Announcing Self-Managed Pools on Horizon Cloud: More flexibility, broader use cases

At Omnissa, our mission has always been to empower IT teams with flexible, reliable, and feature-rich virtual desktop and application delivery solutions. Today we’re excited to announce Self-Managed Pools on Horizon Cloud, a powerful new way for customers to integrate existing desktops into their cloud desktop strategy. 

What are Self-Managed Pools? 

Self-Managed Pools allow IT teams to bring desktops that are created and managed outside of Horizon Cloud under Horizon Cloud’s brokering and session delivery layer. Similar to the experience customers know from Horizon 8, these desktops are registered individually rather than provisioned automatically by the platform. 

This gives customers full control over virtual machine lifecycle while still benefiting from Horizon Cloud’s centralized management, security, and user experience. 

Self-Managed Pools support: 

• Persistent desktops: ideal for users who need a consistent, long-lived desktop experience.
• RDSH session hosts: enabling shared desktops and published applications.
• Bring-your-own infrastructure: desktops hosted on any cloud or platform, as long as networking prerequisites are met. 

 How it works 

Self-Managed Pools in Horizon Cloud mirror the familiar self-managed model from Horizon 8, now delivered through a cloud-native control plane and simplified workflows. 

At a high level, administrators: 

1. Deploy the Horizon Edge on one of the supported capacities: Azure, AWS, vSphere
2. Prepare desktop or RDSH VMs using their existing processes and tools.
3. Install the Horizon Agent on each machine to enable session brokering.
4. Register the machines with Horizon Cloud using the pairing process.
5. Group machines into a pool and entitle users or applications. 

Because the desktops are self-managed, customers retain ownership of VM creation, patching, and lifecycle decisions, while Horizon Cloud focuses on brokering, access, and experience delivery. 

Who should use Self-Managed Pools? 

Self-Managed Pools unlock several compelling use cases for Horizon Cloud customers: 

• Extend existing desktop estates into Horizon Cloud 
  Organizations with pre-existing desktops: whether in AWS, Azure, on-premises, or other environments, customers can bring those desktops into Horizon Cloud without rebuilding or re-provisioning.
• Persistent workspaces for specialized teams 
  Ideal for engineering, design, or business users who require stable, customized desktops that IT prefers to manage outside of automated provisioning workflows.
• RDSH-based shared desktops 
  Enable efficient delivery of shared desktops and apps while maintaining full control over the underlying session hosts.
• Phased migration and modernization 
  Self-Managed Pools allow customers to adopt Horizon Cloud incrementally: starting with existing infrastructure while planning automated pools for future expansion. 

What’s required? 

To use Self-Managed Pools with Horizon Cloud, customers must ensure: 

• Network connectivity (“line of sight”) between Horizon Cloud Edge components and the desktops.
• Machine identity reachability, Microsoft Active Directory accessible from both the Edge and the desktops.
• The Horizon Agent installed on each VM, along with the required pairing configuration obtained from the Horizon Cloud console. 

These prerequisites ensure reliable registration, authentication, and session delivery across environments. 

Why this matters 

Self-Managed Pools give customers the freedom to choose how desktops are created and managed, without giving up the advantages of Horizon Cloud’s centralized control plane. 

With this capability, IT teams can: 

• Bring existing desktops under Horizon Cloud without disruption.
• Reduce migration risk while modernizing workspace delivery.
• Support a wider range of deployment models—from fully automated to fully self-managed—using a single Horizon Cloud platform. 

Whether you’re extending current environments or planning a gradual move to cloud-managed desktops, Self-Managed Pools make Horizon Cloud more flexible than ever. 

Get started 

Self-Managed Pools are now available in Horizon Cloud. To learn more about supported configurations and setup steps, review the Horizon Cloud documentation or contact your Omnissa representative.