Horizon Toolbox
Release Date: March 21, 2016
Communities:
Welcome to VMware Horizon Toolbox 7.8!
VMware Horizon Toolbox 7.8 is a Web portal that acts as an extension to View Administrator in VMware Horizon™ 6 or above.
Read new Horizon Toolbox 2.0 Guide, 2.0 White paper, and this new blog Discover What’s New with VMware Horizon 6 Toolbox 2.0.
Auditing
- Sessions: Shows historical concurrent session trend for last 2 days, last week and last month. Shows current virtual desktop connections by desktop pools, and shows virtual application connections by RDS (Remote Desktop Service) Farms.
- Usage: Shows accumulated use time of users for last 2 days, last week and last month. Shows all connections (user name, pool/farm name, machine name, connection time, disconnection time) for the past 2 days, last week, and last month.
- Snapshots: Shows parent virtual machines of linked clone desktop pools and descendant snapshots in a tree view. The snapshots not in use by linked clone pools are marked in grey, so that the View administrator can remove the snapshots not in use.
- Clients: Shows statistics for operation systems and versions of View clients in different types of view styles. Show View clients IP addresses.
- End users' actions: show agent-side users' actions about USB storage, Client Drive Redirection and Clipboard.
Console Access Console Access lists all VMs for desktop pools, and you can filter VMs by VM name or DNS name. Clicking the VM name, the vSphere console for that VM will pop out.
Power Policy
Power Policy lists all desktop pools and their power policies. Power Policy can power on all VMs in a desktop pool with some schedule, like 8:00 AM on all work days. You can setup power policy for each desktop pool.
System Requirements for Horizon View Connection Server
- Horizon 6.0 or above
If you want to use the "Sessions" or "Usage" functions, you must configure an event database from View Administrator.
System Requirements for Guest Operation Systems
If you want to use the "remote assistance" or "device access policy" functions, your guest operation system must have Microsoft .net framework 2.0 or above. For Windows 7 or Windows 8, they include .net framework as an OS component by default.
Step 0: Uninstall your previous installed Horizon Toolbox.
Step 1: Download installation file “VMware-Horizon-Toolbox-x64-x.x.x.msi” to your View connection server 6.0 or later.
Step 2: Double click the installation file to install. You can select a different installation folder. You can select “everyone” or “just me”.
Step 3: A “setup” process will be started automatically after the installation process.
Start & Stop
Horizon Toolbox starts automatically. But you can use “tomcat8w.exe” to start/stop it. You can find “tomcat8w.exe” in “C:\Program Files\VMware\HorizonToolbox\HorizonToolbox2.0.0\bin” folder if you use the default installation folder.
Access
Open https://[YourServer]:18443/toolbox/ with IE9/10, Chrome, Firefox or Safari. IE8 is not supported. 18443 is the default port and can be changed. You can login with your "Horizon Administrator" account (or read-only administrator account).
July 12, 2019, 7.8.1
- Added support for Horizon View 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8
- Fixed some issues
May 28, 2019, 7.8.0
- Fix some incompatible issues
- Only support Horizon View 7.7 & 7.8
2018 Jan 18
- Horizon 7.4 support
- Some bug fixes
2017 Nov 30
- Add a new "Export" button to the clients table
- Add a new "Export" button to the clients table
2017 Oct 30
Fixed bugs
- Some frontend (JS) exceptions might redirect the browser to login page frequently
- Instant clone pools were shown as "unknown" in web UI
- vCenter password could not be set if the time setting isn't in sync
2017 Oct 12
- Auditing - Clients are enhanced
- Horizon 7.3.1 is supported
- Some bugs are fixed
2017-Aug-31 Horizon Toolbox 7.2.1
Bugs fixed
- Auditing - Export CSV failed
- Console Access - Some vCenter versions were not supported. Now, almost all vCenter versions after 5.5 are supported.
- Console Access - "Parent VMs" show all VMs. Now only the VMs which are (or ready to be) parent VMs are shown.
- Installation sometimes failed due to Tomcat error. Now, the installation should be successful every time if the Connection Server is good.
New Features
- Console Access - "Problem VMs" show the VMs with View Agent, but in abnormal status like "error", "unavailable" or others.
The following features are added back since some customers strongly require these features, but they are marked as "deprecated", since we suggest using the production features in Horizon or VIDM.
- Management- Remote Assistance
- Management- Device Access Filter
Horizon Toolbox 7.2.0 release note
2017 Jul 17
New Features
· Support Horizon 7.2. Horizon Toolbox uses the same version as the latest supported Horizon.
· Support end users' actions auditing (agent side), including USB storage, Client Drive Redirection and Clipboard.
· Support vSphere Console Access to all Parent Images.
Bug Fixes
· Fix one bug which caused the number of concurrent sessions not accurate.
· Fix one bug which caused missed domains in login page.
Removed Features
· Remote Assistance is part of Horizon 7.2 production (in Help Desk). So we have removed this feature from Horizon Toolbox.
2017-Mar-17 Horizon Toolbox 2.1.3
New Features
- Support new Horizon version(7.1)
- Support new VCenter version(VC6.5 and 6.0u2a) in Console Access feature
2016-August-17 Horizon Toolbox 2.1.2
Bug Fixes
- Remote Assistance page continually refreshes.
- Tomcat generates huge logs
2016-Jun-8 Horizon Toolbox 2.1.1 release note
New features
- Admin initiated remote assistance
Enhancements
2016-Mar-21 Horizon Toolbox 2.1 release note
New features
- Horizon 7 support
- Client Access Filter
- Filter client devices by MAC address, IP address or Client Type (MAC, Windows, iOS, Android, Linux)
Bug Fixes
2015-Dec-25
Four bugs are fixed:
- If the user name contains a space like "mydomain\a b", then the username in usage report was shown as "mydomain\a".
- Win10 OS was regarded as "other" in clients auditing report.
- If View Connection Server was not installed in default folder, Client Auditing was empty sometimes.
2015-Dec-09
Four bugs are fixed:
- When a pool is selected in session auditing, no result is shown
- View clients auditing is always empty
- Console access doesn't work sometimes
- Snapshot shots auditing doesn't work sometimes
New features in 2.0
- Console Access
- List all VMs for desktop pools, and you can filter VMs by VM name or DNS name.
- Clicking the VM name, the vSphere console for that VM will pop out. - Power-on policy
- Lists all desktop pools and their power policies.
- Power Policy can power on all VMs in a desktop pool with some schedule, like 8:00 AM on all work days.
- You can setup power policy for each desktop pool. - Client IP address auditing
- List detailed information for all broker sessions, including user name, Client IP addresses, login time and log out time.
- Installation file
- GUI installation process
Enhancements
- Auditing performance
- Compared with toolbox 1.5, auditing performance has been enhanced due to improved SQL query. - Remote assistance
- Update the workflow so it's more stable with Windows Remote Assistance. In addition, installation on helpdesk is no longer needed
- Compatibility improvement for different Horizon View version
- The end user side installer makes sure Windows Remote Assistance model is correctly configured.
Version 1.5.2
Two important bugs are fixed in this minor update:
- Fixed a bug that session auditing report and usage report were not correct when there were unsuccessful connections
- Fixed a bug that "Error happens" was shown in session auditing report when there were too many events in Event DB
