On January 28th, 2025, Omnissa released Horizon 2412. New 2412 versions were already released in the past for App Volumes, ThinApp, Dynamic Environment Manager, and Workspace One Access, but now they also released the latest version for Horizon. Please carefully plan this upgrade before you start upgrading your existing environment. Some significant rebranding changes could seriously impact your existing environment.
The first thing to note is that this version is NOT an Extended Service Branch (ESB), so if you are relying on ESB releases, then you should not update to this release and wait for the next ESB release. The latest ESB release at the time of writing is still version 2312n, although you can use the 2412 Agent version in the 2312 release and still be ESB compliant! See also Compatibility Matrix for Various Versions of Horizon 8 Components. Nevertheless, it’s still worth to read on, because all changes mentioned below, also apply to any subsequent version that will be released in the future.
This blog post is not about new and changed features in the 2412 version but focuses on the impact of the rebranding changes in this version. For the full release notes, check the release notes of each product at the end of this post. Also, other Horizon products like App Volumes, Unified Access Gateway, Dynamic Environment Manager have been rebranded and those upgrades should also be planned carefully. A full list of changes is included at the end of this post.
Why?
As you probably already know, after Broadcom acquired VMware in 2023, they sold the EUC part of VMware, which became an independent company in 2024, called Omnissa. As such, we don’t talk about VMware Horizon anymore, but Omnissa Horizon. In the 2412 release, the Omnissa rebranding was completed. All possible references to VMware Horizon were replaced by Omnissa branded references, not only in the UI, but also in folder structures, registry keys, APIs, … As you can imagine, this could have a serious impact on your environment if not planned carefully.
What changed?
Besides the installers for Horizon, which have been renamed to include the Omnissa name, the folder structure was also renamed. This means, where Horizon was previously installed in c:\program files\VMware\VMware View\ it is now installed into c:\program files\Omnissa\Horizon\. So they are finally removing the “VMware View” folder name from the pre-7.x releases.
In the c:\programdata\ folder, they now use the subfolder Omnissa instead of VMware and the VDM subfolder has been renamed to Horizon. So the Horizon logs can now be found at c:\programdata\Omnissa\Horizon\logs instead of c:\programdata\VMware\VDM\logs.
Other naming changes include:
- ADAM DB was renamed from VMwareVDMDS(G) to OmnissaHzeDS(G)
- Registry keys were moved from “HKLM\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM” to “HKLM\Software\Omnissa\Horizon”.
- As a result of the registry changes, also the ADMX files have been changed with the naming and registry keys. This has a huge impact on your group policies!
- All the services have been renamed from “VMware Horizon View …” to “Omnissa Horizon …”
- Certificates are now created with the “Omnissa, LLC” organization instead of “VMware, Inc.”
What didn’t change?
Some things didn’t change in this release, namely:
- the utilities like vdmadmin, vdmutil, … did not change their names
- The REST and SOAP APIs for the connection server did not contain any VMware namings and thus stayed the same.
Upgrade notes – beware!
Group policy!!!
Before starting an upgrade of Horizon, you first need to install the new ADMX templates. Since all registry keys have been renamed, you need to create new GPO policies with the new settings, so they are still applied once the updated version is running. Once the upgrade is complete and no pre-2412 versions are running anymore (server, agent, client, …), you can remove the old GPOs.
Custom files
During an upgrade of a connection server to version 2412, the application is installed in the new folder structure. The upgrade will NOT copy any customized files from the previous installation to the new folders. So, if you have a custom locked.properties file for example, you will have to manually redo the necessary changes after the upgrade in the new folder.
The only exception is when you have installed Horizon in a non-default folder (e.g. d:\Horizon\Connection server\), the existing path will be reused and you don’t need to manually redo any custom changes.
Antivirus exclusions
If you have configured antivirus exclusions, be sure to update them with the new paths.
Conclusion
As you can see, upgrading to Horizon 2412 can go horribly wrong if you just start the upgrade without carefully planning and checking the changes regarding the folder names, registry keys, GPOs, …
Resources
- Release notes:
- Rebranding changes:
- Compatibility Matrix for Various Versions of Horizon 8 Components