XenTegra - On The Horizon

On the Horizon: New features in Horizon 2306 enhance security, flexibility, and manageability

October 23, 2023 XenTegra / Andy Whiteside / Bill Sutton Season 1 Episode 39
XenTegra - On The Horizon
On the Horizon: New features in Horizon 2306 enhance security, flexibility, and manageability
Show Notes Transcript

The latest release of Horizon 8, 2306, is available and it adds a host of new features. Each of these has been designed based on the feedback and requirements of our valuable customers. Let’s dive right in and see what’s new for servers and clients.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers

WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.820 --> 00:00:09.520
Andy Whiteside: Hello! And welcome to Episode 39 of on the horizon. I'm your host, Andy whites. I got Philip Sellers with me, Philip. How's it going on October sixteenth.

2
00:00:09.750 --> 00:00:11.169
Philip Sellers: Going? Good, Andy.

3
00:00:11.770 --> 00:00:13.120
Andy Whiteside: you

4
00:00:13.180 --> 00:00:18.669
We're just starting. It's a Monday, so I don't know when people listen, but it's a Monday, and sounds like you've been really busy today.

5
00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:30.110
Andy Whiteside: I have been busy. Started out the morning with a certification exam happy to report that I passed so that's always a great way to start a Monday morning. And then,

6
00:00:30.140 --> 00:00:43.110
Philip Sellers: yeah, it's been busy great conversations with customers all throughout the day. So I like these kind of days. So I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Name one problem that you with the customer you've talked to today. They were trying to solve.

7
00:00:43.340 --> 00:00:51.580
Philip Sellers: So had a customer who wanted to be able to manage all of their endpoint devices from one piece of software, one console

8
00:00:51.770 --> 00:01:12.589
Philip Sellers: so we we had a great conversation about Workspace one Uem today. Well, to be to be frank, that's about the only one that can do them all. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a phenomenal platform with so many different operating systems and form factors. This would happen to be a school district. So it's a great place, great fit because

9
00:01:12.590 --> 00:01:39.780
Philip Sellers: chromebooks and ipads and android tablets. And yeah, you know, school districts definitely have those challenges. So I'm at the I'm at the beach. This weekend got a little little condo down there. We ran out to our customers and our friends and our employees, and sometimes random people, but I'm down there decorating. My wife sent me down there to hang curtains and all kinds of madness things that anyway, I was so frustrated. However, the whole time. I got the podcast you know, playing my year listening. And this company comes on to enter this week and enterprise technology

10
00:01:39.890 --> 00:02:02.420
Andy Whiteside: talking about their Mdm. Solution. And at some point the guy asked him about the Android devices, and he goes, oh, we don't do mobile we don't do mobile operating systems yet, like ios and android like, what in the world? I just wasted 30 min for somebody who's just managing windows as an Mdm. Solution like, what's the point? We can't do several of those, including the the mobile phone OS's. Then then why why bother?

11
00:02:02.510 --> 00:02:16.219
Philip Sellers: Well and increasingly, the Internet of things devices. You know, things that that are just network connected. And to me, security around those that's critical. When you start talking the enterprise and and business

12
00:02:16.320 --> 00:02:19.970
Philip Sellers: environments. I mean, it's one thing to hang a ring at home.

13
00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:34.380
Andy Whiteside: It's another thing when you put that on your business network with your crown jewels for sure, for sure. So, Phil, let me do the commercial, real quick. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a vmware customer, data center as well as on the workspace one side

14
00:02:34.380 --> 00:02:58.529
Andy Whiteside: and you're not getting the value out of the platform. You think it's too expensive. Well, guess what these are expensive solutions, but you need to get the value out of the platform. Let us help you. Let us take a run and helping you. These most of these platforms and these product sets are more than worth the money. If you use what they can do. If you use a subset of what they can do, or just one thing that they can do. You're you're you're wasting your money and probably working with the wrong partner or the vendors, not stepping up for you.

15
00:02:58.640 --> 00:03:08.449
Andy Whiteside: We can help with that. So that's that's the commercial simply around Vmware Workspace one horizon today. plenty of opportunity to help people, wouldn't you say?

16
00:03:08.790 --> 00:03:21.290
Philip Sellers: Absolutely. And and if I could add to that our super powers, integrations, we love making things play nicely together, and that's how you as a customer can get ultimate value is to start

17
00:03:21.290 --> 00:03:43.570
Philip Sellers: making sure that your workspace one can integrate with your horizon, can integrate with your citrix, maybe can integrate with your service now, and bringing all those things together. You beat me, too. I was gonna ask you over under a number of times. We say service. Now, in this, podcast it's probably gonna come up. Yeah, I have a great love for that platform. Super happy. Some

18
00:03:43.570 --> 00:03:54.630
Philip Sellers: some friends, former colleagues just adopted it, their site to be moving from a competitor to service. Now it's gonna bring their their its in processes,

19
00:03:54.630 --> 00:04:15.200
Andy Whiteside: you know, into the current century. Yeah, you you can't spell itm without service. Now wait a minute. That makes sense alright. So today's blog is from Suzette Beardsley from October of this year the title of his new features and horizon. 2,306 enhanced security, flexibility, and manageability. So, Philip? Why why did you pick this blog.

