VMware Horizon – Upgrade Horizon Agent to v. 2111

Release date: January 3rd 2022

Welcome to my VMware Horizon series. In this session I will describe how I upgraded the VMware Horizon Agent in my template to v. 2111. I start out by downloading the installation media from VMware Customer Connect

As I’ve gone over to using MDT to create templates, 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 2106 agent in the Deployment Share.

I close the Deployment Workbench MMC before I continue. To update the Horizon Agent in the Deployment Share I will first delete the existing agent and msi-folder from the Deployment Share

Next, I copy the new VMware Horizon Agent executable to the “HorizonAgent” folder in the Deployment Share. It is important to make sure that the executable isn’t blocked by Windows Security, therefore I right-click the exe-file, select Properties and tick the Unblock box, if it exists. This also applies to the other executable files under the “D:\DeploymentShare\VMware” folder.

When I now open the Deployment Workbench MMC, the new Horizon Agent will be identified and the msi-files will be automatically extracted.

As my task sequence is based on the osot.xml template, I will also have to edit this file

I locate the “Horizon Agent” step and adjust the name of the “ExeInstaller” to match the executable I copied in earlier

Once done, I open Deployment Workbench MMC and verify that the correct Horizon Agent is found, and update the deployment Share, before I run through the task sequence and push the new template to my desktop pool.

The last task when upgrading VMware Horizon, is to upgrade the clients. As I use a local client repository for this, I will proceed with upgrading the repository, posted here: VMware Horizon – Upgrade Horizon Client repository

VMware Horizon – Upgrades

VMware Horizon planning, deployment etc.

Official VMware Horizon 8 Documentation

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.