API consumers like the MP4H Adapter invoke MachineDetailsView. This API fails intermittently with user data not found error.

  Workaround: None

• HZEC-2873: Number of issues reported for ESXi Hosts in the dashboard summary may not match with number of issues reported in the dedicated ESXi Host issues section in the dashboard.

  If NVIDIA vGPU support detects a mismatch with the supported vGPUs for the given host, the issue count should be incremented but the count may not display in the UI.

  Workaround: View the warnings in Dashboard > System Health > View > vSphere > ESX Hosts.

Horizon Agent for Windows

• HZN-11737: Creating a sysprep farm from a Windows Server 2025 golden image fails with the error “Timed out while waiting for VM to shut down” when the RDSH agent master virtual machine isn’t joined to a domain.

  Workaround: Join the RDSH agent master virtual machine to the Active Directory domain before creating the sysprep farm.

• HZN-8997: The Admin UI displays an incorrect GOS type for the Agent VM following the upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11.

  Workaround: Remove the machine from the Admin UI (under Registered Machines > Others), then reinstall the unmanaged agent. After completing these steps, the Admin UI correctly displays the operating system as Windows 11.

• When a QoS policy is configured on the Horizon Agent, the Bypass Blast Service TCP proxy feature is disabled.

Workaround: None.

Horizon Agent for Linux

• VCART-15846: In multiple-session mode with Session Recording Agent for Linux installed, 2 (or more) simultaneous sessions from 2 (or more) logged in users are not recorded. Only one of the sessions is recorded.

  Workaround: None.

• VCART-9623: The Collaboration window might not appear after you connect to a remote desktop and click the Collaboration UI icon.

  Workaround: Resize the desktop window or reconnect to the remote desktop.

• VCART-9624: The Linux agent's keyboard layout and locale do not synchronize with the client if the Keyboard Input Method System is set to fcitx.

  Workaround: Set the Keyboard Input Method System to iBus.

• VCART-9625: If you configure two monitors with different resolutions, and the resolution of the primary screen is lower than that of the secondary screen, you might not be able to move the mouse or drag application windows to certain areas of the screen.

  Workaround: Make sure that the primary monitor's resolution is at least as large as the secondary monitor's.

• VCART-9626: If a client user minimizes the window of a Linux published application using the Minimize command and then selects the Maximize command, the window is restored to its previous size instead of changing to full-screen mode as expected.

  Workaround: To change to full-screen mode, select the Maximize command again.

• VCART-9627: Linux published applications do not support using the window taskbar to divide the work area in a multiple-monitor display. For example, suppose a client user has two monitors arranged side by side. If the user moves the taskbar to the right side of the left monitor's screen or the left side of the right monitor's screen, the work area is divided into two parts. However, if the user then maximizes the application window, the window is displayed incorrectly in relation to the taskbar.

• VCART-9638: When connecting to a Linux published application from Horizon Client for Mac, the application window is displayed with square corners instead of rounded corners.

• VCART-9639: If a client user leaves a nonmodal dialog box open in a Linux published application and then makes active a native application on the client system, part of the dialog box will appear to be missing when the user returns to the published application.

• VCART-9640: If the client user minimizes a Linux published application window or brings another application in front of the published application window, the taskbar fails to display the thumbnail preview of the published application window. Hovering over the published application icon in the taskbar displays a blank thumbnail instead of the contents of the published application window.

• VCART-9641: Linux published applications do not support the Aero Snap feature on Windows client systems. Users connecting to a Linux published application from Horizon Client for Windows do not have the capability to snap or fix windows to the edges of the computer screen using the keyboard or mouse.

• VCART-9642: Linux published applications do not support the jump list feature on Windows client systems. If a user connects to a Linux published application from Horizon Client for Windows and right-clicks the taskbar icon for the application, no jump list is displayed.

• VCART-9643: Due to a limitation in the work area, Linux published application windows cannot be moved partially off the edge of the client's screen or work area. If the user attempts to move a published application window past the edge of the screen, the window will bounce back inside the screen's boundaries.

• VCART-9644: If the client user opens a modal dialog box from a Linux published application, that dialog box might not appear in front of native windows.

• VCART-9645: When connecting to a published application from a Windows client system, there are some differences between the context menus of the Windows taskbar and the application window's title bar. Shift + right-clicking the application icon in the Windows taskbar displays a menu with the items: Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize, Close. Right-clicking the application window's title bar displays a menu with the items: Minimize, Maximize, Move, Resize, Close.

• VCART-9646: Published applications do not support the Move and Size context commands for the taskbar on Windows client systems. When a user Shift + right-clicks the published application icon in the Windows taskbar, Move and Size appear in the menu but neither command has any effect if selected.

• VCART-9647: Published applications do not support the Size command from the application window's context menu. When a user right-clicks the title bar of the application window, Size appears in the menu of commands but has no effect if selected.

• VCART-9648: When a user opens multiple session windows for the same published application on a Windows client system, the Cascade all windows command has no effect.

• VCART-9649: If a Windows client user with a dual monitor configuration maximizes a published application in the lower-resolution monitor's work area, the Windows taskbar turns black.