20
00:04:15.430 --> 00:04:19.010
Philip Sellers: Well, you know. everyone's a little.

21
00:04:19.459 --> 00:04:37.550
Philip Sellers: II guess, concerned as broadcom acquisition is set to close. And so I really wanted to highlight the fact that vmware is not. Let this distract them from continuing to build and innovate on their products. 2306 is the latest version of horizon 8.

22
00:04:37.550 --> 00:04:51.910
Philip Sellers: And so lots of new features a lot of customer feedback that's been built into this new version making things easier for administrators and also helping with security. Those are 2 main focuses.

23
00:04:52.200 --> 00:04:59.879
Andy Whiteside: Yeah, happy users and security security and happy users. I'm not sure which ones number one was the number 2. They they got to go together.

24
00:05:00.370 --> 00:05:15.870
Philip Sellers: Yeah, I mean, they can't be exclusive to one another, because I can tell you, working in a place where security is valued. Most of all. It's a horrible user experience. It's a balancing act. And so you have to have both perspectives integrated and working together.

25
00:05:16.230 --> 00:05:37.639
Andy Whiteside: Yeah. Alright first section. Well, the overall section says, simplifying management and bolstering security. First call out it says, granular rb, A/C. Privileges for cloud connected customers. Real quick. 2306. This means we're not talking about the cloud product. We're talking about the on Prem product. And this first section talks about connecting that to cloud. Is that right?

26
00:05:37.640 --> 00:05:57.270
Philip Sellers: It is. Yes, we're talking about the on-prem product the installable product is what I would call it. We'll we'll see vmware. Talk about it as horizon 8. And even if you have the on prem or installable product, you can still cloud, connect it to the horizon universal control plane.

27
00:05:57.330 --> 00:06:25.960
Philip Sellers: And previously you had to have super admin, super duper control to be able to do that. And with 2306. They've introduced a new, more granular role based access control so that you don't have to have super admin. And you can delegate these privileges to activate the control plane and manage it in a horizon connected or cloud connecting environment. And so that's a win, because we always like to have you know

28
00:06:25.960 --> 00:06:28.400
Philip Sellers: just enough admin just enough

29
00:06:28.620 --> 00:06:35.399
Andy Whiteside: permissions and and not grant super admin unless it's absolutely necessary.

30
00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:44.760
Andy Whiteside: And you can never break that down. Set too low of a level at the same time. Don't overdo it. Cause then you just create yourself a mess.

31
00:06:44.940 --> 00:06:55.929
Philip Sellers: Yeah, it it again. It's balancing act, and it's an art. You know, figuring out a lot of these cloud robots, access controls. There's a lot of built in

32
00:06:55.990 --> 00:07:04.129
Philip Sellers: levels. And and knowing what those can and can't do. And then when should you create something? Custom that's pretty important, right?

33
00:07:04.190 --> 00:07:12.179
Andy Whiteside: Alright for section block in the next section block end user connection. If no certificate check. what does this mean?

34
00:07:12.470 --> 00:07:30.609
Philip Sellers: So previously and and currently in in the horizon client, you can actually go in and say, Don't check for a server certificate and don't check whether it's enforced. And we use that a lot in labs and things like that. But for your production environment, you probably don't want your end user bypassing security checks.

35
00:07:30.610 --> 00:07:46.359
Philip Sellers: So this is a way to prevent server security checks certificate checks from being bypassed that way, you know it's your trusted certificate at the server that your users, connecting to no man in the middle, no

36
00:07:46.440 --> 00:08:07.030
Andy Whiteside: hacker, you know, watching what's going on and breaking down your traffic you. You now have the ability to to force that behavior. And so that's a great thing. It just overall increases our security posture. Now, is this for the the initial hitting the the Workspace page. Actual connecting of the protocol. Where? Where does this play?

37
00:08:07.140 --> 00:08:19.040
Philip Sellers: Yeah. This place at the brokering. So this is the client making its initial call, and also setting up that initial connection over to the the virtual desktop or the virtual server in the background.

38
00:08:19.580 --> 00:08:20.260
Andy Whiteside: Okay.

