There has been a new release of Featured pack 2 for VMware Horizon View 5.2. Featured pack has been introduced with initial release of VMware view 5.2 and brought VMware Blast components. The second release of this featured pack brings the new features:
- Flash url redirection – for live webcast video enables to stream webcast video. Live webcast can be streamed to thousands of VDI clients without negatively affecting the datacenter server and network.
- Real time audio-video which allows using Skype or other software using real time processing. (works only on Windows clients, as for now)
The featured pack has a client part and a server parts. A Remote Experience Agent (x32 or x64) is to install at the client side, where the HTML Access Web Portal installer as the name says it all, at the View connection server. After you run the HTML Access installer, the View Portal displays an HTML Access icon in addition to the View Client icon.
Here are the builds with the release numbers.
- VMware-VMware-Horizon-View-5.2-Remote-Experience-Agent-x64-2.0-1211192.exe
- Horizon-View-5.2-Remote-Experience-Agent-2.0-1211192.exe
- VMware-Horizon-View-HTML-Access_x64-1.1.0-1213173.exe
- VMware-Horizon-View-GPO-Bundle-2.1.0-1213173.zip
With this update there were also an update to VMware View Clients software, which changes versions to version 5.4. The latest builds for different OS and and device types. Here are the principal two for x32 and x64 Windows clients:
- VMware-viewclient-x86_64-5.4.0-1219906.exe
- VMware-viewclient-5.4.0-1219906.exe
A screenshot from my lab showing 3 different Desktop pools (XP, W7 and W8).
Quote from the VMware End user computing blog:
The “Real-Time Audio-Video” feature is a complementary technology to previously released Unified Communications (UC) solutions from Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft and Mitel. ”Real-Time Audio-Video” enables Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users to have broader application support for real-time audio and video when using human interface devices (HID) such as microphones and webcams on their local clients. Moreover, the new feature provides significant performance improvements and improved HID compatibility. By encoding audio and video using industry standard codecs, the upstream bandwidth for a single webcam session can be reduced by up to 100x versus using general USB redirection for webcams
Featured Pack 2 – What's new?
Usage of Adobe Media Server someone? Flash URL Redirection – Customers can now use Adobe Media Server and multicast to deliver live video events in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. To deliver multicast live video streams within a VDI environment, the media stream should be sent directly from the media source to the endpoints, bypassing the virtual desktops. The Flash URL Redirection feature supports this capability by intercepting and redirecting the ShockWave Flash (SWF) file from the virtual desktop to the client endpoint.
Skype or Google Hangout, Webex with Real-Time Audio-Video – Real-Time Audio-Video allows Horizon View users to run Skype, Webex, Google Hangouts, and other online conferencing applications on their virtual desktops. With Real-Time Audio-Video, webcam and audio devices that are connected locally to the client system are redirected to the remote desktop. This feature redirects video and audio data to the desktop with a significantly lower bandwidth than can be achieved by using USB redirection. Real-Time Audio-Video is compatible with standard conferencing applications and supports standard webcams, audio USB devices, and analog audio input.
Unity Touch improvements – You can now add a favorite application or file from a list of search results, and you can now use the Unity Touch sidebar to minimize a running application's window. Requires users to connect to their desktops from VMware Horizon View Client for iOS 2.1 or later, or VMware Horizon View Client for Android 2.1 or later.
Links:
- Featured pack 2 Release notes
- Feature Pack download page – https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info/slug/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_horizon_view/5_2
-
View Clients Download page:
https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info/slug/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_horizon_view_clients/2_0
Source: VMware EUC blog
