Thursday, March 26, 2015

More Horizon 6.1 endpoint bad news... now Tera1 zero clients not supported

I stumbled upon this KB today and noticed that Tera1 zero clients will no longer be supported with any Horizon release after 6.0.1.  As someone with a lot of of Tera1 devices that aren't all that old (it's been what, only 2-3 years since Tera1 zeros were being actively sold by vendors?) and still running great, as expected with something as stable as a zero client, I'm even more disappointed to see this than I was by the end of Windows XP and Vista client support (rant is in my previous post).

I could maybe understand it if they've been off the market for 5+ years (since a lot of traditional corporate PC replacement cycles are around 5 years).  VMware must be making some architectural changes with Horizon 6.1 breaking compatibility or something...not expected for a point release (it's not like this is Horizon 7.0 or anything).  I hope Teradici manages a "best effort" approach to keep the Tera1's going for some time even if they can't be "officially" supported.  

To run Horizon 6.1 (we're currently on 5.3 and now planning on going to 6.0.1 this summer) my organization would have to come up with well over $100,000 in funds, not to mention the manpower to do a forklift upgrade, to replace all the thin clients and Tera1 zeros just to be able run 6.1 in a supported setup.  This kind of unexpected expense might just make me rethink keeping my Horizon licensing and production support contracts current going forward and maybe give me reason to give Citrix a call if I now have to replace a lot of hardware.... are you listening VMware?  I haven't administered XenDesktop since the 4.0 days but I'm sure they haven't been sitting still either, and I do note that Citrix specifies "Support for Windows XP ends April 8, 2014 when Microsoft ends extended support for Windows XP. Support for Windows XP Embedded will continue." for Citrix Reciever on its download site.

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