Recent upgrade to VMware Horizon View 5.2

Last week I performed an in-place upgrade from VMware View 4.6 to VMware Horizon View 5.2. Things mostly went well, though I have a few remaining issues waiting to be resolved.

SSL Certificates

View 5.2 has more SSL requirements than 4.6. Out with the self-signed certs and in with certificate authority certs.

When it came to SSL documentation, nothing beats Derek Seaman’s blog. Here are the most helpful resources:

• Create Windows CA VMware Certificate Template
• vCenter 5.1 U1 Install: Part 2 (Create vCenter SSL Certificates)
• VMware View 5.1 Installation Part 1 – View Connection Server

Thank’s Derek for the great documentation.

VMware documentation

In general, VMware’s documentation is quite good. I greatly appreciate that they publish their documentation in HTML, PDF, epub and mobi formats. Thanks so much for the mobile versions.

I did find two errors in their documentation that I’d like to point out and correct. I have provided VMware both corrections and they have acknowledged receipt.

Firewall Rules for DMZ-Based Security Servers

Incorrect: Security server > TCP Any > MMR > View desktop > TCP 4927

Correct: Security server > TCP Any > MMR > View desktop > TCP 9427

Upgrade View Security Server

Incorrect: Prerequisites > Verify that you have a domain user account with administrative privileges on the hosts that you will use to run the installer and perform the upgrade

Correct: This prerequisite should be omitted. VMware View Security Servers should not be on the domain and do not require a domain user account to perform an installation or upgrade.

Firewall Diagram

Thank you to Ivo Beerens for posting a nice diagram of the firewall requirements for View 5.2 in your “Tips for implementing a VMware Horizon View Security Server” post. My network engineer and I greatly appreciated it.

External View 5.2 Problem

My remaining problem resides with the View 5.2 Agent and external access. If I publish a desktop pool using a VMware View Agent version 4.6.0 to 5.1.3, external PCoIP works well. If I upgrade the desktop pool to use the VMware View Agent version 5.2.0, I am unable to establish a PCoIP connection (RDP works). Internally, PCoIP with the 5.2 Agent works fine.

I have an open ticket with VMware and hope to have this resolved so that I can complete my View 5.2 upgrade and begin working on my VMware vCenter upgrade.