VMware vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.5

VMware Official Links for vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.5

Release Notes
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What's New

VMware has expanded the vRealize Operations for Horizon dashboards for the following use cases:

• The Horizon Overview dashboard provides the administrator an overall view of their Horizon and NVIDIA deployment. In addition to performance metrics for the Horizon pod, participants will also gain insight into NVIDIA GRID trends as well as alerts from NVIDIA GRID.
• The Horizon Help Desk dashboard provides session-specific GPU utilization, GPU memory usage and encode metrics, GPU type, and user-specific alerts from GRID.
• The User Experience Monitoring dashboard includes a “weather map” or “heat map” for GPU use cycle and memory, warning administrators of performance degradation before users are impacted. 

Additional features:

• Nvidia vGPU Monitoring -- VMware vRealize Operations for Horizon supports monitoring the usage of Nvidia vGPU on ESXi hosts. To use this feature, you must have the Nvidia vGPU adapter installed, then import the integrated dashboards for vGPU monitoring. With this feature, you can check the usage of vGPU for each session and the usage and health of each vGPU in your environment.
• Additional Aggregation Metrics on User/Pool Level -- vRealize Operations for Horizon provides out-of-box metrics on the usage information at User/Pool level, such as historical records of users accessing the desktop pool, historical pool access records for a selected user. You can download the record as a csv report.
• Cloud Pod Architecture Support -- vRealize Operations for Horizon provides more information on the Cloud Pod Architecture. You can see whether a pool is a global pool, if a global entitlement is assigned to the pool, and whether a session is a global session.
• New Design for Logon Time -- vRealize Operations for Horizon provides a new way to calculate the logon time. To use this feature you must upgrade your Horizon environment to provide you with a more accurate value for logon duration.
• New Process Alerts -- vRealize Operations for Horizon enables you to monitor processes by triggering an alert and offering a recommendation for any process abnormalily in your VM.

Limitations

vRealize Operations for Horizon has the following limitations.

• The RMI registry port 3091 is reused in vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.5 adapter.
  The communications ports are 3099, 3100, and 3101 for the Horizon 6.5 message server. The message server objects for Horizon 6.x and 7.x are registered to this port.
• Physical desktops in a pool are not monitored.
  Physical desktops included in a desktop pool are not monitored or shown in the user interface. However, physical RDS hosts are monitored and shown in the user interface. 
• High availability (HA) is not supported. 
  vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.x does not support high availability (HA). If a View Adapter instance is moved to a different cluster node, the broker and desktop agents can no longer communicate with the View Adapter and the vRealize Operations for Horizon solution stops functioning. For solutions to this problem, see KB: 2092874: Best practices for configuring vRealize Operations for Horizon when HA is enabled.
• You need to wait for some time after restarting the adapter service is restarted or the adapter might not get started.
• Make sure vRealize Operations Manager does not have multiple network cards for multiple sub networks as it might make the adapter instance bind to an incorrect IP address.
• The adapter configuration file /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/inbound/V4V_adapter3/conf/msgserver.properties and /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/inbound/V4V_adapter3/work/msgserver.properties must be updated at the same time.
• Broker Agent 6.1 and Desktop Agent 6.1 cannot communicate with Adapter 6.5 even if pairing is successful because TLS 1.0 is disabled by default. A hand shake exception occurs.
• The configuration file of old adapter instance is not purged during upgrade. Therefore, if other SSL protocol/ciphers is configured on the adapter side, the broker and desktop agent might cause a hand shake failure. Configure some protocol and ciphers on the adapter and agents.
• The adapter can run on the collector node. It cannot run on the data node or the replica node.
• When the primary controller (broker) fails, administrators must manually configure and enable the broker agent at the back-up controller (broker).

Licensing Notes

This section contains notes on licensing vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.5.

