Protect VMware Horizon VDI environment?

Heikki,

Zerto is able to protect any virtual machine that is powered on. However, Zerto will not retain the “linked-clone” disk type at the DR site, meaning that each desktop would be a full clone at DR. So that presents some challenges but Zerto should have no problems protecting a VDI VM.

However, you would also need to create new horizon view servers at your DR site, and have them prepped and ready to go, then after a failover, you would need to register your desktop VM’s into that Horizon Server environment and also entitle users to their desktop (read: doable, but very manual). You might be thinking about replicating your Horizon Servers, but they wouldnt do you a whole lot of good unless you pair them to your other vCenter at the DR site as well as the prod site. Horizon View and vCenter have a lot of dependencies on one another…

If you are using linked clones, you could create another POD at the DR site, and copy your desktop template to that site and have everything ready to go. Then if you are replicating your file servers with Zerto, you can fail them over, and have your users connect directly to the VDI pod at the DR site. (Note that the DR site would need a pool created from the template and entitled to the users who need to login.)

This is most likely going to be more cost effective as well as simpler to execute during a disaster than trying to register your desktops and entitle them on the fly after Zerto fails them over.

Just my 2 cents with knowing how Horizon View works and what it requires from a vCenter database standpoint.