By default, they are expected to be installed on dedicated, physical hardware, and not separated from their intended users by networks and display protocols. The following updates were made to this guide. 1 In VMware Horizon, when using PCoIP Secure Gateway on the Connection Server or Security Server. NVIDIA H.264 with HighColorAccuracy To collect logs on a Mac, you can use the. MinBandwidthKbp and MaxBandwidthKbps also impact all services, including audio and file transfer, while MaxBandwidthKbpsPerMegaPixelSlope only limits the bandwidth used to transfer the screen contents. To use Blast Extreme, the virtual or physical desktop pool or RDSH server farm must first be configured to use the protocol as the default, or be configured to allow users to choose it. This will reduce both network bandwidth and CPU utilization. Updated product documentation links to use Horizon 8 documentation. Screen 0/1 @ Resolution: 3840 x 2160, New in Horizon 8 (2106): HEVCwith High Dynamic Range (HDR) Encoding, VNCSERVER-WIN32: Enabled HDR on display \\.\DISPLAY9 NVIDIA, including GTX 10xx and 20xx series models, AMD, including Radeon RX and Vega RX models, Intel, including Intel HD Graphics 530, UHD Graphics 620, and Iris Plus Graphics 650. The VMware Workspace ONE and Horizon Reference Architecture guide provides guidance for architecting Workspace ONE and Horizon deployments. The script will override the blast settings for users with an existing prefs.txt file without overriding the remaining settings. Chris Halstead co-authored the original version of this white paper. The Horizon Performance Tracker does not currently display the codec currently being used per screen by the encoder switch. When client-drive redirection (CDR) is enabled by the administrator, by default, the traffic is side-channeled on the Blast Extreme channel. Be certain to test key applications and multimedia content before embarking on widespread deployment. Highlight the Security Server, then click the menu named More Commands and click Prepare for Upgrade or Reinstallation. JPG/PNG can also be configured to use build-to-lossless mode. Note, however, that the encoder switch cannot currently be used with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) or when H.264 and H.264 with High Color Accuracy encoding is offloaded to an NVIDIA GPU. hosts to support other tasks, which ultimately increases scalability. 8 Use View Administrator to configure the Blast External URL setting to use for the Blast Secure Gateway on the applicable View Connection Server instances and security servers. Using articles, videos, and labs, this activity path provides the fastest way to learn Workspace ONE! Explore how VMware can help solve an IT team's most pressing digital workspace challenges. Before tuning Blast Extreme, it is critical to properly size and optimize the virtual desktops, physical desktops, Microsoft RDSH servers, and supporting infrastructure. While typically supporting just a single user, most households do not yet have LAN-speed Internet connections (gigabit Ethernet). While most of our environment is running PCoIP, we have also tested with BLAST. This connection is from the client to UDP port 8443 on the Unified Access Gateway. Blast-Worker-SessionID#.txt. Most Macs, laptops, and Windows PCs manufactured in 2013 or later. This not only provides a genuine hardware GPU to accelerate system and application graphics, it also frees the virtual CPUs for other tasks, helping to improve user experience and system scalability. You can increase the rate, up to 60 FPS, by using the Windows Registry setting. Entitle users to desktops and published applications. (which like all VMware flings, is not officially supported). Blast Extreme was carefully designed to provide an excellent out-of-the-box experience, with no additional configuration required in almost all cases. Testing has shown this enables smooth 4K video playback without need for hardware GPUs. EUC Solutions Exchange on VMware CODE is the best place to find and share snippets. With Horizon 7 version 7.12, support for using Blast Extreme with physical desktop machines running Windows 10 versions 1903 and later was added. These components include the transport protocol and display protocol codec: For details about the various transport protocols, codecs, image formats, and types of compression that Blast Extreme uses, depending on the type of screen content, see Blast Extreme Technology, in the VMware Blast Extreme Optimization Guide. Chris is EUC Staff Architect, End-User-Computing Technical Marketing, VMware. HEVC requires NVIDIA GPUs to be installed in the ESXi hosts to offload encoding. Visit these other VMware sites for additional resources and content. I ended up writing a logon script to solve the problem until VMware fixes it. Although JPG/PNG and the Blast Codec are ideal for ensuring still image quality, this capability hinders their ability to efficiently support rapidly moving screen content and motion graphics such as streaming video, video editing, and gaming. MaxBandwidthKbpsPerMegaPixelSlope The maximum bandwidth used to transfer screen contents per megapixel remoted, in kilobits per second. (maximum display bandwidth) to the maximum desired bandwidth utilization per user. USB redirection traffic can also be side-channeled in the Blast Extreme port between the Unified Access Gateway and agent. This is typically achieved using a Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) marking of AF41. Used together, the JPG/PNG codec is ideally suited for typical Windows and Linux applications, including Microsoft Office. The VMware Blast ADMX template file ( vdm_blast.admx) contains