39
00:08:21.910 --> 00:08:34.260
Andy Whiteside: alright. Next section talks about fixed. Oh, by the way, we should told our listeners, this is gonna probably be a 3 parter. There's a lot to cover here next one's fixed timer for discarding Sso. Credentials. Bolster security.

40
00:08:34.549 --> 00:09:01.729
Philip Sellers: Yeah. So I mean, with single sign on you get that great user experience. But from an administrator or security professionals aspect, you don't want someone just to have access every single time. If their endpoint or their credentials get compromised, then you want to be able to force them to reauthenticate every so often. So this is the ability to do that on a fixed basis you now have the control of. When do you set

41
00:09:01.730 --> 00:09:05.009
Philip Sellers: reauthentication to occur for virtual desktop sessions?

42
00:09:05.090 --> 00:09:05.760
Andy Whiteside: Okay?

43
00:09:06.950 --> 00:09:10.220
Andy Whiteside: And what do you think's a good timer for that

44
00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:24.989
Philip Sellers: here for me, I would say sometime within a week. You know, may maybe as much as every day. It really depends on what you're trying to do and and accomplish. You know. II can see.

45
00:09:25.160 --> 00:09:33.710
Philip Sellers: you know, long term on prem things within the corporate network, maybe being a little more relaxed.

46
00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:53.530
Philip Sellers: you know, and then, for truly off site, remote users, maybe a daily thing that you want them to have to re authenticate as well as you know, that implicitly implies Mfa, so as part of that authentication process force them to do that. 2 factor authentication.

47
00:09:53.690 --> 00:10:00.300
Andy Whiteside: Yeah. Next one says, configure certificate mappings from console.

48
00:10:00.870 --> 00:10:21.829
Philip Sellers: Yeah. So this is a little geeky but you know, the certificate mappings underneath horizon have always kind of been an interesting thing. So you know, for some of your Ssl. Certificates and things you have to go into is, or you have to go in and change some files all of this management is now

49
00:10:21.940 --> 00:10:34.550
Philip Sellers: in the console and so you can manage it directly from there. In addition, there are some additional things that they've added in terms of Sid based

50
00:10:34.660 --> 00:10:54.070
Philip Sellers: and then x 509 s. Ki like, I said, super geeky, it! It's you know, the format where you've got alternate security identifiers as part of it. And then you've also got legacy options for smart cards and things like that for authentication. So

51
00:10:54.140 --> 00:11:13.230
Philip Sellers: when we talk about certificate based authentications, you know, this is an alternative to the traditional 2 factor authentication, you know, this is, having actual cards and things like that, little pieces of of hardware that you carry around so

52
00:11:13.260 --> 00:11:38.959
Philip Sellers: as opposed to, just, you know, being challenged with a Microsoft authenticator, or you know. I don't know duo or something like that. It's an app. So you. You've got those those options as well. You know. This is probably more in our ultra secure customers. Maybe Dod space same type of customers that may do more disconnected type. Horizon deployments right

53
00:11:39.830 --> 00:11:43.179
Andy Whiteside: instant clone, smart provisioning default.

54
00:11:43.890 --> 00:11:53.049
Philip Sellers: So in in the previous few versions of Verizon there's been 2 different modes for instant clones. So instant clones

55
00:11:53.140 --> 00:12:12.879
Philip Sellers: can can be created without a parent. Vm. Traditionally mode a. The original mode always created it with a parent. Vm, so mode B has been an available option, it's now become the default option. So why is that important? You know, we've had virtual hardware changes around trusted platform

56
00:12:12.880 --> 00:12:23.789
Philip Sellers: and gpus. And so with those clone operations, we wanna be able to do that and not replicate those those pieces of virtual hardware. So

57
00:12:23.990 --> 00:12:26.689
Philip Sellers: this is a provisioning mode.

58
00:12:27.300 --> 00:12:44.629
Philip Sellers: Change to allow us to kinda scale and go where physical hardware is going as well as the virtual hardware needs to respond and go. You know, windows 11. Change the requirements for us significantly. And so you have to have some of this virtual hardware in order to be able to load and run windows. 11.

59
00:12:45.980 --> 00:12:46.650
Andy Whiteside: Yeah.

60
00:12:47.650 --> 00:12:52.610
Andy Whiteside: Improved. Improved with auto debugging for instant Clones.

61
00:12:52.990 --> 00:13:06.180
Philip Sellers: So we've always had some amount of debugging but a a and there's a great screenshot. If you scroll just a little bit further down. They've now added it to the more menu, so you can enable and disable instant clone debugging.

62
00:13:06.180 --> 00:13:23.550
Philip Sellers: I love this because as an administrator, you don't have to go digging through the file system, you know, and turning on a switch and things like that. Now you've just got a button, you can click a button, you can get logs. And so that's a huge usability step forward for Admins.