• VCART-9650: After publishing a LibreOffice application as an application pool, duplicate LibreOffice icons might appear in Horizon Client.

  Workaround: From the Connection Server, manually assign the icon for the LibreOffice application.

• VCART-9651: Linux published applications do not support the Multi-Session Mode option in the application pool settings in Horizon Console.

• VCART-9652: When connected to a Linux published application, if the user opens a dialog box related to user account controls (such as when editing firewall settings), the desktop will not show.

• VCART-9653: Horizon Agent for Linux does not support session stealing between published desktops and published applications. For example, if a user has opened a published desktop session and then attempts to open an application session based on the same farm, the desktop session remains active and the application session is not established. Likewise, if the user has opened an application session and then attempts to open a published desktop session based on the same farm, the application session remains active and the desktop session is not established.

• VCART-9628: If a user types an entry into the Session Collaboration invitation text box and moves the cursor away from the text box, the original entry is cleared.

• VCART-9629: If a client user with a multi-monitor system opens a published application in seamless window mode, display problems might occur when moving the application window between monitors.

  Workaround: Shift + right-click the application icon in the client's task bar and select Maximize to enlarge and refresh the window display.

• VCART-9644: Display problems might occur when a client user opens published applications in seamless window mode on a multi-monitor system where some monitors have portrait orientation and other monitors have landscape orientation. If the user maximizes the application windows in all the monitors, the task bar appears black in the landscape monitors.

• VCART-9630: When client users copy content containing images in rich text format and then paste the content into an application on a remote Linux desktop, the images might be missing from the pasted content. This issue is caused by a limitation in certain third-party applications such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice, not by Horizon Agent for Linux.

  Workaround: Use a clipboard manager to retrieve the missing content from the clipboard.

• VCART-9632: The Enter Ctrl + Alt + Del control in Horizon Client does not take effect when connected to a RHEL 7.9 desktop with MATE desktop environment.

  Workaround: Use the default keyboard shortcut for logging out of a MATE desktop. Or, define a custom keyboard shortcut for logging out.

• VCART-9633: A small blank recording (2-3 kb) is sometimes created when a blast session running on Linux agent is being recorded by the Horizon Recording solution.

  Workaround: None. There is no adverse effect on the functionality except that a small recording can be seen in the recordings page for some of the sessions during a fresh logon.

Horizon Agent for Mac

• VCART-15550: After the Mac Agent 2609 installer completes successfully, it does not display the prompt “Do you want to move the installer to the Trash?”.

  Workaround: Manually eject the installer disk image and delete the installer file.

Horizon Client

This section describes problems that end users might encounter when using Horizon Client or Horizon Web Client to connect to remote desktops and applications. For problems that occur only in a specific Horizon Client platform, see the Horizon Client release notes in the Omnissa Product Documentation portal.

• VCART-9656: When you connect to a Linux desktop, some keyboard inputs do not work. For example, if you are using a non-English IME on both the client device and the remote desktop, some non-English keys are not displayed correctly.

  Workaround: None.

• VCART-9655: When you use the Ambir Image Scan Pro 490i to perform a scan on a remote desktop or application, the dialog box always displays “Scanning…” and does not complete.

  Workaround: Perform a scan on the client. The client scan calibrates the scanner. After the calibrate operation is finished, save the calibration file and deploy it in ProgramData\AmbirTechnology\ImageScanPro490i.

• VCART-4245: HDR support for full screen mode is limited to a scenario where the selected monitor is the primary monitor.

  Workaround: None.

Windows OS Optimization Tool

• When the exported analysis report is exported to the same VM where you're running the Optimization Tool EXE, the report is auto-deleted after running the tool's Generalize task. Even though you'll still be able to view the report inside the Optimization Tool user interface, the exported report is deleted after Sysprep runs (Sysprep runs as part Generalize).

  Workaround: Export the analysis report to another location on the network instead of saving the report into the current user folders on the same VM. Because those user folders get deleted as part of Sysprep, if saved in those folders on the VM, the report is deleted during the Generalize run. If you specify to redirect the report to another location on the network, the report will be retained after running Generalize.

APIs

• HZN-3296: REST API ObjectGUIDs change after certain events, such as disaster recovery and pod rebuilding.

  Workaround: Do not rely on ObjectGUIDs as persistent identifiers. After an event such as disaster recovery and pod rebuilding, resync any third-party applications to the new ObjectGUIDs.

Nutanix

• Horizon provisioning tasks on Nutanix can result in orphaned category keys due to an underlying Nutanix Prism Central API issue (Nutanix reference ENG-819762).

  Workaround: Administrators should periodically manually delete any orphaned keys through the UI to maintain database consistency and ensure proper cleanup.

• HZN-10883: Loading golden images and image snapshots takes significantly longer in Horizon 8 2609 than in previous releases. Reported load times range from roughly 7 to 40 seconds, depending on the Prism environment. The delay occurs when images and snapshots are fetched during pool creation, when the image selection page loads, and after adding or editing of the pool.

