Horizon 8 Reviews

We use Horizon View to provide virtual desktops for internal use. There are about a thousand users. 

Horizon View provides virtual desktops on demand.

Horizon View could be more stable.

I have been using Horizon View for a couple of years.

I rate Horizon View's stability seven out of 10. 

Horizon View is relatively flexible and scalable.

Setting up Horizon View is somewhat complex, but we got some professional services from VMware. It would probably be complicated if you tried to set it up on your own. 

I rate Horizon View four out of 10 for affordability. It was pretty expensive.

We have performed some benchmark tests before deciding to go with Horizon View, but we chose VMware because most of our existing setup uses VMware. 

I rate Horizon View eight out of 10.

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. 

In the past, students had to physically go to labs to access software, but now they can access them from any device anywhere, and don’t have to login via VPN because of the security server part of Horizon.

View Persona, it’s been pushed to the wayside because they acquired UEM, and I’d prefer to use it, but have no budget for it. View Persona has less features than UEM, and it doesn’t seem updated, which makes a difference for standard edition users.

It is stable, but it depends on the use case. For us, we use it to allow students to access their desktops anywhere, at anytime. We just use the standard version, not the full enterprise one. We would like to go enterprise, but don’t the have budget for it. But, the standard version has been stable and addressed by support and updates. No issues that would cause us to turn away.

Recently had issue with the 3D application performance with the release of 6.1, and added VGPU support. All we had to do was add hardware (Nvidia K1 cards).

It's responsive, but a few times we had issues with their tech knowledge and troubleshooting steps. We had to escalate the issue and then it was resolved.

It was complex, and many facets on the networking side sit on top of vSphere, with multiple composer engines, and connection servers.

It loses points becuase I can’t take advantage of enterprise stuff. You should do a POC to make sure it fits the use case, three to four month period, and make sure you involve your networking team.

I've been using Horizon View for almost two years.

Horizon View is stable.

Horizon View is scalable.

VMware's technical support is good.

Horizon View's pricing is high.

I would give Horizon View a rating of seven out of ten.

Horizon 7's most valuable feature is the unified endpoint management, including the Orchestrator feature that helps those without any programming knowledge.

I've been using VMware Horizon 7 for over four years.

Horizon 7's stability is very impressive.

Horizon 7 is scalable.

VMware's technical support gives wonderful support.

Positive

I previously used Citrix VDI, but Horizon 7 is easier to manage and has GUIs for everything.

The initial setup is simple as there is lots of documentation available to help. However, it may be a little difficult for those with no experience.

I would give Horizon 7 a rating of ten out of ten.

We use VMware Horizon 7 for my company's internal systems, our clients' hosting, and public services.

The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon 7 is that it can be accessed anywhere in my internal network. It has a lot of flexibility.

I have been using VMware Horizon 7 for approximately 10 years.

VMware Horizon 7 is a stable solution.

The scalability of VMware Horizon 7 is very high.

The setup of VMware Horizon 7 is easy. However, we have a lot of experience with VMware Horizon 7.

We pay for the solution annually at a cost of approximately 10,000 HKD.

This is a very good solution that is very easy to use for users.

I rate VMware Horizon 7 a ten out of ten.

This solution provides centralized management with a digital platform.

It has improved our business because now we can run applications and it's easier for our students to do their exams.

We learned something new and gained experience regarding single digital platforms including how they work, how it is made into a single platform, and technically how the hybrid conversion works.

The most valuable feature is the graphics facilities.

They have tried to create a solution that is similar to Nutanix Citrix. Nutanix Citrix is the leader with this type of solution, a digital single platform. VMware tried to do the same, it's close but in terms of performance and how they manage a single platform, Nutanix Citrix is much better.

In the next release, the performance, the speed, and the price need to be improved.

I have been using this solution for six months.

There are still many unknowns as we have only been working with this solution for a short time. We don't know the level of support and the servers are new to us, but in the six months that we have been running this solution, we have not run into any problems.

At this early stage, we can't determine whether VMware is able to address any issues or not.

We are still new to this solution and have not run into any issues to be able to access the level of support or response time.

To date, I am doing the support with my team with our limited knowledge.

We haven't created any tickets with VMware technical support to resolve any issues.

So far we have been able to resolve the issues immediately.

Previously we were using Microsoft Terminal Server. 

Microsoft Terminal server did not meet our requirements and we didn't achieve our tasks or what we need in education. The new application now, it's reported to have strong backend, and to have a graphic backend to be able to support new applications, like Photoshop, printers, and video. It has graphics facilities.

Terminal Server does not have these facilities.

The VDI with this solution is now supported and it works for us. The challenge is to have a graphical backend and we get this with VMware, which solves the problem.

The deployment model is on the hybrid cloud.

This solution is expensive.

Nutanix Citrix is the best solution in the world. I have attended a seminar and I like it.

Unfortunately, I am not able to purchase it due to finance. Our recruitment office decided to go with Dell, not Nutanix. If the decision was mine to make I would have gone with Nutanix Citrix, not VMware or Dell VMware.

Area 1 Horizon is a product by VMware. It's centralized management with a digital platform.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten, but to be fair, there have been several improvements to this solution. We can work with this solution. We had issues before, but now they have been resolved. Students can do the lessons that are required and write the exams.
We requested the graphics facilities and now they are available and working fine.

Overall, I would say that we can give them a rating of seven out of ten.