63
00:13:27.750 --> 00:13:40.940
Andy Whiteside: Instant. Clone, smart provisioning default. That sounds familiar. Yeah. I think that one got put in here twice, for some reason persistent disk for instant calls.

64
00:13:41.070 --> 00:14:09.340
Philip Sellers: Yeah, persistent. This is an interesting one. So this is a carryover for customers who? We're using dedicated Link Clones. And that's been deprecated. So linked clone technology was kind of the original way. The original magic behind horizon view that allowed you to make lots of copies quickly. And so this is this is bringing back that persistent disk capability. So

65
00:14:09.740 --> 00:14:19.390
Philip Sellers: you know it. It prevented some customers from actually upgrading to horizon 8, you know, if they were using dedicated link phones in the past, you know they they didn't

66
00:14:19.500 --> 00:14:31.430
Philip Sellers: choose to upgrade to Horizon 8, because this feature was missing. So this gives us a lot of well, it gives us a very specific use case for certain customers.

67
00:14:31.720 --> 00:14:32.480
Andy Whiteside: Yeah.

68
00:14:33.350 --> 00:15:00.560
Andy Whiteside: you know. And I had this conversation earlier today in a different, podcast. Around persistent disk, and persistent machines in general and man, there's so much more adoption that could happen if you allowed yourself to get beyond non persistent and it's still goodness in there. You still have it centralized. You still have somewhere. You can manage it. You still keep an eye on it. You remove some of the attack vector from these remote VPN type scenarios. I just don't think the world thinks about persistent machines and persistent

69
00:15:00.610 --> 00:15:02.269
Andy Whiteside: things that go with it enough.

70
00:15:02.610 --> 00:15:16.339
Philip Sellers: Well, you know, it's definitely on our friends at Microsoft's mind. With windows 2 65. I mean, that is the the exact use case that they're they're targeting is that persistent use case. And so

71
00:15:16.450 --> 00:15:21.029
cloud. Pcs, you know they're talking a lot about cloud Pcs, and so

72
00:15:21.100 --> 00:15:30.240
Philip Sellers: you know, this is great to have in your back pocket, because I like the concept. I just want to be able to centralize

73
00:15:30.280 --> 00:15:48.800
Philip Sellers: the user experience so that everything my user needs comes from one place and that they're able to have no friction and getting to these, and also maybe a better delivery protocol. But that gets a little geeky. So you know, it really is to me about user experience.

74
00:15:48.910 --> 00:15:56.330
Andy Whiteside: Yeah. cloud architectures, cloud pod architecture, session load distribution.

75
00:15:56.740 --> 00:16:24.499
Philip Sellers: You know, I was on the phone call phone call with an a user the other day, and we were talking about their pod architecture and how you know, session load, balancing and stuff happens, you know, and that was just within on-prem pods of horizon infrastructure. When you go to cloud pods, it's it's a elevated problem. But the problem that you run into is, you know, having the resources you need coming from the correct pod.

76
00:16:24.760 --> 00:16:31.290
Philip Sellers: sourcing and making sure users go to the closest pod, but also making sure one pod doesn't, you know.

77
00:16:31.380 --> 00:16:37.429
Philip Sellers: have to handle all of the sessions and and handle all of the load together. So

78
00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:56.400
Philip Sellers: cloud pod architecture and and this particular feature in 2306 helps distribute the load more equitably. And so there's there's more intelligence as the brokering is happening things are happening behind the scenes so that users get routed to the best pod. And

79
00:16:56.400 --> 00:17:11.329
Philip Sellers: again, that's a configurable thing of of how you determine what's the best pod but being able to more adequately share the load across your cloud pods is certainly something of interest, because.

80
00:17:11.390 --> 00:17:13.239
Philip Sellers: you know.

81
00:17:13.310 --> 00:17:19.589
Philip Sellers: there's a lot of different factors that we talk about to get great performance. But having you

82
00:17:19.650 --> 00:17:44.869
Philip Sellers: go across the country to the wrong pod, well, that's going to be a performance killer. So come back for the data. Well, and you know it's it's not uncommon for us to talk to customers who have outsourced resources around the world follow the sun type support organizations are notorious for this, but call centers, too. And so yeah, I mean, there's very real

83
00:17:45.180 --> 00:18:08.930
Philip Sellers: physics that get involved. Speed of light is what it is. It's a fixed speed. And so we fight that latency a lot particularly in the Bdi space. Yeah, that'll give me a chance to bring up my common conversation around. Don't give me your bandwidth situation. Tell me your latency, that's it. Latency is ultra important for us when we're talking about Vdi delivery, or

84
00:18:09.600 --> 00:18:17.600
Andy Whiteside: really anything. I mean, it's it's as important as how close is the data and that data gravity conversation that we have with customers.

