Horizon cloud on Azure – Pod creation

Horizon cloud on Azure

Eknath - 28 September 20196 May 2020

Reading Time: 8 mins

I know this post name attracts lot of people in IT world ? what, horizon cloud on Azure .. how it works ? Yes, you read this correctly, you can leverage your Azure subscription or credits to add Horizon Cloud desktop and applications compute in.

Let’s go through detailed steps below here:

Before starting with pod creation, there are certain prerequisites to be completed:

Domain controller can be created or use existing one:

- On-Prem AD that is connected via VPN
- Azure AD Domain Services
- An Active Directory Server VM running in Microsoft Azure

2. Make sure you have the following user names created with required permissions:

Create a standard User in Active Directory for Domain Binds
Create another standard User in Active Directory for Auxiliary Domain Binds
Create an account in Active Directory that has permissions to Join

3. Create networks in azure portal: In this case I have created just one vNet and if you have plans to separate each network with a vNet , you can certainly do that with peering.

- Provide the details like Name for the vNet, Address space, select the subscription from dropdown.
- Resource group: You can either use an existing one or create new.
- Location: Region should be selected based on your design, cost analysis. In this case, I have selected EAST US.

Note: Created vNet with management subnet as shown below:

After successful creation, vNet can be seen under virtual networks section and make sure to assign the DNS server ip for the newly created vNet.. Here, since the dns role is installed in domain controller, so gave the same ip here.

- Click on the vNet > Settings > DNS Servers > Custom
- After providing the DNS ip, make sure to save it.

Create two more subnets (DMZ and Desktop) under the same vNet or upto you if you want them to be part of different vNet , configuring peering between the vNet.

4. Check the usage quota in Azure portal:

make sure you have sufficient quota available, please note that node manager requires standard Dv3 family, UAG standard Av2 family and jumpbox requires Standard F family cpu’s.

POD creation starts from here:

Logon to the Horizon Cloud Plane here using the correct ‘My VMware’ account credentials

After successful login, the getting started page displays as shown below.. trust me, this is very user friendly.. Add button (as highlighted below), allows you to add compute capacity from your Azure subscription and in this wizard you will add Azure Cloud Capacity to the customers Cloud Plane.

Add capacity page gives two options i.e., Microsoft Azure and VMware cloud on AWS.. So, for now we will proceed with Microsoft Azure:

Here is the list of details to be provided for connecting to azure portal and lets discuss each of them and the way to collect them from azure portal:

Apply Subscription: Since this is the new pod, click on Add New and this will allow to provide a subscription Name. I recommend to give a name that matches in azure portal.

Subscription Name , Subscription ID: Login to Azure portal > Search > Subscription

Page shows the Subscription Id and Subscription name.

Environment: Select the type of azure environment here

Directory ID, Application ID and Application Key: These details can be collected from azure portal directly and before that, you should create a principal name (app registrations), of course with a friendly name as shown below:

If a new registration needs to be created, then click on + New Registration and give a friendly name.

(or)

If registration already exists, then click on SPN and overview page shows the Application ID, Directory ID.

Under the same registrations page, Manage > Certificates & Secrets > + New client server : Provide Description and set the Expires to Never.

You will see the new key added under client server as shown below and yes, this is the Application Key.. copy and note to save it.

Now we are ready with all the required details to create a POD, so lets gets back to pod creation window and fill the details as collected above:

Fill in the pod name, location and azure region.. please note that cost differs from region to region. I would suggest you carefully select the region based on your design.

Here you can create a new networks or use existing subnets, and selecting the existing subnets will help you to select the vNet created above.

Note: NTP is the domain controller ip I have used here.

Review the provided details and hit submit, this will start creating the POD, progress can be monitored in the home page.

After few minutes of progress, azure portal shows you the status of vm creation.. first it deploys a jumbox, node manager and followed by UAG’s.

Once the pod is successfully created, you can see the pod in capacity section with a green tick next to the name that indicates the health status:

A tap on the pod name takes you to the summary page that allows you to view all the details related to that pod

Next register the active directory and this can be done from the same admin portal page:

Login to Admin portal > Settings > Active Directory .. fill the details and make sure you have all the required permissions assigned to the domain join user.

That’s it, After a successful domain registration.. you are good to publish the images, provision the desktops/application in the pod created now.

Thanks for Reading, next post will have more details about downloading the images from azure market place, preparing image and provisioning the desktops, access the desktops using HTML/client.