• To run vRealize Operations for Horizon, you need to enter two keys.
  • A single vRealize Operations Manager license key.
  • A 10-pack or 100-pack vRealize Operations Manager license key that monitors your desktop virtual machines.
• The VMs must be part of the appropriate licensing groups to ensure accurate licensing. For detailed licensing instructions, see Adding a vRealize Operations for Horizon License Key and Associate Horizon Objects with Your vRealize Operations for Horizon License Key in the vRealize Operations for Horizon Installation guide.
• When upgrading from vCenter Operations Manager to vRealize Operations Manager, you might perceive this licensing change as a reduction in the number of virtual machines they can manage. This is not the case. Follow the licensing process and the steps in the vRealize Operations for Horizon Installation guide to ensure that all your VMs are monitored and are license compliant.
• The vRealize Operations Manager component license that is included is for Horizon-supporting infrastructure monitoring. A separate vRealize Operations Manager license is required for non-Horizon infrastructure monitoring.

Installation Notes

This section contains notes on the installation process for each vRealize Operations for Horizon component. For complete installation instructions, see the vRealize Operations for Horizon Installation document.

• vRealize Operations Manager for Horizon 6.5 is compatible with the following Horizon and vRealize Operations Manager versions:
  • VMware Horizon 7.x and 7.0.x
  • VMware Horizon with View 6.2.x
  • vRealize Operations Manager versions 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.6.1.

For the most current information about supported versions, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes.

• You can download the vRealize Operations for Horizon installation files from the VMware download page.
• You can download the preconfigured View dashboards file (Dashboards_V4VAdapter-6.5-xxx.zip) and report templates file (Reports_V4VAdapter-6.5-xxx.zip) from the VMware download page. View dashboards and reports are installed automatically when you install vRealize Operations for Horizon. To enable the vGPU monitoring feature, you must manually import the Horizon End User Experience With vGPU.json and Horizon Help Desk With vGPU.json from the Dashboards package. These files are provided in case problems occur during or after installation and you need to restore the dashboards or reports to their original state. For information about importing dashboards and reports, see the vRealize Operations Manager documentation.
• You install the View adapter on a vRealize Operations Manager cluster node or remote collector.
• You install the vRealize Operations for Horizon broker agent on a View Connection Server host in your View environment.
• Your View version determines how you install the desktop agent component of vRealize Operations for Horizon.
  • Horizon View Agent includes a version of vRealize desktop agent. Horizon 6.0.1 ships Desktop Agent 6.0, Horizon 6.1 and 6.2 ships Desktop Agent 6.1, and Horizon 6.2.x ships Desktop Agent 6.2.0. Horizon 7.0 ships desktop agent 6.2.1 and Horizon 7.0.x ships Desktop Agent 6.4, Horizon 7.3.2 ships Desktop Agent 6.5. Check the VMware website for the latest available version.
• For sizing and scaling guidelines, see KB 2098051: vRealize Operations for Horizon sizing guidelines. 

Upgrade Notes

This section contains notes of the upgrade processes. For complete upgrade instructions, see the vRealize Operations for Horizon Installation document.