85
00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:20.499
Philip Sellers: How how much bandwidth is good. But

86
00:18:20.660 --> 00:18:31.090
Andy Whiteside: it's not often the greatest limiting factor. It's it's not the limiting factor. It's it matters. But you know, getting from here to there. You're going to get there so fast if there's traffic that makes it worse.

87
00:18:31.230 --> 00:18:52.970
Philip Sellers: Yeah. And I mean it. It's true. You can have a bottleneck, I mean, if we had a hundred Meg circuit or something like that. Yes, we may need to have a conversation, but you know, it also depends on how large of an environment, too. If if we're talking about 2030 users and 100 Meg, then probably okay. But thousands and thousands of users. That may be your bottleneck.

88
00:18:52.980 --> 00:19:02.490
Andy Whiteside: Alright. Next section now is horizon agent 2306. Enhance compatibility and user experience. Why does it matter to be talking about the agent.

89
00:19:03.110 --> 00:19:19.800
Philip Sellers: So the agent here is super important, because, as we step through this, you'll see that vmware is pushing more and more capabilities outside of just windows, you know, horizon does windows pretty doggone well.

90
00:19:19.820 --> 00:19:29.940
and Vmware wants to have more options, particularly around Linux, and also compatibility for the client. And Mac

91
00:19:30.150 --> 00:19:31.830
there's so much

92
00:19:31.840 --> 00:19:49.460
Philip Sellers: happening from an Ios and from Mac devices as users have choice, and so, being able to support those endpoints as well, is a huge thing for vmware. And again, this is responding to requests from the field requests from customers.

93
00:19:50.740 --> 00:19:55.759
Andy Whiteside: So on that note, let's talk about Linux and the actual agent for the Linux scenario.

94
00:19:55.950 --> 00:20:16.249
Philip Sellers: Well, you know I'm not a die hard penguin head over here. So for me, the beginning of this doesn't have a ton. You know, when I run Linux, it's generally used to be red hat but you know, they're building on support now, 2306 supports, rocky Linux.

95
00:20:16.250 --> 00:20:30.989
Philip Sellers: and it's one I hear a lot about. I couldn't tell you why. It's a better Linux, or why people prefer it. But support for Rocky is there? More importantly, across all Linux versions horizon desktop recording is there?

96
00:20:31.070 --> 00:20:58.249
Philip Sellers: That's key, especially when we're working with call centers and and places that need recording, either from a troubleshooting standpoint or just from a compliance standpoint. Sometimes it's just coaching and seeing what's going on in a session as a user works. And so these things can be added. Lastly, they they mentioned that integrated printer can also add a watermark

97
00:20:58.280 --> 00:21:08.060
Philip Sellers: to the beginning of a document set. So you know, very incremental type things. But you know, rocky fans resource.

98
00:21:10.020 --> 00:21:16.800
Andy Whiteside: Have you had a chance, Philip, to do a a single implementation pilot Poc with Linux being the

99
00:21:16.860 --> 00:21:18.180
Andy Whiteside: the virtual desktop.

100
00:21:18.390 --> 00:21:31.310
Philip Sellers: I've definitely done it in my lab. And it works great. Yeah. But I'm not having a ton of users asking for Linux. We are having some interesting conversations around

101
00:21:31.430 --> 00:21:39.039
Philip Sellers: browsers and Linux and being able to deliver those. Which is a very interesting use case just controlling

102
00:21:39.060 --> 00:21:45.620
Philip Sellers: malware controlling. Yeah, entry points for ransomware. And so

103
00:21:45.670 --> 00:22:01.429
Philip Sellers: yeah, that that may be something that we end up doing a lot more of we. We certainly have other people in the Vdi space who are making a lot of noise around Linux based browsing and how we deliver that for users right?

104
00:22:02.110 --> 00:22:15.760
Andy Whiteside: Alright next section enhancements in remote experience and codec support via blast blast being the the vmware remoting protocol. First section says, Vst, Rx. Feature allowance. What's that?

105
00:22:15.950 --> 00:22:19.510
Philip Sellers: Yeah. So these get pretty

106
00:22:19.540 --> 00:22:30.830
Philip Sellers: pretty geeky, really? Quick. You know the blast secure gateway. Remote experience. That's what Bsgr stands for. It's it's

107
00:22:31.960 --> 00:22:39.730
Philip Sellers: it is a set of configurable things within the blast protocol. You know. basically here.

108
00:22:39.760 --> 00:22:48.030
Philip Sellers: they're adding some additional things so that we can safeguard and restrict features at the Uag itself.

