scanner vmwarePutting a USB Scanner to work in a VMware Horizon View environment always was a pain in the butt. Either images came into the session sooooooo slooooooow you had a caffeine shock by the time the scan was finished, or images were garbled and looked like they were send from Mars, or you never got a scan at all. It all was very frustrating, especially if you were trying to get that desk clear of paper to put it into a document management system or when you wanted to add those pictures to your project. The standard USB redirection just didn’t cut it. That is, until now.

Scanner Redirection

The latest version of VMware’s Horizon View contains a scanner redirection function that should get rid of all those bad memories from the past and put the picture up into your VDI session. To make it work, you of course need a USB scanner, the View Agent from Horizon with View version 6.0.2 or later, and the Windows Horizon Client 3.2 or later. The scanner redirection functionality supports both TWAIN and WIA scanning modes and allows images to be captured from both scanners and other imaging devices (such as webcams).

When you install the View Agent component, be sure to select the scanner redirection feature as it is disabled by default. If you are installing the feature on a server (Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 R2) for either VDI desktops or RDSH desktops or applications, first install the Desktop Experience feature (a Microsoft operating system feature) on the server. This is a prerequisite for installing scanners on a Windows server.

Howto

Peter Brown, the senior R&D manager at VMware in the UK made a very nice article describing all the ins and outs and how to make it all work together. Check his howto out over here.  Read it and make that scanner work for you in your View session!