• You can upgrade from vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.3, 6.4 to vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.5. If you have vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.0, you must first upgrade to vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.1 before upgrading to vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.5.
• The upgrade process retains the dashboards, views, and reports from the vRealize Operation for Horizon 6.1 and adds new dashboards, views, and reports. Old dashboards, views, and reports are identified by the View prefix, and the new dashboards, views, and reports are prefixed with Horizon. You can remove old dashboards, views, and reports.
• After the adapter upgrade, enable the port numbers 3099, 3100, and 3101, if not already enabled. Edit the /opt/vmware/etc/vmware-vcops-firewall.conf file in the vRealize Operations Manager.
  1. Add the command: TCPPORTS="$TCPPORTS 3099:3101" after TCPPORTS="$TCPPORTS 3091:3094" in /opt/vmware/etc/vmware-vcops-firewall.conf.
  2. Restart the firewall: /etc/init.d/vmware-vcops-firewall restart.
  3. Check the status of the firewall: /etc/init.d/vmware-vcops-firewall status.
• Due to an existing limitation, you must restart the vRealize Operations Manager cluster after the upgrade for the process to complete. Or restart the remote collector: Run service vmware-vcops --full-restart.
• Sessions that were active during upgrade might not report data after the upgrade is complete. Restart the desktop agent for the active sessions that are not reporting.
• During the Broker Agent upgrade process from 6.3, 6.4 to 6.5, vRealize Operations for Horizon stops the broker agent service, preserves the configuration, uninstalls the Broker agent, and installs the new version of Broker Agent. When the Broker Agent configuration utility launches, on the first screen of the wizard, you must re-enter and pair the vRealize Operations Manager IP address/FQDN  IP and the pairing credentials. The subsequent screen contains the data populated from the preserved configuration file of the previous installation, including data such as Horizon Credentials and Events DB configurations. In case of upgrade, the Broker Agent service is not started automatically. On the Configure The Broker Agent Service screen of the Broker Agent Configuration Utility wizard, you must restart the broker agent service.
• TLS 1.2 is enforced by default in vRealize Operations for Horizon Adapter 6.5. The Adapter cannot communicate with older desktop Agents running with TLS 1.0, such as vRealize Operations for Horizon Desktop Agent 6.0/6.1. VDI Pools, RDS Pools, or Apps running with older desktop Agents are monitored by default. To monitor pools running with older desktop Agents, administrators need to log on to vRealize Operations Manager collector node and add enforcesslprotocols = false to the /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/inbound/V4V_adapter3/work/msgserver.properties file. Restart the Horizon Adapter instance. You might need to pair the Broker Agent and Horizon Adapter instance.

Internationalization (I18N) Support

The vRealize Operations for Horizon user interface and documentation are available in English, Japanese, French, German, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and Spanish.

Resolved Issues

These issues have been resolved in this release:

• Some users are not listed in reports.
• Session is displayed slowly on dashboards in an instant clone pool.
• Missing session in Cloud Pod Architecture in Horizon 7.2.
• Alert not triggered when the connection server service is down.
• Some relationships are not removed after session logoff.
• The pool entitlement query can be disabled in broker agent.
• Adapter installation is improved so it can be installed faster.

