Introduction

The Cloud Pod Architecture feature uses standard Horizon components to provide cross-datacenter administration, global and flexible user-to-desktop mapping, high availability desktops, and disaster recovery capabilities. With the Cloud Pod Architecture feature, multiple pods can be linked together to provide a single large desktop and application brokering and management environment.

A pod consists of a set of Connection Server instances, shared storage, a database server, and the vSphere and network infrastructures required to host desktop and application pools. In a traditional Horizon implementation, you manage each pod independently. With the Cloud Pod Architecture feature, you can join together multiple pods to form a single Horizon implementation called a pod federation. A pod federation can span multiple sites and datacenters and simultaneously simplify the administration effort required to manage a large-scale Horizon deployment.

Connection Server instances in a pod federation use the Global Data Layer to share key data. Shared data includes information about the pod federation topology, user and group entitlements, policies, and other Cloud Pod Architecture configuration information. In a Cloud Pod Architecture environment, shared data is replicated on every Connection Server instance in a pod federation. Entitlement and topology configuration information stored in the Global Data Layer determines where and how desktops are allocated across the pod federation. Horizon sets up the Global Data Layer on each Connection Server instance in a pod federation when you initialize the Cloud Pod Architecture feature.

If any of the VMware Horizon Connection Server instances in a Pod fail or exhibit unhealthy performance patterns, it may delay or even deny users access to desktops, thus severely impacting the user experience with the desktop service. To avoid such adversities, the operations and all-round health of each of the VMware Horizon View Connection server instance within the VMware Horizon Pod should be continuously monitored. The eG Enterprise helps administrators in continuous monitoring of VMware Horizon Pod.