Horizon 8 Reviews

We use this solution for delivering virtual desktops and applications.

Currently, we are using version 2006 which has an older model of provisioning and there are some compatibility issues that we are going to solve in the coming months. The latest version is 2103. However, there is not much difference between 2006 and 2103 it is almost the same.

The small differences are in adjunct functionality and regarding the transference relationship between domains. 

The benefits of this solution are that it is modern and it works perfectly well with the rest of the VMware environments we have. Having this vertical integration is what matters to us as an organization and this solution excels in this area. You deploy it and it works without much hassle.

The multimedia playback is not very good and they could improve it by increasing the quality.

In an upcoming release, there could be more integration support for Linux and better Linux user profile management. This is a feature we use in the universities but most other normal businesses will not be interested in Linux. 

I have been using this solution for approximately six years.

95% of the features work without any issues and 5% of them have issues that are normally difficult to pinpoint. However, since these small issues can normally be corrected by support, this solution's stability rating is high.

We have 5,000 users on the system but only 200 of them are using it together at the university. Scalability was not ever an issue.

We have contacted technical support and they have been responsive.

The initial setup is a moderate level of difficulty.

We did the implementation of the solution.

In my organization, we use a lot of VMware solutions for vertical integration and have evaluated other solutions, such as Citrix.

I would have said this solution needs to improve in profile management a couple of years ago because VMware does not have profile management that works out of the box. However, this issue was solved by Microsoft by releasing a solution that works very well with VMware Horizon.

Those who are wanting to implement this solution should consider the Cloud offerings for VMware Horizon. There is a possibility it could cut the time for delivery and it is more scalable. You will not have scalability issues.

I rate VMware Horizon 7 an eight out of ten.

We're a payroll company and understandably security is pretty important for us. When a user takes a laptop home you have to manage encryption in case they lose it. With everything in our data center, there's no risk of lost data because everything is run in the VDI. That's our primary use case for this product. I'm a systems engineer and we are customers of VMware Horizon View.

This product is great for desktop management, particularly when it comes to all the upgrades. It enables you to update one golden image, save it and basically deploy it. Any user logging in will get that new DDI and you've only had to upgrade one machine. The other advantage is that because you're pushing out this image, it's a clone of the original so everybody has the same experience. That's not always the case when people use different laptops, adjusting and tweaking them. It makes management a lot easier. There's also the huge savings we've had with the pandemic because everybody had to work from home. Even if there weren't enough laptops to go around, almost everybody has a home computer. It was just a matter of installing Horizon on your home computer and connecting to the office using two factor authentication. They made it really simple.

I believe documentation could be improved. There's a product in the solution called DEM, which is for screening applications or importing settings into a particular app. In VDI machines your profile's replicated or just live-streamed from the supplier server. Things like Google Chrome, with all its different application settings and passwords and whatever, is stored in zip files that are extracted when you log in. Horizon works with this but documentation is lacking. The applications have changed so much, but the company doesn't seem to be keeping up with that. The product needs to be simplified, have more documentation, and some predefined applications so that users don't have to re-engineer things each time.

For an additional feature, it would be great if they had automatic replication of all the stored profiles so we're not having to use third party tools to do the replication of their users' profiles. It would mean that you can use it as a disaster recovery server, as well as just active-active across data centers.

I've been using this solution for five years. 

It's important to set it up correctly and maintain it properly. Once it's working, it's really stable.

This solution is scalable, we currently have around 300 users and about five people who take care of everything connected to the product, including maintenance upgrades and everything. We'll expand usage if the business grows. 

There are certain aspects of technical support that are good and you can get a quick response. At other times there are issues where the blame game kicks in and you have to wait for somebody to take ownership of the problem. They're generally okay. 

In this instance we were implementing in two data centers and introducing not only a VDI, but also replicating all the data from one place to the other. Deployment involved building Microsoft clustered file servers and setting up replication between those two file servers and then mirroring the configurations. It probably took us about six months but we were doing other things at the same time. If we'd focused only on that, I think it would probably have taken about a week or two. It depends how much effort is put in. 

We definitely have an ROI. Previously, we had to patch every single laptop which was a drastic pain. With everybody now working from home, that created a whole bunch of new challenges but with VMware everything's saved in our network so no matter what's happening on the home network it's not carrying over into our business.

The product requires a Microsoft license for the operating system, which is standard. If you want support and upgrades, you pay for that. 

