Omnissa Horizon 8 on Nutanix AHV: A modern VDI solution for the enterprise

Overview

If you're reading this blog, you are probably familiar with Omnissa's Horizon 8 (formally VMware Horizon) product suite and know it as a robust, scalable, cost-effective and easy to use solution to support virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) initiatives for secure remote access, business continuity and centralized management of Windows and Linux desktops and applications. Up until now, you would also, most likely, understand Horizon has always been tied closely to VMware's vSphere as the supporting hypervisor. In fact, there is a SKU of Horizon offered today that includes the vSphere hypervisor. While I am a big fan of the vSphere suite, I always felt that this tight integration held Horizon adoption back for on-premises and, in some cases, cloud deployments of VDI when comparing it to their competitors. Further, the end-user computing (EUC) team at WWT, of which I am a part, has been involved in an increasing amount of conversation with customers who are looking for alternatives to vSphere. So, Omnissa, now that it is a separate company, did the most logical thing they could do and partnered with an alternative hypervisor vendor, in this case, Nutanix, to expand the hypervisor options available for their product suite.

This blog is designed to explore the integration of Omnissa Horizon 8 and Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor (AHV). In this blog, I will lay out how they integrate and the high-level steps that need to be taken for this integration.

About the solutions

First, let's take a look at the two products:

Omnissa Horizon 8

Omnissa Horizon 8 is a leading VDI and published application platform that delivers Windows and Linux desktops and apps through a single platform suite. It is designed for flexibility and scalability, supports hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, and integrates with enterprise tools for security, user experience and automation.

Key Features:

Fast provisioning of desktops
Smart policies and conditional access
App Volumes app layering technology for real-time app delivery
User Environment Management utilizing the User Environment Manager (UEM) product
Integration with on-premises infrastructure (VMware vSphere & Nutanix AHV) and cloud infrastructure (Microsoft AVD & AWS Workspaces Core).

Nutanix AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor)

AHV is Nutanix's enterprise-grade, secure, and easy-to-use hypervisor, which comes natively with Nutanix's hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) platform. It eliminates the need for costly third-party hypervisors and is tightly integrated with Nutanix Prism for simplified virtual machine lifecycle management.

Key Features:

Integrated with Nutanix HCI stake (compute, storage, virtualization)
Centralized management with Prism
Native security and backup integration
Seamless scalability

How It Works:

Infrastructure Setup:
1. Firstly, you'll need a Nutanix Cluster running AHV to host Horizon infrastructure and Virtual Desktops
  1. Prism Central version 2024.3 or newer
  2. AOS 7.0 or newer
  3. AHV 10.0 or newer
2. Windows ISOs for building Horizon infrastructure servers and template VDI image(s)
3. Nutanix VirtIO ISO. (Without this, Windows won't recognize the virtual HDD)
Horizon Suite software and agents (downloaded from https://customerconnect.omnissa.com)
1. Deploy Omnissa Horizon Connection Server(s)
2. Deploy Unified Access Gateway(s) (optional)
3. Deploy App Volumes (optional) in VHD mode.
4. Deploy UEM (optional)

*Note: At the time of this blog, the Horizon suite version is 2506 and is currently only available in a Beta format.

Provision desktop(s):
1. Create a golden image on AHV
  1. The snapshot selected during pool creation must point to the active version of the golden Image template in Nutanix.
  2. The golden image VM must:
    1. Use a SCSI disk bus type.
    2. Have Secure Boot enabled.
    3. The network used for Horizon desktop pool creation must be mapped to an Active Directory Site.
  3. Optimize golden image and install agent(s)
    1. Download and install Horizon agent(s)
      1. Make sure to check the box: This machine will be used as a Golden Image.
      2. Specify the correct Connection Server.
      3. Reboot when prompted.
    2. Download and execute the Horizon OS Optimization Tool (OSOT)
      1. (Recommended) Take a snapshot (recovery point) of the VM in case rollback is needed.
  4. Shut down the VM.
  5. From Prism Central
    1. Select the VM with the installed Horizon Agent.
    2. Create VM Template.
Integrate Horizon 8 with Nutanix AHV

A screenshot of a computer

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Add Prism Central as a Capacity Provider

3. Create a Desktop Pool

4. Entitle users to the Pool and wait for the desktops to be built and customized.

Per testing in my lab, the pool creation takes approximately 6 minutes total. This is whether I build 5, 10 or 20 desktops, the majority of that time was spent customizing the desktops. My educated guess is that this will be even faster when ClonePrep becomes available.

Final Thoughts

Omnissa Horizon 8 on Nutanix AHV offers a streamlined approach to modern VDI. It combines the flexibility and power of Omnissa's desktop virtualization platform with the simplicity and scalability of Nutanix HCI. While not a one-size-fits-all solution, it provides an attractive alternative for companies seeking to move off of the vSphere hypervisor and still get all of the VDI goodness that you've come to expect from Omnissa Horizon.