Known Issues

• When using NetScaler, storefront servers configured to NetScaler create a Netscaler object rather than a storefront object.
  The broker agent gets storefront information from session objects and then sends it to the adapter. When using NetScaler, all storefront servers are configured to NetScaler to do the load balance. The broker agent only gets NetScaler information rather than storefront information from session objects, resulting in a failure to create storefronts. 
  Workaround: Use the desktop agent to send storefront information to the adapter. The desktop agent installed on the storefront server sends data on a storefront server and then the adapter creates the storefront object.
• Cannot navigate to the Horizon Root Cause Dashboard or other dashboards from End User Experience Dashboard heat maps if using vRealize Operations Manager 6.3.
  Workaround: Upgrade vRealize Operations Manager to 6.4 or later.
• Duplicate App Volumes Managers can be added with the Horizon Broker Agent Utility.
  The Horizon Broker Agent Utility allows you to add an App Volume Manager by FQDN and IP address. It is possible, but not desirable, to add the same App Volume Manager twice, once by FQDN and once by IP, creating duplicate objects.
  Workaround: Delete one App Volume Manager manually via the Broker Agent Utility, and restart the broker agent service.
• The sessions count may not be accurately reflected in the Access Point widget.
  The total number of sessions shown in the Access Point widget may not include sessions launched in Access Point, as some Access Point-launched sessions may still be alive but not counted in the session total of the widget.  (The total number of sessions will be appropriate in other places apart from the Access Point widget.)  This only applies to sessions launched in Access Point.
  Workaround: None for vRealize Operations for Horizon. Try troubleshooting Access Point.
• Blast protocol metric is not available in the RDSH Pool dashboard.
  Workaround: Create a super metric to calculate Blast data with the Pool object.
• The Desktop Agent may not run normally after you restart a VM or log in as another user.
  This is caused by an installation mistake. It's not permitted to install the Desktop Agent on a desktop machine with an account that has an App Stack assignment in App Volumes. In such a case, the Desktop Agent might be installed successfully, but it would be installed on the mounted App Stack, not on the local storage, and the Desktop Agent will not run normally after you restart the VM or log in as another user.
  Workaround: Install the Desktop Agent on an account that is not assigned an App Stack, or install the Desktop Agent on the base template of the desktop machine.
• Too many application crash alerts may be displayed on the Alerts page.
  When an application crash happens on the desktop, the Desktop Agent sends this information to the adapter; the adapter then throws a notification alert that is displayed on the Alerts page. Over time, unless old alert notifications are cleared, the Alerts page will be overpopulated with alerts.
  Workaround:
  Use cleanallstopobjects.jar to remove unwanted alerts:  
  Usage: java -jar cleanallstopobjects.jar VROPS_IP Admin_User password record_per_page expire_day.
  example: java -jar cleanallstopobjects.jar vrops.vmware.com admin password 100 7
  ("7" means all notifications that are created 7 days ago will be canceled when the program is running.)
  Set a daily cron job to run cleanallstopobjects.jar.
• The Access Point widget displays deleted Access Point objects.
  If you remove an Access Point with the Horizon Broker Agent, the Access Point widget may still display the deleted Access Point object.
  Workaround:
  1. Stop the adapter instance. 
  2. Delete the unused Access Point object from the inventory tree. 
  3. Restart the adapter instance.
• Pod names do not appear in the Connected Sessions widget within the expected time of 15 minutes.
  Names of connecting pods may not appear in the Pod Name column of the Connected Sessions widget of the  Horizon Help Desk Dashboard within the expected time of 15 minutes after session launch. Data appears within 15 minutes in all other columns related to the launched session in this widget.
  Workaround: None. Pod names should appear within a maximum delay of 40-60 minutes after session launch.
• In the Broker Agent Utility for Horizon, the test for Desktop Pool ID in the optional Specify Desktop Pools, fails if this ID is different from the Desktop Pool name.
  Workaround: Enter the correct Desktop Pool ID, ignore the error message and click Next for the configuration.
• When vRealize Operations for Horizon solution is upgraded to 6.1, duplicate session objects would appear.
  When vRealize Operations for Horizon solution is upgraded to 6.1, duplicate session objects appear. The newer object has a machine_id and the older object is without a machine_id. Only the session objects containing a machine_id will fetch the metrics. Session Objects without machine_id are stale and will not fetch any metrics due to the vRealize Operations Manager limitation of not deleting stale objects immediately. This is applicable to VDI session objects only.
• Horizon pods that are no longer being monitored still appear in the Horizon dashboards.
  If you stop monitoring a Horizon pod, the Horizon pod resource continues to appear in the Horizon dashboards.
  Workaround: Manually delete the Horizon pod resource and all Horizon Connection Server, security server, and pool resources related to this Horizon pod from the vRealize Operations Manager user interface.
• Existing linked-clone desktops must be recomposed.
  If you created desktop pool images that utilize linked clones prior to installing vRealize Operations for Horizon, you must recompose the linked clones to include the vRealize Operations for Horizon desktop agent in the image.
