One of the nice features of Horizon View 5.3 is the Events Database.  When its configured, the Events Database will collect and store any events from the Horizon View environment.

Unfortunately, VMware never built any notification tools into View to alert administrators when errors occurred and were recorded in the Events database.  There have been workarounds to this using PowerShell or SQL Mail to send database alerts, but this requires a scheduled task or SQL Agent job to ensure that it runs on a regular basis.

There is another option that can be used for Event database alerting.  Chris Halstead (Twitter: @chrisdhalstead) developed a tool called the Horizon View Event Notifier that recently became a VMware Fling. 

The Horizon View Event Notifier is a simple little application that is very easy to set up.  It’s so easy, in fact, that it doesn’t even have an installer – you just create a folder for the application and drag the executable and the config file into a folder and double-click to launch it.

Unfortunately, this simplicity carries a heavy price.  The Event Notifier cannot be run as a scheduled task or service.  It must run interactively, and if the server running the application is rebooted, an administrator will need to log in, restart the application, and then lock the computer or disconnect their session without logging out.  Chris has stated that this is one of the things he hopes to address in the next version of the program.

Configuring the Horizon View Event Notifier

After you’ve finished installing the Event Notifier, it’s time to start configuring it. 

1.  Click the settings tab.

2. Fill in the Name, DB Server, Database, Username and password fields.  If you have multiple View pods storing information in the same events database, you may need to enter your table prefix in the Table Prefix field. 

If you are connecting to a SQL Server instance, enter servername\instancename in the DB Server field.

3. Click Test Connection to verify that the Event Notifier Application can log into the database.

4. Click Save Changes to save the database information to the config file.

5. Select the type of events that you want to receive email alerts on and then click Save Changes.

6. Enter your email server, port number, sender address, and recipient address.

Note: The application does not appear to support email servers that require authentication, such as Gmail, at this time.

7. Click Send Test Email to verify that email alerts work.

8. Click Save changes.

9. Click Start to have the application start monitoring your View Events database.

Note: The application will need to be launched and the start button clicked every time the computer is rebooted.

Do I Need It?

If you don’t have any other form of alerting configured for Horizon View Events, this program will help you maintain a healthy View environment.  It’s saved my bacon a few times when a recompose operation failed and left a pool unusable.  If I this tool hadn’t been in place, I would have had a flock of angry users with no desktops.