109
00:22:48.100 --> 00:23:16.489
Philip Sellers: The u unified access gateway is that edge device. It's a hardened Linux appliance, but it does have some features that we can set from a security standpoint like we can turn off USB direction universally from the uag, and so these features allow us, to to set this as a different set of policies for external users than what we allow for internal users. And I think that's the simplest way to put this is.

110
00:23:16.490 --> 00:23:26.500
Andy Whiteside: it gives us another place to kind of set those security settings for that external use case. A. V one. Codec enhancements.

111
00:23:26.810 --> 00:23:53.620
Philip Sellers: So this is neat. There's huff hardware offload hardware and code support. Now, in conjunction with Nvidia Gpus. So the the ability for Codex to be offloaded just improves performance. And so if you do have Gpus available within your horizon host, you can make use of that. They've also extended support for Linux clients to be able to use the

112
00:23:53.690 --> 00:23:57.540
Philip Sellers: underneath blast. So that's

113
00:23:57.810 --> 00:24:05.969
Philip Sellers: just an evolutionary step of you know us moving through technologies and improvements. You know.

114
00:24:05.980 --> 00:24:14.380
Philip Sellers: at some point something else will replace AV one. But it is probably the best codec we can use for encoding today.

115
00:24:14.560 --> 00:24:17.340
Andy Whiteside: Audio video sync improvements from Mac.

116
00:24:17.930 --> 00:24:34.699
Philip Sellers: Yeah. So this is something extending on the support that that vmware did for windows. You know there, there can be times with AV where things get a little out of sync, and you can kind of notice a little bit of latency

117
00:24:34.700 --> 00:24:57.739
Philip Sellers: within your sessions and stuff. So they've been working hard within windows, clients to to pick this up. And so now that's come to the Mac client as well. And so that's that's really what we're talking about is just making sure that we don't have a a dubbed film effect going on. When we're watching video inside of a Vdi session.

118
00:24:58.030 --> 00:24:58.720
Andy Whiteside: No.

119
00:24:59.640 --> 00:25:11.010
Andy Whiteside: and this is important to call out to. I mean this, this is Mac as an endpoint client.  we love our Mac users. But someday, someday, sometimes I got to get the windows stuff.

120
00:25:11.070 --> 00:25:40.540
Philip Sellers: Yeah, I mean, you look behind me. I've got Mac posters all over the wall. You know I love my Mac, and I will tell you I've tried to work from Mac office, and it just doesn't work for me. I need full blown excel, and it's no knock on what Microsoft delivers in excel for Mac. But there's just differences, and I much prefer to work in a Vdi all day long.

121
00:25:40.740 --> 00:25:47.670
Andy Whiteside: Because I get the right tools. Yeah. next one's 3D hardware support for Linux. Vdi.

122
00:25:48.020 --> 00:25:57.050
Philip Sellers: yeah, this is this is really nice, because, you know, the Linux agent on physical desktops did not support Gpus in the past. So

123
00:25:57.100 --> 00:26:16.900
Philip Sellers: this is something where you can harness that. And and we all know the benefit that comes from gpu acceleration. So having this for Linux delivery, that's gonna make things move forward at a lot faster speed again. A lot of these things I feel like is vmware investing?

124
00:26:17.030 --> 00:26:27.080
Andy Whiteside: For where things could go in the future? On a non windows operating system. Yeah. And Mac in the back end.

125
00:26:27.400 --> 00:26:36.639
Andy Whiteside: And look you, did you didn't say a non Microsoft Linux, I mean, could Microsoft at some point? In fact, they should especially in the security where we're living in. But

126
00:26:37.030 --> 00:26:40.159
Andy Whiteside: you know. Non, a non-windows option on the input, of course.

127
00:26:40.450 --> 00:26:46.880
Andy Whiteside: But on the back end, yeah, why not should be should be Linux all the way. That's the next best way to host

128
00:26:47.120 --> 00:26:50.010
Andy Whiteside: those client-server related apps.

129
00:26:50.300 --> 00:26:55.550
Andy Whiteside:  Linux makes ton of sense. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing

130
00:26:56.010 --> 00:27:00.490
Philip Sellers: we're seeing the world of containerized things starting to in in

131
00:27:00.930 --> 00:27:16.129
Philip Sellers: impact our world here in this space. And so it's gonna be really interesting to see in the next few years. You know how how we may be able to improve security by, you know, changing the borders of what we're running in on the back end.

132
00:27:16.520 --> 00:27:30.420
Philip Sellers: Alright, Philip, couple more here enhanced the Mac and Linux support abilities. We talked in the endpoints here, the back end, obviously the endpoint. Right troubleshooting, you know any of those

133
00:27:30.940 --> 00:27:40.189
Philip Sellers:  disconnect, or or you know, black screen where you just don't get output coming to your machine. So it's really around logging

134
00:27:40.390 --> 00:27:48.549
Andy Whiteside: and then finally, I think this last one we'll cover is high definition and high dynamic range for hevc Codex.

