Horizon – Upgrade Horizon Windows Agent to v. 2412

Release date: February 14th 2025

Welcome to my Omnissa Horizon series. In this session I will describe how I upgraded the Horizon Windows Agent in my template to v. 2412. According to the Horizon 8 2412 Release Notes, these are the changes to the Horizon Agent:

Horizon Agent for Windows

Horizon Agent is supported on Windows 11 2024 Update (also known as Windows 11, version 24H2).

Starting with this release, user domain information is now collected and sent to Omnissa Intelligence when you have enabled the Horizon Agent Monitoring Service (hzMonService) to monitor Horizon Agent on Windows desktops and your deployment is integrated with Horizon Cloud Service – next-gen.

Starting with this release, additional metrics for Horizon Blast protocol are sent to Omnissa Intelligence when you have enabled the Horizon Agent Monitoring Service (hzMonService) to monitor Horizon Agent on Windows desktops and your deployment is integrated with Horizon Cloud Service – next-gen. The additional metrics sent to Omnissa Intelligence as Horizon Session metrics are:

Max Session Bandwidth: The maximum bandwidth for a Horizon Blast session. The default is 1 Gbps.

Min Session Bandwidth: The minimum bandwidth reserved for a Horizon Blast session. The default is 256 kbps.

Estimated Bandwidth (kbps): The maximum bandwidth used by all Horizon Blast session services, such as display, keyboard-and-mouse, file transfer, clipboard, etc.

Bandwidth Usagen (kbps): Realtime bandwidth usage in a Horizon Blast session.

RTT (kbps): Round trip time for network packets between the client and the agent.

According to Omnissa’s official documentation, this agent-upgrade should be done as step 11 in the supported update sequence.

I start out by downloading the installation media from Omnissa Customer Connect

As I’ve gone over to using MDT to create Horizon templates, described here: Automating Template Creation & Maintenance, I will update the Horizon Agent in the Deployment Share, and run through the task sequence to create a new template. Before I begin, I open the task sequence and can see that it has found the 2312.1 Agent in the Deployment Share.

After updating the MDT Plugin, as described here: Horizon – Upgrade OSOT MDT Plugin to v. 2412, the Plugin NO longer worked, so I decided to use a Powershell script for this step in the task sequence instead. The silent install parameters are available here: Silent Installation Properties for Horizon Agent for Windows. As the task-sequence copies the OSOT-folder (inside the DeploymentShare), to C:\OSOT earlier in the Task Sequence, I created the Powershell-script in the OSOT-folder and made a folder containing the install media.

The Powershell-script will unblock the exe-file and install the Horizon Agent using the silent install options I declare as arguments

_{$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"
$HzAgentExe = "Omnissa-Horizon-Agent-x86_64-2412-8.14.0-12994395200.exe"
$HzAgentArgs = "/s /v ""/qn ADDLOCAL=Core,NGVC,USB,RTAV,TSMMR,HelpDesk REBOOT=ReallySuppress /l*v C:\OSOT\horizon-agent-install.log"""

# Unblock Horizon Agent Installer
Write-output "======Unblock Executables....."
Unblock-File C:\OSOT\Install\HorizonAgent\$HzAgentExe -Confirm:$false -ErrorAction Stop

# Install Horizon Agent 
Write-output "======Install Horizon Agent....."
Try 
{
   Start-Process C:\OSOT\Install\HorizonAgent\$HzAgentExe -ArgumentList $HzAgentArgs -PassThru -Wait -ErrorAction Stop
}
Catch
{
   Write-Error "Failed to install the Horizon Agent"
   Write-Error $_.Exception
   Exit -1 
}}

I add the Powershell script as a step in my task sequence and run through it to update the Horizon Agent.

Once done, I run through the task sequence and push the new template to my desktop pool.

Having finished the Windows Agent upgrade, I can now proceed with upgrading the agent in my Linux template, covered here: Horizon – Upgrade Linux Agent to v. 2412

Omnissa Documentation:

Horizon – Upgrades

Horizon planning, deployment etc.

Disclaimer: Every tips/tricks/posting I have published here, is tried and tested in different it-solutions. It is not guaranteed to work everywhere, but is meant as a tip for other users out there. Remember, Google is your friend and don’t be afraid to steal with pride! Feel free to comment below as needed.

Release date: February 14th 2025

Del dette: