Horizon 7.13.1 Instance and Horizon 8 2111 Instance on the Same vCenter Server

[dpalazeke]

Hello Everyone,

I am currently involved in a project where we are looking to upgrade a customer from Horizon 7.13.1 to Horizon 8 2111.  They have enough resources to build them side-by-side and slowly cut people over.  Their Horizon 7.13.1 environment utilizes linked clones and persona management.  We plan on moving them to Horizon 8 2111 with FSLogix profile containers.

I have read that it is not supported to run two Horizon instances that utilize Composer against the same vCenter Server, but I haven't been able to find anything concrete on running a non-Composer Horizon Instance on the same vCenter Server as a Composer Horizon instance.

Does anyone have any experience with this?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  The customer is on vSphere 7 U2.

Thank you,

Doug

[Jubish-Jose]

Pretty sure you have already seen https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/80673. 

We did this for switching from 7.12 to 8.2. 7.12 was on Composer and we switched to instant clones on 8.2 with FSLogix. We built another Horizon pod with 8.2 and after some testing, we pointed the users to the new pod. No issues were seen during this switch and all users are now on 8.2.

Having said that, I don't think its supported by VMware, so please do at your own risk.

[dpalazeke]

Thank you for the quick response.  VMware actually got back to me in a timely manner and reinforced your input:

"You are correct in that vCenter & Composer supported environments are required to have 1 to 1 relationship, the same is not a requirements for instant clones as per KB 80673 below.

While multiple vCenters are supported with a single Hz deployment the reverse as you mention, Sharing of a single vCenter Server across multiple Horizon Pods is not supported with Composer.

How to share a Single vCenter Server Across Multiple Horizon Pods : https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/80673

As there will be only 1 instance of Composer, while a cut over is being implemented with adequate resources available this should not pose too much of an issue in itself."

I'm a bit confused on the term Pod, I was just going to create a separate instance.  I'm not sure if the term is being used colloquially in this case, or if you have to actually create different pods.  Do you have any input there?  There is only one datacenter.

[sjesse]

A pod is basically a set of horizon servers and assoicated esxi servers for desktops. You tie pods together using the cloud pod architecture

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon/2106/horizon-architecture-planning/GUID-CE4019FE-0C43-462A...