Create ODBC Database Connection in Horizon View Composer ServerMustBeGeek

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View Composer is an optional component of VMware Horizon 6 product. View Composer server requires database to store information of deployed linked clone desktops. The database can reside on same server where vCenter database instance is located or you can setup dedicated database server for View Composer. Either option requires you to setup ODBC database connection and separate database instance. So in this post, I will show steps to create ODBC database connection in Horizon View Composer server.

Create ODBC Database Connection in Horizon View Composer Server

I have already installed dedicated SQL Server 2012 on Server 2012 R2. SQL server is joined to domain but SQL authentication will be used for authentication. Log on to SQL server and open Microsoft SQL Server Management Console. Open server properties.

Choose Security on the left pane. Under server authentication, choose SQL server and windows authentication mode. Click OK. Reboot the database server, or restart database process.

Now, it’s time to create database and ODBC connection. Right-click Databases and click New Database as shown below.

Type the name of database. I named it, ViewComposerDB01. Click OK.

When you setup separate instance of View Composer and database server then, you must use database authentication as authentication method, because windows authentication is not support in this scenario. You can only use windows authentication if you install View Composer in the same server where Database instance is also installed. In our scenario, we have separate virtual machines for SQL server and View Connection server, so we can’t use Active Directory authentication for ODBC connection. So now, I will create username ViewCom and it will be authenticated by SQL server itself. To create new user, expand Security folder. Right-click Logins sub-folder and click New Login.

In the General page, type login name as ViewCom. Choose SQL Server authentication as authentication option. Type password. On the bottom, choose ViewComposerDB01 as the default database.

Choose Server Roles page on the left pane. Check public and sysadmin server roles.

Now, choose User Mapping page on the left pane. Under users mapped to this login, check ViewComposerDB01 database. Then, check db-owner and public as database role membership. Click OK.

Now log on to View Composer server virtual machine and create ODBC connection to the database we just created. Open the ODBC Data Source Administrator application. Select System DSN tab and click Add.

A new Create New Data Source dialog box will open. Select SQL Server Native Client 11.0 and click Finish.

Now Create a New Data Source to SQL Server dialog box will open. Here, type name of the ODBC connection, description and server IP address which I have already done as shown below. Then click Next.

Here, choose SQL server authentication. SQl server will verify the authenticity of the login ID so click Next. We created ViewCom account in SQL server before.

Here, change the default database to ViewComposerDB01, and click Next.

Review the settings and click Finish.

Now you can test the data source. Make sure the test completes successfully. If there is any issues, then go back fix the problems and repeat the above steps.