• User names that include multibyte characters might not appear correctly in the vRealize Operations Manager user interface.
• Network-related alerts are not generated for user sessions that were established before the View adapter was set up 
  The following alerts are not generated for user sessions that were initiated before the configuration of a View adapter instance: PCoIP|Round Trip Latency (ms) and PCoIP|Packet Loss Percent. See KB 1030695: PCoIP performance is slower than expected for troubleshooting high latency and packet loss issues.
• Changing the adapter name causes the View Adapter Status dashboard to display incorrect data 
  If the name of the View adapter instance is changed, the health of the View Adapter in the Select View Adapter widget and the health of the objects in the View Adapter Status widget are unknown on the View Adapter Status dashboard. These problems occur because the View Adapter Collector resource does not automatically update to reflect the name change of the vCenter Operations for Horizon View adapter instance.
  Workaround: Do not change the adapter name. If the adapter name has already been changed, update the adapter name in the vRealize Operations for Horizon user interface.
• Certain View reports return inconsistent or incorrect results 
  The View Desktop Pool Usage and View Application Pool Usage reports return inconsistent or incorrect results in the Connected and Disconnected Desktop Sessions sections.
  Workaround: None.
• If a View adapter receives data from more than 1,000 desktop agents, the ARP cache on the vRealize Operations Manager collector node is not large enough to handle all of the necessary entries in the cache.
  Workaround: For a solution to this problem, see KB 2096607: Adjusting the ARP cache on a vRealize Operations Manager remote collector node.
• Scoreboard widgets on the View Overview, View Remote Session Details, View RDS & and View Adapter Self Health dashboards do not refresh
  Most scoreboard widgets are configured to refresh every two minutes, but this problem prevents auto-refreshing. This problem is most apparent if the affected dashboards are always kept open. 
  Workaround: Click the Perform Multi-Select Interaction button on master widget's toolbar to reinitiate interactions and refresh the corresponding scoreboard widgets. For example, on the View Overview dashboard, click the Perform Multi-Select Interaction button on the View Pods widget toolbar to refresh the Pod Indicator Metrics scoreboard widget. 
• In Horizon Desktop Agent 6.1 or earlier versions, the Logon time, Logon duration, Session duration, Average Logon, Average Recollect, and Maximum Logon Time information cannot not be collected.
  These metrics cannot be seen in the widgets such as Top RDS Desktop Session Logon Time in Horizon RDS Pools dashboard, Top Application Session Logon Time in RDS Pools dashboard, Top VDI Session Logon Time Horizon in VDI Pools dashboard, Horizon Remote Session in Horizon User Session Details dashboard, Pool Desktop Sessions in Horizon Desktop Usage dashboard, Top RDS Desktop Session Logon Time in Horizon user sessions dashboard, Top Application Session Logon Time in Horizon User Session dashboard, Top VDI Session Logon Time Horizon in Horizon User Session dashboard, All desktop Pools in Horizon Desktop Usage dashboard, Horizon pods in Horizon Overview dashboard.
  Workaround: Upgrade the Desktop Agent version to 6.2 or later.
• Tab traversal does not work in the correct order while configuring the Broker Agent utility.
• The name of the virtual machine does not appear in the Applications Instances widget in the Horizon Application dashboard if you are using a Desktop Agent 6.1 or earlier versions.
  Workaround: Upgrade the Desktop Agent version to 6.2 or later.
• Applications launched by user widget in Horizon Remote Sessions Details dashboard does not populate any data if you have installed Desktop Agent 6.1 or earlier versions on RDS Server or VDI machine. 
  Workaround: Upgrade the Desktop Agent version to 6.2 or later.
• If you restart a connection server machine, the Broker Agent cannot initialize the event db type. The following message appears:
  WARNING: Exception creating connection for EventDBListener: Unsupported Event DB.
  Workaround: Restart the Broker Agent service.
• Blank view sessions are listed in the vRealize Operations Administrator UI after the Adapter receives the desktop Agent data.
  Workaround:
  1. Click the pencil icon on the top right corner of the widget.
  2. In the pop-up window, go to Select which tags to filter, expand Collection States and ensure the Collecting option is selected.
  3. Click Save.
• When you upgrade vRealize Operations for Horizon adapter from 6.x to 6.4, the collection state of the adapter instance shows failed.
  Workaround: Either restart the collector service (Run service vmware-vcops --full-restart) or restart the vRealize Operations Manager appliance.
• Log on time, average logon time, and maximum log on time values are not retained for the existing sessions after upgrading adapter from 6.x to 6.4.
  Workaround: Log off and login again.
• Even after the deletion of the View Pod environment, the stale entries are retained on the dashboards.
  Workaround: Restart the service ( Run service vmware-vcops --full-restart). Login to vRealize Operations Manager, go to Administrator > Inventory Explorer, and select the objects and delete them manually.
• For reconnected sessions, Horizon connected widget in help desk dashboard shows junk data.
  Workaround: Edit the Horizon connected widget and select All Active Sessions and click Save.
• If the View server is configured with IP, then the Broker Agent first tries to connect as a local host and displays a redundant error 'Could not connect to the connection server with the provided credentials.' in the utility. The second time it automatically connects to IP or host name. There is no impact on the functionality.
  Workaround: None