Tag Archives: VMware Horizon Client

Install VMware Horizon Client using Winget

14 Dec

The enterprise has been rolling out the application packages using various available methods (GPOs, SCCM, WS1 UEM etc.) in the industry. Today we are going to take a step further and see how to deploy the VMware Horizon Client using the new Micrososft Windows Package Manager (Winget)

Available Commands for various verison of Horizon Client

Following are the commands however, it’s recommended only to install the latest or the matching version based on your VMware Horizon environment.

VMware Horizon 8.xVMware Horizon Client 8.x
VMware Horizon 7.xVMware Horizon Client 5.x
# Latest GA version VMware Horizon Client version 8.7.0.31805
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient
# VMware Horizon Client version 8.6.0.29364
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 8.6.0.29364
# VMware Horizon Client version 8.5.0.26981
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 8.5.0.26981
# VMware Horizon Client version 8.4.1.26410
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 8.4.1.26410
# VMware Horizon Client version 8.3.0.21227
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 8.3.0.21227
# VMware Horizon Client version 8.2.0.18176
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 8.2.0.18176
# VMware Horizon Client version 8.1.0.15949
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 8.1.0.15949
# VMware Horizon Client version 8.0.0.13243
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 8.0.0.13243
# VMware Horizon Client version 5.5.4.26353
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 5.5.4.26353
# VMware Horizon Client version 5.5.3.24986
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 5.5.3.24986
# VMware Horizon Client version 5.5.2.19788
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 5.5.2.19788
# VMware Horizon Client version 5.5.1.17068
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 5.5.1.17068
# VMware Horizon Client version 5.5.0.14558
winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient -v 5.5.0.14558

Installing, Listing, Upgrading and Un-installing the latest version HZ Client

Open the PowerShell with administrative privileges

Installing

winget install -e --id VMware.HorizonClient

Listing the installed package

List the package and its details of the previous installation step

winget list --name 'VMware Horizon Client'

Upgrading from version 5.5.4 to 8.7.0

winget upgrade --id VMware.HorizonClient

Un-installing

Following is the command to uninstall the Horizon Client. 

winget uninstall --id VMware.HorizonClient

Note after running the above command, the Windows endpoint rebooted immediately. I am not whether the product team has included the /norestart switches to the packages. If you come across the same leave a comment down below.

I hope you will find this helpful post about the winget and VMware Horizon Client details. Give it a spin in your lab and production environment, if you find anything interesting. I hope you can share it back with me?

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

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Unable to uninstall/upgrade VMware Horizon Client within the VMware App Volumes AppStack

22 Jul

We had a very long ongoing issue wherein we couldn’t uninstall or upgrade the VMware Horizon Client within the AppStack. We had successfully installed the Horizon Client within the AppStack. However, when it was time to perform an upgrade or uninstall to the latest version, it would fail during a reboot with the following error.

Unknown HardError

We initially saw the issue on App Volumes 2.14. While we were troubleshooting for an extended period, we upgrade to App Volumes 2.18.1, and both the versions exhibited the same failure during uninstall or upgrade.

Process to reproduce the error

  • Upgrade horizon client –> reboot –> hard error
  • Uninstall horizon client –> reboot –>hard error
  • Uninstall horizon client –> install horizon client –> reboot –> hard error
  • Upgrade horizon client –> complete provisioning without reboot –> completes successful –> during next update of AppStack it crashes with Hard error
  • Uninstall horizon client –> complete provisioning without reboot –> completes successful –> during next update of AppStack it crashes with Hard error

Environment Details

VMware Horizon 7.11
VMware App Volumes 2.18.1
VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 9.10
VMware Horizon Client 5.x

Process of elimination

  • Upgrade the Horizon Client to the various 5.x version to remove any version specific Client related issues
  • We didn’t have Antivirus running on the AppStack capturing template
  • We could build the AppStack from scratch with the newer version of Horizon Client but only upgrade/uninstall would fail
  • We were honestly running out of troubleshooting ideas

Resolution

After trying out all the usual steps and avoid re-creating AppStack every single time during life cycle management, we managed to open a VMware GSS case handled by Karan Ahuja(Very helpful support engineer), which ended been worked by the engineering team(Art Rothstein – Champ in AV Eng Team). Note quite alot of logs and Procmon were exchanged from the problematic application capturing VM template. Finally, the fix was determined as a AppStack snapvol.cfg exclusion. After putting this exclusion into the AppStack – App capturing VM during provisioning we could upgrade or uninstall Horizon Client.

exclude_registry=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileService
Path exclusion in AppStack snapvol.cfg

Disclaimer – Due to the nature of the issue and time taken to resolve it we decided to move the Horizon Client from AppStack into the base image. However, the fix is validated, and 100% working post the exclusion.

I hope you will find this information useful if you encounter the issue. A big thanks to Manivannan Arul my teammate for his continuous effort while troubleshooting with GSS over a period of 4+ months.

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

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