This is a great product but it's a massive product and you can't do anything with Horizon View alone. It requires all the other products flying together with it. It's a very complex product and it takes a lot of time to become knowledgeable about it. It's crucial to have decent hardware before implementing this solution because it's fairly resource intensive. If this is new to you, be prepared for a fairly long project because there are so many moving pieces and it's fairly complex, and it requires having a lot of things in place before you can even begin.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for developer access within the company.

The solution's most valuable aspect is the VDI - the remote virtual desktop interface. We really enjoy using the remote desktop.

The solution can scale.

The product has been quite stable so far. The performance is very good.

The solution is quite expensive. They should work to lower the costs if possible.

The deployment of the product can sometimes be difficult. It would be ideal if the whole process was more simplistic.

There needs to be more documentation. If there was, it might help make the initial setup a bit easier. They need to provide users with more manuals.

The technical support could be more responsive.

I've been using the solution for about five years at this point. It's been a while. We have quite a bit of experience with it internally.

The product is quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The solution scales. A company could expand it if they needed to.

We have about 20 users on the solution currently.

We do not have plans to increase usage at this time.

Technical support could be better. They take too long to respond right now. We aren't quite satisfied with the level of support they provide to our organization.

We did previously use Hyper-V by Microsoft. We had issues with its performance and stability and decided to move to this product instead.

The initial setup is not always straightforward. It can be a bit complex, a bit difficult. We struggle with some aspects of the configuration which slows things down during the implementation. We have two companies and we've found that the configuration has been a real challenge for them.

In general, the deployment took us about two days to complete.

We have three people that handle the deployment and maintenance process.

We used a reseller that assisted us with the implementation. They were quite knowledgeable and it helped to have them during the process.

The solution is pricey. The cost of it is high.

That said, I do not have the full details on the exact cost to our organization.

We did look at a few other options before ultimately settling in with this product. I do not recall all of the names. The stability and the response to backups are what sold us on this product.

We are customers and end-users of the solution.

We're always using the latest version of the solution. For VMware, we're on version 7.7.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it at an eight out of ten overall. For the most part, it's worked well for us and the performance is quite good, however, I'd rank it higher if it had more documentation and manuals that could assist with configuration and the initial deployment.

We use this solution for virtual desktop infrastructure and remote desktop connections on client sites with 18 clients or end-user devices.

It is stable and easily scalable. 

The remote connection, bandwidth usage, and error connection can be improved. Working with the load balancer sites should also be improved. For example, with Horizon, we can use two clients with a one megabit connection, but with Citrix, we can use four or five clients with the same bandwidth through ICA protocol. VMware must improve remote connection, connection stability, and load balancing.

I have been using this solution for five or six years. 

VMware is stable. We don't need to switch after installation, but for one area, the connection stability is currently lower than other solutions. We tested it, and one connection from the load balancer or the firewall needs to be improved.

It is easily and quickly scalable and expandable. 

We are also Citrix Platinum partners. We are using Citrix solutions and desktop. When we create a project, we give our clients options and considerations between Citrix and VMWare. They choose after that.

For one building or two buildings that are nearby, or one local site, we prefer Horizon Seven. If end users are connected to VDI desktops or other Citrix services or if they are using a load balancer like NetScaler, for coming from outside to the inside of corporate, we are using Citrix VDI because of the ITA protocol.

The initial setup is quick and easy, but after that, you must configure user groups, machine groups, and delivery groups. It also requires some scripting and other tweaks, but the initial setup is easy for VMware Horizon.

The deployment duration depends on the number of users. For example, for 1,000 end users, you need redundancy servers for VMWare Horizon, and you need other servers for connecting to vCenter. Load balancing depends upon the client's sites. For example, for 10 users, I can make a connection locally in 45 minutes to one hour, but for 1,000 end users from different sites, it can take two to four days. If the complexity is high, it can take one month.

In terms of the staff required for deployment and maintenance, it depends on the end users and requirements on the customer site. I can complete installation myself, for example, of up to 100 users on one site. If more sites and more configurations are needs, it is a team job. It depends on the end users and customer expectations.

I would rate VMware Horizon 7 a seven out of ten. If it becomes stronger like the Citrix ICA protocol, it would easily be a ten.

Horizon actually has been working well in the current pandemic situation. Originally, we had clients deployed in our infrastructure. Now, once working from home or remote working has been imposed, we deployed a Unified Gateway. It's simply one more component of Horizon, and it allows us to give access over the public IP so that those people at home get the same environment itself as they work from their home without causing any user experience problems. There were no additional licenses required for that job either, which was nice.

