VMware Horizon Mirage Essentials

Manage your entire desktop environment with a single management tool – VMware Horizon Mirage

Overview

• Deliver a centralized Windows image management solution for physical, virtual, and BYOD
• Migrate seamlessly to new versions of operating systems with minimal user downtime
• Easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide on how to deploy and work with the technology

In Detail

Managing desktop software builds has always been a time consuming task. Having to build and maintain multiple different images for the various use cases and hardware platforms in an organization is a complex full-time job for IT admins everywhere. Delivering resilience and recovery solutions are also things that become more of a challenge when you step outside of the data center. VMware Horizon Mirage can help with all of this and more.

VMware Horizon Mirage Essentials will show you how to deliver a complete centralized image management solution by taking you through a number of Mirage use cases, each one designed to solve the challenges faced by an IT department in managing a desktop environment.

This book starts by introducing the concepts behind VMware Horizon Mirage, how they work, and how they map onto the everyday tasks faced by a desktop administrator. It will then follow three themes, manage, migrate, and protect, and will look in detail at the different features and functionality offered by Mirage in delivering against these themes to the desktop estate.

You will also learn how to design, install, and configure your own Mirage infrastructure, whether for production or a pilot deployment, covering core features such as single image management, how to migrate old operating systems such as Windows XP to Windows 7, and how to migrate to new hardware platforms.

VMware Horizon Mirage Essentials will walk you through the process of delivering single image management to your entire desktop estate, regardless of whether it’s physical or virtual.

What you will learn from this book

• Design, install, and configure a Mirage infrastructure with hints, tips, and best practice advice
• Deliver single image management to your desktop and laptop estate
• Build and deploy new desktops and laptops and deliver a central corporate image to all devices
• Migrate with minimal user downtime
• Navigate your way around the Management Console and web-based consoles
• Move between different hardware vendors and platforms with just a single core image so that you can eliminate the need for multiple images
• Restore and fix applications or deliver your desktop as a VDI session so that users can continue working

Approach

This book provides a practical, step-by-step approach to teach you how to build a successful infrastructure.

Who this book is written for

This book is perfect for desktop administrators who want to deploy a solution to centrally manage their endpoint images across their entire estate using VMware Horizon Mirage. You need to have some experience in desktop image management using Microsoft Windows operating systems and Windows applications, as well as be familiar with Active Directory, SQL, IIS, and general server infrastructure relating to supporting end users.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: An Introduction to VMware Horizon Mirage
Chapter 2: Design, Install, and Configure
Chapter 3: A Guided Tour of Management Consoles
Chapter 4: Getting Started with Horizon Mirage Layering Technology
Chapter 5: Manage – Centralized Image Management and Deployment
Chapter 6: Migrate – Operating System and Hardware Migration Made Easy
Chapter 7: Protect – Backup, Recovery, and DR for Endpoint Devices