135
00:27:48.600 --> 00:27:52.280
Andy Whiteside: Hip. Do you pronounce that HVEV. C. Or HIV.

136
00:27:53.090 --> 00:28:13.070
Philip Sellers: You know, I actually don't know how to pronounce it. So we'll we'll go with HE. DC. Codex just to be safe. Maybe maybe somebody can comment. And let us know how you actually say it. But yeah, I mean high definition how to arrange. Yeah, we, we saw this come out on Tvs.

137
00:28:13.090 --> 00:28:15.990
Philip Sellers: First, you know our our video

138
00:28:16.220 --> 00:28:37.670
Philip Sellers: applications for movies and having greater color depth. But in business it has a lot of applicability, especially in like graphics, houses and places that are doing color grading. And so, you know, even, you know, possibly in engineering and architecture applications where they're building, you know large things. And

139
00:28:37.790 --> 00:28:57.329
Philip Sellers: they need to be able to see shading. And and, you know, build out these things. So these Codecs. Just help but it's a response to where we've gone from a hardware perspective. The things we just saw in the living room have now moved to the enterprise. And now we've got monitors and things with with these capabilities.

140
00:28:58.030 --> 00:29:09.149
Andy Whiteside: I guess historically, we would have dummy this down, but now we're allowing it if we turn it on. And then, of course, that's when Gpus in our back end systems, either a shared or even a physical pass through become

141
00:29:09.320 --> 00:29:10.320
Andy Whiteside: more important

142
00:29:10.660 --> 00:29:16.450
Philip Sellers: it is, and and you know we've we've seen a lot in the endpoints change you know, with

143
00:29:16.570 --> 00:29:29.719
Philip Sellers: OLED displays. And then, whatever came after that, I can't keep up with the acronyms in it. But yeah, we have those in our hands with phones and and ipads and android tablets. Those

144
00:29:29.820 --> 00:29:41.090
Philip Sellers: those have been some of the first adopters of of this technology when it comes to superior colors and and depth and things so pretty cool to to see.

145
00:29:41.940 --> 00:30:00.830
Andy Whiteside: Alright, look, we got a couple more minutes here, let's hit the unified communication piece, and then we'll wrap it up for part one I guess it's you can't go without saying that in today's age you need to be able to use a centralized, presented virtual desktop or app solution. But you also need to be able to meet remotely with tons of people simultaneously.

146
00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:08.679
Andy Whiteside: And that's where unified communications comes in simulcast streaming for superior quality with Microsoft teams.

147
00:30:08.810 --> 00:30:20.240
Philip Sellers: Yeah, so simulcast streaming is is interesting. It's a way of syncing up things when you're doing kind of a coordinated  stream. And so

148
00:30:20.500 --> 00:30:33.390
Philip Sellers: now, with this, each participant E, each participants gonna independently connect into the call and and it will automatically bring things together. So you know, this is really trying to to help.

149
00:30:34.130 --> 00:30:35.360
Philip Sellers: The

150
00:30:36.540 --> 00:30:46.380
Philip Sellers:  Awkwardness, I guess, is the right word, the awkwardness sometimes of of doing these live events and things. Because.

151
00:30:46.600 --> 00:30:52.020
Philip Sellers: yeah, I saw comedians make fun of this, especially in the beginning of Covid. You know, you know.

152
00:30:52.720 --> 00:31:03.980
Philip Sellers: making fun of how etiquette happens, how we act on these calls. And so this is just technology responding to help us

153
00:31:05.050 --> 00:31:19.650
Philip Sellers: provide a better experience as we, we kind of create these live events. And you know, th, this is one, and we don't use the teams platform for it here. But it's one where we do a ton of workshops and webinars and things, and so we run into it a lot.

154
00:31:19.650 --> 00:31:38.910
Andy Whiteside: and it. You know, the simulcast feature from teams is pretty cool and and different than what we had in some of the other platforms. Well, it's just a matter of time before we consider using teams. When we feel like it's ready for that. Yeah. Well, you know, we've made a huge step forward in the past week. I don't know if you tried. The new teams client, but there's a new optimized

155
00:31:38.980 --> 00:31:46.940
Philip Sellers: runs, better less resources version of teams that is starting to make its way out into the wild. And it's pretty good

156
00:31:47.050 --> 00:31:57.820
Andy Whiteside: next one, says Mac. Clients get teams, background blur. You would assume that has been around for a while, but not necessarily in the Vdi world. Sounds like we're treating our Mac friends as first class citizens on that one.

