What is the new General Support policy for Horizon?
Lifecycle Policy
VMware will offer support for a specified number of years from the general availability of a new Major Release.
Product Specific Policies
| General Support Phase: 12 months Technical Guidance: N/A |
Details |
| VMware Horizon Agents Installer | Customer is required to run a version of Horizon Agents Installer which has been released in the past 12 months. Refer to VMware’s Interoperability Matrices and section 2.6 of the service descriptions of Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure and Horizon Cloud Service with Hosted Infrastructure for details on Change Management. |
| General Support Phase: 18 months Technical Guidance Phase: N/A |
Details |
| VMware Workspace ONE UEM Console* VMware Identity Manager |
VMware will offer General Support for 18 months from the General Availability of each released version of the Console. Workspace ONE UEM Console and Identity Manager support lifecycle dates are synchronized based on their interoperability. *This product does not use the terms Major, Minor and Maintenance Releases for its updates. |
| General Support Phase: 18 months Technical Guidance Phase: 1 year after General Support Phase |
Details |
| VMware TrustPoint | During the General Support phase, VMware will support the then-current release and the previous sequential release for up to 18 months from General Availability of the then-current release. |
| General Support Phase: 2 years Technical Guidance Phase: 1 year after General Support Phase |
Details |
| VMware App Volumes | N/A |
| VMware Horizon DaaS on Prem Platform VMware Horizon DaaS Bundle |
Bugs and security issues will be addressed for the last two minor releases of a supported major version. |
| VMware Dynamic Environment Manager | N/A |
| General Support Phase: 3 years Technical Guidance Phase: 2 years after General Support Phase |
Details |
| VMware ThinApp | N/A |
| General Support Phase: 3 years Technical Guidance Phase: 1 year after General Support Phase |
Details |
| VMware Horizon Server* | Support periods are defined for releases of the Horizon Connection Server. Most Horizon Clients are versioned and shipped separately from Horizon Connection Server releases and are only supported under the terms of the server releases they are compatible with. While a server release is within its general support phase, new versions of existing clients will maintain backward compatibility with that supported server release. However, it should be noted that features in newer releases will not be supported with older versions. The intent is to maintain the basic functionality of the oldest version without breaking compatibility. * For Horizon 2006 the General Support Phase will be for 5 years, and the Technical Guidance Phase will be for 2 years after the General Support Phase. |
Enterprise Desktop FAQ
Under the updated lifecycle policy, General Support for Horizon 2012 and later will be for 3 years after General Availability. For example, VMware Horizon 2012 was released in January 2021. Under this policy, General Support for the VMware Horizon 2012 ends in January 2024. One year of Technical Guidance will follow General Support, as per the new policy. However, Horizon 2006 will follow the previous lifecycle policy and will have a General Support phase of 5 years followed by two years of Technical Guidance.
How will fixes/updates be distributed for Horizon Clients?
Critical bug or security fixes for Clients will only be supplied via an update to the latest Client version; it should be noted that some Clients are only available through device-specific App-Stores, and maintenance of older client versions on such devices is impossible.
Will all the features of a new client release be available when running it against an older server version?
No. When an existing client is updated to a new version, it will remain compatible with older server versions that are still within the General Support phase. However, new client features may be disabled while connected to an older server. For example, the Horizon Client 2103 will work with Horizon Server 2012 and will support the features that were present in 2012, but a feature that was newly introduced in Horizon Client 2103 will not necessarily be available.
When a new client type is first made available, will it be compatible with older server versions?
When a brand-new client is released, it is compatible with the latest shipping Horizon Server version and is covered by the same support policy. Horizon Clients are generally backwards compatible to Horizon Server versions that are under active support. Note that the latest Horizon Clients (YYMM) are also compatible with Horizon 7.13 and will be as long as Horizon Server 7.13 is under support.
What happens when a particular release reaches end of General Support?
Starting in Q2 2018, Horizon introduced an option of Extended Service Branch (ESB) in addition to the Current Release Branch (CRB) https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2960651
As per the updated lifecycle policy, ESBs receive four planned periodic maintenance updates within the General Support period. Once the ESB release moves from General Support to Technical Guidance, no additional maintenance releases or derived hot-patches will be supplied. When General Support ends for a particular Current Release branch (CRB), the release moves to Technical Guidance of one year. During the Technical Guidance period, no hot patches will be supplied.
When a new Extended Service Branch (ESB) release comes out, how long will updates continue to be shipped for this release?
VMware is committed to supporting periodic maintenance updates as part of General Support lifecycle of the ESB version. The maintenance updates will provide server, and guest OS updates, bug and security fixes. VMware may choose to provide a hot patch for individual customers for critical issues. If the fix delivered in a hot patch is subsequently available in a generally available maintenance release, customers will have up to 90 days to migrate to that maintenance version.
