This guide still applies with Horizon 7.9!

Hi to all fellow VDI peeps.

This week VMware released a load of new EUC updates. Will put up the upgrade guides for the products below and starting with Horizon View.

• Horizon View 7
• AppVolumes 3.0
• UEM 9

Here I will show you how to upgrade your current Horizon View 6.X to 7.

Best practices:
The upgrade order is as follows:
1. Composer Server.
2. Connection Servers.
3. Security Servers.

Best is also to stop current running pools and provisioning just in case.
Create a REAL Backup or if you don’t have Veeam or something else, a snapshot.
While you’re at it, update your machines with the Windows updates.
Know what you are doing. Obvious 🙂

Log in to your Composer Servers and start the installer.

Click next.

Accept the agreement and click next.

Select your installation directory and click next.

Enter your database information and click next.

On this stage, you choose to use an existing certificate. If you did not… read below how to fix this.

Review your setup and click install.

And you’re done! click finish and reboot.

Login to View Administrator and check if it’s up.

Now hop over to your Connection Servers.
Stop the VMware Horizon View Connection Server process in services before you start.

Click next.

Again accept the agreement or don’t 🙂 and click next or cancel. For now, choose next.

Click install.

The upgrade will now start, sit back and wait.

And you’re done, click finish.

Now hop over to your Security Servers.

This is also straight forward, in my lab I do not run a Security Server but the process of upgrading is the same!

Start installer, Agree, Next, Next and Finish!
Log in to your View Administrator page now and check if all is ok. In my case, it broke.

Issues that may happen after upgrade:

If your View Administrator page is not loading or getting failed to connect to the connection server error then this is probably due to this:

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2144768

To resolve this issue, perform one of these options:

Get this error below?

BROKER_SVI_CERT_INVALID
Certificate is invalid for Composer at address https://yourcomposerserver:18443

This can be fixed by selecting the correct certificate, where during the upgrade you probably have chosen to create a new certificate instead of using existing:

• Stop the Composer service.
• Open CMD and change directory to the Composer installation directory.
• sviconfig -operation=ReplaceCertificate -delete=false
• Select the correct certificate by choosing the number and enter
• Start the Composer service.

Get the error: 

“The vCenter server certificate is invalid, make sure you have a CA signed certificate or accept the self-signed in the dashboard”.

TLSv1 has to be enabled on the connection server and if you have one, the composer. Here we just have a connection server so let’s dive into ADSI Edit and change it. This Fix is provided by Rob Beekmans!

From the VMware installation guide of VMware Horizon View 7:

Now update all your templates with the new agent and update your pools.

Be aware that the Connection Server for View 7 has higher ram needs. If you run this puppy on 4GB ram performance will be degraded.
BROKER_SMALL_MEMORY
Broker vDrone-VCS.vdrone.local has been detected as being configured with a small amount of physical memory. Please refer to the View Installation Guide.

“Failed to connect to the Connection Server” when loading HTML access with External VIP, but only from Chrome.

Solution: Allow HTML Access Through a Load Balancer

Create or edit the locked.properties file in the SSL gateway configuration folder on the View Connection Server or security server host.
For example: install_directory\VMware\VMware View\Server\sslgateway\conf\locked.properties
Add the portalHost property and set it to the address of the gateway.
For example, if https://view-gateway.example.com is the address that browsers use to access View through the gateway, add portalHost=view-gateway.example.com to the locked.properties file. If the View Connection Server instance or security server is behind multiple gateways, you can specify each gateway by adding a number to the portalHost property, for example:
portalHost.1=view-gateway-1.example.com
portalHost.2=view-gateway-2.example.com
You must also specify multiple portalHost properties if a single gateway machine is known by more than one name.
Save the locked.properties file.
Restart the View Connection Server service or security server service to make your changes take effect.

Items to watch out for when you install or upgrade to Horizon 7 version 7.1 from View 5.3 or later.

If you are upgrading from Horizon 6 version 6.2.x to Horizon 7 version 7.1, you already should have taken these configuration steps. Use these notes to review your setup.

1) You must open port 4002 in your back-end firewall to allow security servers to communicate with View Connection Server in the new enhanced message security mode.

If you perform a fresh installation of Horizon 6 version 6.1 or later, enhanced message security mode is enabled by default. If you upgrade to Horizon 6 version 6.1 or later, the pre-existing message security mode is retained. To enable the enhanced mode after an upgrade, you must change the Global Setting in View Administrator.
2) You cannot deploy desktop versions earlier than View Agent 6.1 after enhanced message security mode is enabled.

3) View supports IPv6 as an alternative to IPv4. When you install your View components, select IPv4 unless you have a working IPv6 environment.

A mixed IPv6 and IPv4 environment is not supported. If you inadvertently configure a mixed environment, clients will not be able to connect to View Connection Server, remote desktops, or applications. Only fresh installations are supported in an IPv6 environment.

Not all features that are supported in an IPv4 environment are supported in an IPv6 environment. Read the IPv6 topics in the View Installation guide if you plan to run View in an IPv6 environment.