VMware Horizon – Upgrade to v. 2312

Release date: January 30th 2024

Welcome to my VMware Horizon series. The new version of VMware Horizon, 2312, was GA on January 23rd 2024. According to the VMware Horizon 8 2312 Release Notes, vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 are no longer supported, along with several other new features and enhancements.

IMPORTANT NOTES

• Horizon 8 2312 is not supported with vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7, which are both past the end of General Support.  Horizon 8 2312 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 2312 if you are using Instant Clones.
• TLS 1.3 is now supported on most Horizon 8 components and considered the preferred security protocol when operating in non-FIPS mode. However, the Connection Server 2312 release does not support TLS 1.3 and uses TLS 1.2 instead by default. Therefore, TLS 1.2 must remain enabled on components that interact directly with Connection Server.
• In FIPS mode, Horizon 8 2312 is compatible with all Horizon Client and Unified Access Gateway releases, including versions earlier than 2312. However, to use a Horizon Client version 2312 or later in FIPS mode, you must use Connection Server version 2312 or later; if using Unified Access Gateway, you must also use Unified Access Gateway 2312 or later. For more information, see VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 95144.
• Microsoft security update (KB 5014754) will impact customers using certificate-based authentication such as smartcards. If you have applied this update to your Windows Domain Controllers and if you have not mapped certificates to one of the strong mapping types described in the Microsoft KB, then users will be denied authentication when the full enforcement mode is activated by Microsoft.  See the above KB for details on the full enforcement mode date. To address this issue the Horizon 8 2309 release allowed administrators to configure certificate mappings to one of the strong types from the Horizon console. If you are using certificate-based authentication, then we recommend that you upgrade to this release to configure certificate mappings. See KB 91595 for details.In the 2312 release, we tested the impact of this Microsoft update on TrueSSO. You do not have to take any action after installing this Microsoft security update if you are using TrueSSO.
• Horizon Agent no longer supports Windows Server 2012 R2 in a guest OS for new and existing deployments. Starting with this release, 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 VMware 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 VMware Horizon infrastructure to v. 2312. But first, at what point in an upgrade procedure should we upgrade the VMware Horizon Components? According to VMware’s official documentation, this should be done as shown below.

Prior to upgrading Horizon, I check out VMware Product Interoperability Matrices 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 (No upgrade available)
2. Load Balancer – HAProxy
3. Upgrade Workspace One Access (No upgrade available)
4. Connection servers
5. Enrollment Server
6. Recording Server
7. UAG (No upgrade available)
8. vSphere
   • NVIDIA Host Drivers
9. OSOT MDT Plugin (No upgrade available)
10. Agents:
    1. Windows Agent
       • NVIDIA Guest Driver
    2. Linux Agent
       • NVIDIA Guest Driver
    3. Recording Agent
11. GPO-Bundle

VMware Documentation:

• VMware Horizon 8 2312 Release Notes

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.