policy settings for the VMware Blast display protocol. Use of a solid color with no image or pattern is recommended. And limiting frame rate for multimedia use cases such as streaming video simply impairs playback quality and user experience. The table in each section outlines the settings configured by the application template. The same workload on a 4K display requires up to six times the resources required by 1920 x 1080p, regardless of display protocol and codec used. and includes optimization templates for both Windows desktop and server operating systems. Introduced in Horizon 8 (2106): Enable support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) color. format. TCP 443 is used between the client and the Unified Access Gateway. Figure 3: Tunneled Connection from Client to Agent Through the Connection Server. In the client VMware Blast settings, Allow High Efficiency Video Decoding (HEVC) and Allow High Dynamic Range Decoding (HDR) needs to be turned on. Fortunately, this processing can be offloaded from the CPU to graphics cards (GPU) in the device. Codec settings can also be set in the registry of the templates used to deploy pools of desktops and farms of RDSH servers. Note: for all settings in the following table, if the key is set to 1 support is enabled; if it is set to 0 support is turned off. Get all the Tech Zone demos in one place. The encoder switch ensures that the most efficient codec is dynamically used based on screen content. The Blast Codec should be evaluated for use whenever network bandwidth or display protocol CPU utilization is a primary concern. For a detailed list of Blast Extreme features, see the VMware Blast Extreme topic in the VMware Horizon Architecture Planning guide. If possible, prevent or encourage only limited use of bandwidth-intensive services such as file transfer. The actual size of the cache will be the lesser of this value, and the value of EncoderImageCacheSizeKB set on the agent side but cannot exceed half of the available RAM. Each setting is a string value (REG_SZ). Set. EncoderHEVCEnabled Enables or turns off support for the HEVC codec (H.265). Click the View All button for the full list. On the VM registry I configured the following GPO values: In addition, I also tried to manually configure this registry setting: Configuring the Client Clipboard Memory Size (value of 8192 decimal) [despite the fact that is was configured in the above GPO When viewing the Blast logs on the VM I see the following entry: Blast-Worker-SessionId1.log If you have a GPU to offload H. 264 and the available bandwidth, you can change this setting to reduce the . If multimedia redirection (MMR) is enabled, this traffic uses TCP port 9427 between the client and agent. Open "Device Manager" Right click on the VMware Display adapter and open "Properties" On the "Driver" tab, select "Uninstall" In testing this has been shown to decrease the amount of network bandwidth used by Blast Extreme. 3 enable file download only, 0 turned off in both directions If USB redirection is enabled, this traffic, this traffic uses TCP port 443 from the client to the Horizon Tunnel on the Unified Access Gateway. Find assets to help you develop an adoption strategy that engages employees through careful messaging, education, and promotion. These settings apply to HTML Access and all Horizon Client platforms. Configuration Settings for Administrators, Tuning Blast Extreme for Wide Area Networks, Guidance for Work-from-Home and Home-Office-to-Cloud Use Cases, VMware Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure, A solid understanding of desktop and application virtualization, A good working knowledge of networking and infrastructure, covering topics such as Active Directory, Group Policy, and supporting technologies. What about frame rate? Testing has revealed this reduces desktop and per-user RDSH server CPU utilization by up to 60 percent and per-user session bandwidth by up to 80 percent. H.264 will provide support for full-motion graphics, whereas the encoder switch will ensure that the most efficient codec is dynamically used for each screen based on screen content. Screen 0/1 @ Resolution: 3840 x 2160. The connection continues from the Unified Access Gateway to UDP port 22443 on the agent. It is important to recognize, however, that no display protocol can provide a perfect LAN experience over typical WANs. Use cases of this caliber nearly always require hardware GPUs to provide the necessary graphics capabilities and acceleration. Horizon Client 5.2 requires a special client setting. NVIDIA Encoded H.264(H.264 Offloaded to GPU). These were typically not sized to handle organizations rapidly shifting their workforces to work-from-home deployments. Figure 3: Group Policy Settings for Blast Extreme. When client-drive redirection (CDR) is enabled by the administrator, this traffic goes through the Horizon Tunnel on the Unified Access Gateway appliance. However, some use cases and situations require additional tuning, especially for wide area networks (WANs). Although Blast Extreme is designed to provide an excellent, out-of-the-box configuration for most use cases, some network conditions and applications require additional tuning. To determine whether the session is using UDP or TCP, review the latest entries in the Blast-Worker-SessionId<#>.log file, and look for the entries such as those shown in the following table. Horizon is a complete solution that delivers, manages, and protects virtual desktops, RDSH-published desktops, and applications across devices and locations. Monitors with higher screen resolutions, and use cases with multiple monitors, require more system resources, especially