Horizon – Upgrade to v. 2506

Release date: November 12th 2025

Welcome to my Omnissa Horizon series. The new version of Horizon, 2506, was GA on July 31st 2025. According to the Horizon 8 2506 Release Notes, vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 are no longer supported, along with several other new features and enhancements. Furthermore there are a lot of changes made due to the rebranding from VMware to Omnissa, as described here: Rebranding Changes in Omnissa Horizon Products (6000681)

IMPORTANT NOTES

• The Horizon 2506 Agent is now supported with both the 2503 ESB Server and the 2506 Server versions. See Compatibility Matrix for Various Versions of Horizon 8 Components for more details.
• Horizon 8 is not supported with vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7, which are both past the end of General Support. Horizon 8 Instant Clones are incompatible with vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 so you must upgrade to vSphere 7.0 or later before upgrading to Horizon 8 if you are using Instant Clones.
• Microsoft security update (KB 5014754) will impact customers using certificate-based authentication to Horizon 8, such as smartcard authentication. Horizon 8 True SSO is not impacted by this security update. If you have applied this update to your Windows Domain Controllers but have not mapped certificates to one of the strong mapping types described in the Microsoft KB, then users will be denied authentication after Full Enforcement mode is activated by Microsoft in a future Windows Update. See the above KB for further details, including the expected Full Enforcement mode date. To address this issue, Horizon 8 2309 introduced the ability for administrators to configure strong certificate mappings from the Horizon console. If you are using certificate-based authentication, upgrade to Horizon 8 2309 or later in order to configure certificate mappings. See KB 91595 for details.
• Horizon Agent no longer supports Windows Server 2012 R2 within a guest OS whether it be for new or existing deployments. Also starting with Horizon 8 2312, the use of Windows Server 2012 R2 is no longer supported for Horizon Connection Server and Horizon Enrollment Server deployments. Please use Windows Server 2016 or later. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/windows-server-2012-r2-end-of-support for details.
• Microsoft released security updates KB5008383 and KB5020276. While Omnissa has determined that KB5008383 does not impact Horizon Full Clones and Instant Clones, KB 5020276 does if you have selected “Allow Reuse of Existing Computer Accounts”. See KB 92214 for details.

Anyhow, in this section I will describe how I upgraded my Horizon infrastructure to v. 2506. But first, at what point in an upgrade procedure should we upgrade the Horizon Components? According to Omnissa’s official documentation, this should be done as shown below.

Prior to upgrading Horizon, I check out Product Interoperability Matrix to see that my planned upgrade path is supported.

The procedure used for upgrading is as follows:

1. Clients
   • Clients-repository
   • Dell Wyse Horizon Package
2. Load Balancer – HAProxy
3. Connection servers
4. Enrollment Server
5. UAG
6. vSphere (N/A)
   • NVIDIA Host Drivers (N/A)
7. OSOT MDT Plugin
8. Agents:
   1. Windows Agent
      • NVIDIA Guest Driver
   2. Linux Agent
      • NVIDIA Guest Driver
9. GPO-Bundle

Horizon 8 Documentation:

• Horizon 8 Release Notes
• Horizon 8 Docs

Omnissa Documentation:

• Rebranding Changes in Omnissa Horizon Products (6000681)
• Horizon 8 Upgrade Overview
• Product Interoperability Matrix
• Omnissa Product 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.