In previous post, we have discussed Connection Server upgrade process. So we can move towards end of this blog post series.
So this post will be the last in this series of upgrading to Horizon 7.12 Release. In this post, we will upgrade the GPO Policies, upgrade Horizon Agent as the last block of the process, and verify the successful upgrade by testing connectivity to the virtual desktop.
Upgrading GPOs
Horizon 7 provides various component-specific such as Horizon agent, Horizon Client, and other Group Policy Administrative ADMX template files. The Horizon 7 ADMX template files contain both Computer Configuration and User Configuration group policies.
As per the version I downloaded i.e. 5.4.0, there are 18 ADMX templates in it.
- To begin with Horizon GPO upgrade, download the copy of VMware Extras Bundle and extract the files from the extras bundle.
- Once extracted, navigate to extracted folder and copy all the ADMX templates.
- Navigate to \\DomainName\SYSVOL\DomainName\policies\PolicyDefinitions directory.
- Paste the copied templates here.
- It will prompt for replacing old files, since I already had Horizon 7.7 policy templates here.
- As per the count, there is one extra template in Horizon 7.12 compared to Horizon 7.7.
- I just went ahead and replaced the template files.
- Click continue if prompted for permissions, since this is a central store for policies.
- Navigate back to the extracted folder and navigate to en-US sub-directory and Copy all language files.
- Navigate to \\DomainName\SYSVOL\DomainName\policies\PolicyDefinitions\en-US sub-directory and paste the copied language files here.
- If prompted for permissions, click continue to paste.
- That’s all we need to do for updating policy templates. Now let’s just verify that no errors are reported while editing the policies and also check that all templates are loaded successfully.
- Under User configuration,
Upgrading Horizon Agent
Upgrading Horizon agent is a fairly straight forward process just like upgrading Horizon Client.
Below is the screenshots walkthrough of Horizon Agent upgrade process.
- Launch the installer and click next on Welcome screen
- Select IP addressing scheme as per the environment
- Select the horizon components as required, change installation path if required. Click Next
- Click Install with upgrade process.
- Wait for process to complete, as it will remove the old files and replace with new ones.
- Click finish to end the wizard.
- Reboot the desktop to complete the upgrade process.
Since Horizon agent is upgraded, we can go ahead do a quick test by connecting virtual desktops.
- Launch the Horizon client and connect to connection server
- Launch the desktop pool by double clicking it.
- And that’s my virtual desktop loaded like a charm. Just launched Performance tracker to verify its responsiveness and see some of the stats. Read more about Horizon performance tracker.
Wrapping up:
Successfully upgraded Horizon 7.7 deployment to Horizon 7.12 release. The order followed during this upgrade process is as below.
- Horizon Client
- View Composer
- Connection Server
- GPO
- Horizon Agent
I did not upgrade RDSH since I am already running it on Windows Server 2012 R2, Also I had vSphere 6.7 already, so I did not upgrade it as well.
That is all in this Horizon upgrade series.