  Workaround: None

• HZN-6730: Desktops are not able to refresh when the connection server is down and the replica server is up.

  Workaround: None

• HZN-7169: Farms can be created using the Windows 10 GI template.

  Workaround: None

OpenShift

• HZN-11722: When a virtual machine on a Nutanix or OpenShift provider crashes, Horizon Connection Server can report that machine as Agent Unreachable indefinitely. The Always Powered On power policy does not start the machine.

  Workaround: None

Horizon Advisor

• HZM-10760: Server requirement checks in remote mode: When prechecks are run remotely against a target server, the Static IP, OS Edition, OS Version, and Installed Features results reflect the machine running Horizon Advisor rather than the target server.

  Workaround: Run the precheck locally on the target server to get accurate results for these four checks.

Horizon 8 API

For the latest set of Horizon 8 APIs, see Omnissa Developer Portal and navigate to the current release in the drop down. Click on the Documentation tab for more details and examples on how to use the API.

Horizon Edge and Horizon Cloud Connector

Applicable to customers with Horizon Universal Subscription, Horizon Enterprise Plus Subscription, Horizon Standard Plus Subscription, Horizon Apps Universal Subscription, or Horizon Apps Standard Subscription.

The Horizon Edge is a required component for connecting Horizon 8 to Horizon Control Plane next-gen for subscription licensing enablement and additional control plane SaaS services.

The Horizon Cloud Connector virtual appliance is a required component for connecting Horizon 8 to the first-gen Horizon Control Plane for subscription licensing enablement and additional control plane services.

Horizon 8 Deployed on Public Cloud SDDCs

For a list of Horizon 8 features supported on Azure VMware Solution (AVS), see KB 80850.

For a list of Horizon 8 features supported on VMware Cloud on AWS, see KB 58539.

For a list of Horizon 8 features supported on Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE), see KB 81922.

For a list of Horizon 8 features supported on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, see KB 88202.

For a list of Horizon 8 features supported on Alibaba Cloud VMware Service (ACVS), see KB 92140.

Before You Begin

• Important note about installing VMware Tools: If you plan to install a version of VMware Tools downloaded from the product downloads page, rather than the default version provided with vSphere, make sure that the VMware Tools version is supported. To determine which VMware Tools versions are supported, go to the Omnissa Product Interoperability Matrix. (Supported versions: 11.1.0, 11.0.6, 10.3.22, 10.3.21). There are also performance issues with the 11.x versions of VMware Tools. For more information, see KB 78434.

• When you deploy an instant clone as a RDS host, do not reboot the RDS host directly from within the Windows Server OS. Instead, refresh the instant clone VM using the push image workflow.

• To use View Storage Accelerator in a vSphere environment, a desktop virtual machine must be 512GB or smaller. View Storage Accelerator is disabled on virtual machines that are larger than 512GB. Virtual machine size is defined by the total VMDK capacity. For example, one VMDK file might be 512GB or a set of VMDK files might total 512GB. This requirement also applies to virtual machines that were created in an earlier vSphere release and upgraded to vSphere 5.5.

• For best practices on using Carbon Black with Horizon 8, see KB 95512.

• Horizon 8 supports a maximum of 500 virtual machines per ESXi host when using vSAN 8 ESA datastore. The achievable maximum depends on the workload and specifics of the hardware. For information on all Horizon configuration maximums, see VMware Configuration Maximums.

Upgrade

Check the Omnissa Product Interoperability Matrix before upgrading your Horizon deployment. Note the following guidance:

• You can only upgrade to a version with a release date later than your current deployment.

• When upgrading from a non-ESB version to an ESB version, the target ESB version must be later that your current non-ESB release. For example, you cannot upgrade from Horizon 8 2203 (non-ESB) to Horizon 8 2111.1 (ESB) even though 2111.1 was released after 2203 (or you will lose features). You can only upgrade to Horizon 8 2212 or later versions.

• Important: Please allow for extra time and preparation when you upgrade from a VMware-branded Horizon version to an Omnissa-branded Horizon version. For more details, see KB 6000681 and Upgrading to Omnissa Horizon 8 2412 and Later.

Compatibility Notes

The table below contains specific compatibility information as well as links to information located elsewhere.

Use of Open Source

Horizon 8 uses several open-source software packages. For more information about what packages are used in this release, see Open source notices.

• Horizon Connection Server 2609 is built on the Apache Tomcat implementation of Jakarta EE, version 10.1.60 and on the BellSoft Liberica distribution of OpenJDK, version 21.0.11.0.1 (CPU).
• Horizon Agent for Linux 2609 and Horizon Agent for Windows 2609 use the BellSoft Liberica distribution of OpenJDK, 21.0.11.0.1 (CPU).

Documentation

Horizon 8 documentation is in the Omnissa Product Documentation portal.

Localized Content for Omnissa Docs

For details on Omnissa's localization strategy, see Announcing Omnissa Localization Support.

Support Contact Information

To receive support and to learn more about support policies, see Omnissa Customer Connect.

For information on filing a support request in Customer Connect and via Cloud Services Portal, see KB 6000005.