We have been shipping for over five years and I have been working on View for over 6 years and we have always required AD. There always has been some notation of AD requirements in the docs since its required to get things working.
In the getting started guide the first step is preparing your AD. It links to this section of the Install Guide in the docs.
VMware View 5.2 Documentation Library ( Preparing your Active Directory )
Here it states View uses Active Directory and certain steps must be done. It also states the AD versions supported.
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