How does VMware Horizon View licensing work?

VMware Horizon View, formerly known as VMware View, exists as part of Horizon Standard Edition. As a result, organizations that want to use Horizon View must license Horizon Standard Edition. Some VMware documentation refers to this as Horizon View Standard.

VMware offers two different Horizon View licensing models for most of its Horizon products. The per named user licensing model is for organizations with users who require dedicated virtual machine access. This Horizon View licensing model is a per user licensing model.

The other Horizon View licensing model VMware commonly offers is the per concurrent connection model. This model is essentially a per device licensing model. Rather than licensing individual users to use virtual desktops as is done in the per named user model, the license applies instead to the device the user works with to connect to his virtual desktop. This VMware Horizon View licensing model is a good fit in organizations where multiple users share devices, because doing so results in a lower overall cost than licensing each user individually.

Although VMware normally leaves the choice of licensing model up to its customers, they can only license Horizon View Standard through a concurrent connection license. It is also worth noting that this license applies to all the individual components within Horizon View Standard. IT cannot license some components based on concurrent connection licenses and license others on per named user basis.

Although a Horizon View license is included with VMware Horizon Standard Edition, admins must enable the license separately. To do so, they can open a web browser and go to the Horizon View Administrator console. After logging in, they can expand the console's View Configuration container and select the Product Licensing and Usage container. Next, they should click the Edit License button and enter the license serial number in the space provided and click OK.