VMware VDI (Horizon)
AI-powered intelligent operations for VMware / Omnissa Horizon VDI — manage desktop pools, RDS farms,
published apps, user sessions, desktop machines, entitlements, instant-clone images, and Horizon
events/health/statistics through the Horizon 8 Connection Server REST API. Ships as both an MCP
server (for AI agents) and a CLI (for help-desk and scripting). Part of the
VMware skill family.
Disclaimer: Community-maintained open-source project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or
sponsored by VMware, Inc., Broadcom Inc., or Omnissa, LLC. "VMware", "Horizon", and "Omnissa" are
trademarks of their respective owners. Source is publicly auditable under the MIT license.
Status: v1.0.0 (beta). REST endpoints are verified against the official Horizon Server API;
GET-response field projections are defensive and pending validation against a live Connection Server
(a field-name mismatch yields empty results, not a crash — see the beta note).
Why vmware-vdi
Every other VMware family skill stops at the vСenter VM. A Horizon desktop pool sits on those VMs —
so vmware-aiops can reset the backing VM, but it cannot see a user session, log a user off, disable a
pool, or push a golden image. vmware-vdi fills exactly that day-2 VDI gap — "who is stuck on a broken
desktop", "log this user off so their profile unlocks", "why is this pool not provisioning", "push the
patched image to Finance tonight" — with the family's governed-ops harness: every write is audited,
previews its blast radius, and is authorized by the Horizon account's own RBAC role.
| Category | Tools |
|---|
| Monitoring | health summary · session list/get · machine list/get · event list |
| Statistics | session concurrency stats · per-pool utilization |
| Management | pool list/get · farm list · app-pool list · entitlement list · image list · AD search · pool enable/disable · entitlement add/remove |
| Ops actions | session logoff / disconnect / message · machine reset / maintenance / remove |
| Tasks | task status · image push · task cancel |
Reads are strictly non-destructive. Writes preview their blast radius, double-confirm at the CLI, and
are audit-logged to ~/.vmware/audit.db. pool_push_image recreates every desktop in a pool — the
highest single-call blast radius in the family — and its preview states affected-desktop and
in-session-user counts before any confirm.
Quick start
uv tool install vmware-vdi
vmware-vdi init
vmware-vdi doctor
vmware-vdi health
vmware-vdi init prompts for the Connection Server host, admin username, AD domain, and password; writes
~/.vmware-vdi/config.yaml + a 0600 .env (password obfuscated); tests the login; and on success
discovers your pools, machines, and sessions with the next commands to try.
Example workflows
Help-desk — a user's desktop is stuck
vmware-vdi session list --user alice
vmware-vdi machine list --state AGENT_UNREACHABLE
vmware-vdi session logoff --user alice --dry-run
vmware-vdi session logoff --user alice
Patch night — push a new golden image
vmware-vdi image list
vmware-vdi pool push-image --id pool-fin --dry-run
vmware-vdi pool push-image --id pool-fin
vmware-vdi task status --pool pool-fin
MCP server
{
"mcpServers": {
"vmware-vdi": {
"command": "vmware-vdi",
"args": ["mcp"],
"env": { "VMWARE_VDI_CONFIG": "~/.vmware-vdi/config.yaml" }
}
}
}
Using the installed vmware-vdi mcp console script (not uvx) avoids a PyPI re-resolve on every launch —
important behind enterprise TLS proxies.
Supported versions
- VMware Horizon 8.x (primary) — Connection Server REST API
/rest/v1.
- Latest Omnissa Horizon (2406 / 2412+) — same
/rest/v1 lineage.
Security
- Authorization = Horizon RBAC. The skill does not gate read vs write; point a target at a read-only
Horizon admin role and every write is refused at the Connection Server, un-bypassably.
- Credentials live only in
~/.vmware-vdi/.env (0600, obfuscated b64: at rest); config files hold
host/username/domain only. Inject VMWARE_VDI_<TARGET>_PASSWORD from a secret manager for real secrecy.
- TLS verification on by default. All Connection-Server text is
sanitize()d against prompt injection.
- No outbound calls except to the configured Connection Server — no webhooks, no telemetry.
See SECURITY.md and skills/vmware-vdi/references/setup-guide.md.
Beta note
REST endpoints are verified against the official Horizon Server API operation index. GET-response
field names (and a few write bodies) are defensive (.get() with fallbacks) and pending validation
against a live Connection Server. On a field-name mismatch a list reads empty rather than crashing.
First real-Horizon use should run vmware-vdi init and confirm the session/machine/pool projections;
please file an issue with raw *_get output if a projection
looks empty. Quality: 32 regression tests, ruff clean, bandit 0, tool endpoints pinned to a verified spec.
Companion skills
Part of the VMware skill family — install the modules you need:
License
MIT — see LICENSE.