CPU and network bandwidth. But it can also be used to support graphically intensive applications by leveraging the desktops physical GPU. Blast Unity Touch Easily browse, search and open Windows applications and files from mobile devices with intuitive tools, easier navigation and search bar providing quick access to files. It also causes some screen content to letterbox, which may impair user experience. If the UDP connection is successful, Blast assesses the networks condition to decide whether to use TCP or UDP for session traffic. The range is 136, where 1 is the highest quality. This is great for users that use their own devices with all kinds of displays and DPI settings and such. It also tells whether a GPU is required on the client or server. Broad client support, including Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, Chrome, and web (HTML Access) clients. Testing has shown this reduces the bandwidth required to support such content by up to 80 percent. Note: For more information about external client connections, see Network Ports in VMware Horizon. Encoder Switch: JPG/PNG and H.264 with HCA. VMware Blast performance and end-user experience acceleration Blast is now the new default. This configuration is ideal for digital photography, design, and video production but requires an NVIDIA hardware GPU to support HEVC. You can combine GPU with PCoIP and blast settings to adjust video performance, frame rate (frames per second), i mage quality level, based on your available . However, it does increase client CPU utilization by up to 200 percent for the duration of the redirection (from an average of 8 to 24 percent on a sample test system). (Requires NVIDIA GPU). However, compared to other codecs, H.264 requires more processing power to perform its encoding and decoding operations. Diagrams show which ports are used at which locations, and the numbered lists that follow the diagrams show what is happening at each connection. Screen 0/1 @ Resolution: 3840 x 2160. If users experience any of these issues, HCA can be enabled to improve quality while preserving H.264s multimedia efficiency. General Settings for Virtual Machines The Connection Server returns connection information for the virtual desktop or RDSH server that provides remote applications (on TCP port 443). They are downloaded as part of the VMware-Horizon-Extras-Bundle. VNCRegionEncoder_Create: region encoder h264 4:4:4. This is also due to a limitation of desktop-class video drivers. This ensures that all systems deployed from these templates are configured properly for Blast Extreme. Remember that you are separating the user and their keyboard, monitor, and mouse from the system they are actually using. Set up the VM with general settings, as follows, and then further configure according to the type of graphics acceleration you are using. My email is [email protected] Figure 2: Codec Options Available in the Horizon Client. Most configuration settings can be made directly in the Windows Registry of each virtual and physical desktop and RDSH server using your preferred tool for making such registry changes. The App Volume Manager is a console for managing configuration, creation of AppStacks, and assignment of AppStacks and writable volumes. Access technical, third-party tips, tricks, and how-tos. Why it is only showing this low settings? After the policy is applied, the settings are stored in the registry key HKLM\Software\Policies\VMware, Inc.\VMware Blast\config. Therefore, images compressed using JPG cannot be decoded and restored to the same quality they had before compression. In other words, the settings do not directly enable the feature, such as forcing all connections to use H.264. If UDP is enabled on the client, the Unified Access Gateway, and the agent (default), the client attempts to make a UDP connection to the agent via the Unified Access Gateway. When using Blast Extreme, Unified Access Gateway can be used to bridge between IPv6 VMware Horizon Clients and an IPv4 backend and agents. Another important aspect to consider is the size of the monitor (or monitors) to be used, and their screen resolutions. Actual results will depend on the application workloads and usage patterns. If you are using Horizon Client for macOS 5.0 or later, this Horizon Collector functionality is included in Horizon Client. Start with these recommendations before moving on to more specialized settings. HTML5 multimedia redirection transfers this screen content to the client as HTML5 code instead of far less efficient display protocol traffic. Added guidance on the benefits of HTML5 multimedia redirection. Since first joining VMware in 2008, Mark has focused on helping customers succeed with their end-user computing endeavors. VMware recommends configuring QoS to prioritize Blast Extreme one level below Voice over IP traffic, commonly the highest prioritized application. The actual size of the cache will be the lesser of this value, and the value of DecoderImageCacheSizeKB set on the client but cannot exceed half of the available RAM. The client-side settings work in conjunction with the agent-side settings, which administrators can configure, as described in How to Configure Blast Extreme, in the VMware Blast Extreme Optimization Guide. Join the community by engaging in forums, events, and our premier community programs. Blast Extreme is a display protocol built by VMware to deliver an immersive, feature-rich experience for end users across devices, locations, media, and network connections. These settings are used to configure the address at which clients can reach the specific server when tunneling is in use. Deselect all other codecs and codec options. Set, Turn off audio unless absolutely required. More than 8 virtual CPUs might be required to support the most demanding use cases, especially video gaming, even with NVIDIA hardware GPUs. Continuing the theme of useful registry key settings you can bake into your image or manually configure for some quick testing, below is a list of corresponding Blast Extreme registry settings to the Horizon 7. For more information see. A codec is used to encode and decode the screen content transferred by Blast Extreme. Begin your journey leveraging cloud-based services for desktop environments. To provide secure access from external locations and over the Internet, VMware Unified Access Gateway is deployed to provide secure edge services. Incorporated various recent suggestions from reviewers. 