I would love to see so they can actually allow the use of Linux, from a hosting environment as well as from a VDI client environment. If I can actually host Linux instances as VDIs with the same features as what I get on Windows and have all the key components, like the Composer, database, or the connection services, that would be ideal. Often, ransomware and attacks usually target Windows, therefore, if I'm on Linux, at least I'll have some level of comfort or a buffer against danger.

VMware Horizon was deployed around one and a half years ago in my infrastructure.

We do not have any problems with the stability part of it. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's not buggy and it doesn't have any glitches. It's reliable.

VMware is a hyper-converged infrastructure model. Therefore, for scaling it you just add more servers to it in the inputs. It's rather straightforward. 

We've had a couple of calls with technical support. They're very good, from what I have experienced. We are quite satisfied with their level of knowledge and responsiveness.

The initial setup is somewhat okay. They're not too complex. There are various components that have to be installed and configured, and therefore a little bit of expertise is required. It's not dead simple. You do need some background.

Ours was a smaller deployment and it's supposed to host around 800 different current virtual instances. Starting from the backend stack to going live, it took approximately two weeks overall.

It is more economical than purchasing each license individually. If you purchase vSphere Enterprise plus vSAN, then vROps, and then Horizon, it's going to be a large cost. If you do this logic, it will be very cheaper, because they did not charge us separately for the vSphere or vSAN or vROps with this. You buy the number of seats irrespective to how much hardware you run on, they will not charge you more. That's the benefit.

We aren't on the latest version of the solution. We're at minus one right now. The final upgrade has not been done due to the pandemic situation.

In our kind of environment, it's just more of a media use case, so we used it and it made sense. If you have variable workloads, not a uniform workload, then it might not go under the licensing for just VDIs, asVDIs specifically cover your operating system instances as well as uniform with the VDI clients. If it is a uniform VDI client, such as all Windows 10 systems for users to log in, like on host environment, or it's all a server farm, etc., for those kinds of environments, Horizon is a no brainer. 

A company should go for it. I'd recommend it. It is a good solution to work with.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. For the most part, we've been quite satisfied with the results.

I am a system engineer and this is one of the products that I assist people with by providing support.

The most valuable features are Instant Clones and AppStacks.

Sometimes when we log on, there are applications that are not visible.

Technical support is only average and can be improved.

In general, there are many things that can be improved.

I have been using VMware Horizon View for about three months.

As much as I have used this product, the stability looks good. We don't have many issues that require support.

I feel that Horizon is more for a small business, rather than a large organization.

In our organization with 250 users, it works fine but if you're talking about 10,000 to 15,000 users then I don't know whether it would support a scale at that size.

Technical support from VMware is all right, although I would not say that they're great. Overall, they are average.

I am much more familiar with Citrix and work with it regularly. I have only been working with Horizon View for fine-tuning. I also use a similar product from Microsoft.

Ranking these, I would say that Citrix is first with a mark of 80%, Microsoft is second with a mark of 60%, and VMware is third with a mark of 50%.

The installation process is really fast.

We use a team that sets up solutions and then moves on. They remain only for the deployment.

In my short experience, I would say that this is a really good product that can be installed quickly for a small scale organization with not many users.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We use the solution for deployed applications.

The solution’s stability and pricing could be improved.

I have been using VMware Horizon View for one and a half years.

The product is stable.

It will be difficult to manage or to scale if the deployment is complex.

We have the product countrywide.

We always use the tech support and health check. Everything is excellent.

The initial setup is complex. Depending on the project, it can take one year, one and a half year to deploy. We have to take a lot of things in the configuration.

We do the deployment in-house. We too have many vendors onboard like Dell.

VMware Horizon has been changing a lot in the past years. It is a good option. The company should adopt more technology as it went on cloud.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use VMware Horizon View for remote accessibility of all the legacy apps.

VMware Horizon View is an easy-to-use solution. VMware Horizon View allows us to access and manage any type of client.

The solution’s stability and initial setup could be improved.

I have been using VMware Horizon View for four years.

I rate VMware Horizon View a nine out of ten for stability.

VMware Horizon View is a scalable solution. Around 800 users regularly use the solution in our organization.

VMware Horizon View's technical support is fairly good.

Neutral

We previously used Citrix. We switched to VMware Horizon View because it offered better features.

VMware Horizon View's initial setup is complex and takes several days.

I would recommend an integrator to install VMware Horizon View.

We have seen a return on investment with VMware Horizon View.

VMware Horizon View's licensing cost is not expensive.

You must understand your users before deploying VMware Horizon View.

Overall, I rate VMware Horizon View an eight out of ten.