157
00:31:57.950 --> 00:32:08.819
Philip Sellers: Yeah, the teams calls with the blurred background. I mean, we we get take it for granted. In Zoom, for instance, it made its way into teams. And now we can do that with

158
00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:20.159
Philip Sellers: the the experience and offload from a horizon client. So if some of these features. And we've talked about this on the podcast before. You see, features were

159
00:32:20.430 --> 00:32:38.729
Philip Sellers: delayed. Certainly not. First there, when we we went into Covid. And so a lot of these optimizations to make you see work. Well, have continued to develop over time. This is just another feature being added in for parity. During an offload session.

160
00:32:38.890 --> 00:32:42.859
Andy Whiteside: Next, one is screen snipping on teams for Mac client, what does this mean?

161
00:32:43.250 --> 00:32:54.699
Philip Sellers: Yeah. So now, we can actually do screenshots and things like that from a a Bdr running in full screen. For some reason this was always just a a little problem.

162
00:32:54.840 --> 00:33:16.740
Philip Sellers: you know, it worked most of the time, but then there were times where it created like a black void. When you you tried to screenshot it, and so now the screenshot is taken on the end point first and then saved to the vm, so they're changing the way that it works inside of the client. The the horizon software client on Mac

163
00:33:16.810 --> 00:33:19.249
Philip Sellers: to make this a little more reliable

164
00:33:19.950 --> 00:33:22.310
Andy Whiteside: breakout rooms in teams.

165
00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:34.470
Philip Sellers: Yeah, I don't know a ton of people that use breakout rooms. Yeah, I've I've used them a couple of times. This is definitely more of a conferencing type feature. So

166
00:33:34.740 --> 00:33:42.970
Philip Sellers: now there's support for that within the offloaded client for horizon on Mac.

167
00:33:43.200 --> 00:33:49.610
Andy Whiteside: Actually, no, this one's not just Mac. This one's across the board, actually, right? It's left to our reactions and teams.

168
00:33:49.640 --> 00:34:18.909
Philip Sellers: Yeah, we we love our emojis, we we've I've talked to educator friends about how? you know, kids these days. God, that feels old to say, kids these days use their emojis. But yeah, I think about our collade man, Andy. And we've we've got that in one of our communication apps. And that's just our our way of saying way to go breaking through. It's awesome.

169
00:34:18.960 --> 00:34:40.779
Philip Sellers: so you know. Now you've got those reactions. During our our last quarterly meeting of the whole team, I saw a lot of people using emojis, and, you know, rallying behind friends and announcements and things that we made as a company. And so I think this is great to have that kind of feedback and feature across the board for the offloaded

170
00:34:40.800 --> 00:34:42.730
Andy Whiteside: same experience.

171
00:34:43.659 --> 00:34:52.989
Andy Whiteside: Yeah. one of my podcasts, we can talk about the Us. Government spend a million dollars or 20 million dollars or something for, like one of the universities to study emojis.

172
00:34:53.020 --> 00:34:55.030
Andy Whiteside: you know it's it's just a reality.

173
00:34:55.440 --> 00:34:56.929
Philip Sellers: it is, I mean.

174
00:34:57.270 --> 00:35:05.669
Philip Sellers: who would have thought these little pictures? Would, you know quickly take over the world. But yeah, they have their own language. And

175
00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:08.810
Philip Sellers: yeah, I think it was telling a few years ago when

176
00:35:09.240 --> 00:35:19.209
Philip Sellers:  apple came out with their release, and it like quadrupled or quintupled the number of emojis that you had

177
00:35:19.410 --> 00:35:30.669
and then you've got all the different variations and permutations for each one of these. So yeah, it's it's a while kind of thing. But it's how we communicate these days.

178
00:35:31.080 --> 00:35:39.009
Andy Whiteside: Alright, Philip, I'm gonna pause. This there, that's part one. We'll cover the horizon client updates in a minute or next time for part 2.

179
00:35:40.140 --> 00:35:54.590
Andy Whiteside: That sounds good. Thanks so much, Andy. Yeah. Hope you enjoy the rest of your week, and I look forward to finishing this conversation. amazing to watch the amount of progress horizon vmware is making with horizon product.

180
00:35:54.620 --> 00:36:04.909
Philip Sellers: Yeah. I mean, if there's any clear signal, this is one where they're not sitting idle, they're they're very busy. They're very productive. So

181
00:36:04.920 --> 00:36:07.709
Andy Whiteside: certainly, we're all gonna be watching. Yup.

182
00:36:07.930 --> 00:36:16.650
Andy Whiteside: yeah, don't let the broadcom think in the way the technology advancements there that trains keeping on absolutely. Yeah. Alright, sir, enjoy the rest of your week.

183
00:36:17.030 --> 00:36:18.380
Philip Sellers: See? Y'all, next time.