4 If using Blast Secure Gateway 5 Not using Blast Secure Gateway 6 Standard encoded RMI 7 RMI over SSL Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > VMware View Agent Configuration > VMware HTML5 Features > VMware WebRTC Redirection Features > Enable Media Optimization for Microsoft Teams. Deploy virtual desktops and RDSH servers on fast virtual disks (all-flash or flash-optimized). We also frequently discover that the underlying ESXi hosts are overutilized and are exhibiting clear indicators of problems impacting user experience such as high CPU Ready times. The Horizon Clients can use either IP version 4 or 6. If full-motion graphics must be supported, such as streaming video, use the encoder switch to dynamically switch between the Blast Codec or JPG/PNG and the H.264 codec. Note: This parameter does not impact the bandwidth of other services such as audio and file transfer, which are unrelated to transfer of the screen. This means that some of the original image data is discarded (lost) as part of the compression process. Update for VMware Horizon 7 version 7.10. Using articles, videos, and labs, this activity path provides the fastest way to learn Workspace ONE! Screen 0/1 @ Resolution: 3840 x 2160. Look for Desktop & End-User Computing and under this category, select Download Product under VMware Horizon. HDR also requires Horizon 8 (210) or later with Horizon Agent build 2106-8.3.0-18287218 or later and Horizon Client build 2106-8.3.0-18287501 or later. DecoderImageCacheSizeKB Introduced in Horizon 8 (2111).Set on the client. Then select the appropriate Horizon version and click Go To Downloads. It may be a good idea to completely uninstall VMware Tools and re-install. If the Horizon Performance Tracker cannot be used or does not provide the desired details, the most effective way to verify the Blast Extreme configuration is to examine the log files on the virtual desktops, physical desktops, or RDSH servers. The latest innovation for Blast Extreme is the Blast Codec. Figure 2: Internal Connection from Client to Agent Using Blast Extreme. Because this Dynamic Environment Manager functionality needs to evolve to match advances in Blast Extreme, the author of this guide recommends not using the Blast policies included with Dynamic Environment Manager until covered in a future guide release. Requires NVIDIA GPU. The encoder switch also supports High Color Accuracy (HCA) for H.264, enabling it to be used for multimedia content that exhibits color problems or lack of clarity with H.264 alone. General settings include both Computer Configuration and User Configuration settings. Depending on the environment and design requirements, these external URLs can be configured in several different ways: Using multiple ports on a single address (Port Address Translation) Fortunately, Blast Extreme can be tuned to handle all of these situations. The fewer packets the display protocol has to transfer across the network, the fewer that will be affected by high latency. It is extremely important to recognize that optimizing for higher quality nearly always results in more system resources being used, not less. HCA turns off 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, providing a 4:4:4 sample rate instead. Although this strategy makes for reliable delivery, the process adds overhead. The following table details the requirements for each codec. Consider using the HEVC codec. The very latest in NVIDIA's lineup of GPUs, both these cards are . Explore custom assets and resources for federal, state, and local government framework solutions here, including industry-leading, public-sector solutions for endpoint management security, virtualization, cloud, and mobile, commercial requirements, industry standards, government certification, and accreditation programs. Fix the network if packet loss is greater than 5 percent. The following tuning recommendations apply to all WAN conditions. This is due to the much higher graphical quality this hardware-enabled configuration provides. : NVIDIA GPUs will also offload H.264 and HEVC encoding. Instructions for configuring all of the Blast Extreme codec options are provided in the next chapter, How to Configure Blast Extreme. . Figure 4: External Connection from Client to Agent Through the Unified Access Gateway. This guide is intended for IT administrators and implementors who want to provide end users with the best possible remote display experience. A monitor at 4K resolution requires up to six times the bandwidth for the same application workload as 1080p. The VMware virtual desktop pool setting in the Horizon administrative console You'll need to set the video resolution and the monitor account to their maximum values. Note: Dynamic Environment Manager also provides optimization templates for Blast Extreme. Keep in mind that this may complicate WAN use cases.