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Microsoft has made available a free eBook called: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions, From the Desktop to the Datacenter (Second Edition).
The eBook written by Mitch Tulloch, is an update to the earlier version which was released last year. This new version is now updated for Windows Server 2008 R2 and contains six chapters and has a total of 466 pages.
InstallFree announced that it now supports Virtual Applications on Windows 7 64-bit editions for it’s Bridge and 7bridge products , eSchool News reports.
Bridge is a product to create autonomous virtual applications, which don’t require an agent on the target OS to run. The product is capable of updating and patching those applications without the need to repackage the application. With the release of version 2.0 the company announced support for Windows 7, which is now extended to Windows 7 64-bit editions as well as of version 2.1.5.3 which is now Generally Available.
In July, along with the major release 4.1 of vSphere, VMware also updated its physical to virtual (P2V) migration tool vCenter Converter to version 4.2 (build 254483). Just a month later, the company also updated the standalone edition of the tool to version 4.3 (build 292238).
An important information that passed under our radar about these upgrades is that VMware dropped support for Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000, along with support for the OVF format and the VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) format.
A virtualization.info reader reports that it’s still possible to convert a physical Windows 2000 into a vSphere 4.1 virtual machine by using the old Converter 4.0.1 standalone, despite this scenario is not supported by VMware.
A Support engineer provided the following “workaround” to our reader:
With the release of VMware vSphere 4.1, VMware made available the vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). The VAAI can offload specific storage operations to compliant storage hardware, which results in less CPU, memory and storage fabric bandwidth consumption.
Chad Sakac who is Vice President VMware Technology Alliance at EMC wrote a blog post in July detailing what the impact of using the VAAI means for normal operations and what the benefits are in terms of performance improvements.
Last week the analysis firm Gartner generated a lot of interest for a couple of comments made about the virtualization industry.
The first one came from Thomas Bittman, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, who said that Microsoft Hyper-V is under-performing compared to his expectations.
The second one came from Chris Wolf, Vice President of Research, who said that Citrix HDX remote desktop protocol performs better than VMware PCoIP in high-latency (200ms) WAN scenarios.
While Microsoft didn’t reply (not yet at least) to Bittman, VMware has been very quick in addressing Wolf comments. The official reply comes directly from Scott Davis, CTO of the End User Computing business unit (emphasis our):
…VMware View 4.5 with and PCoIP are configured out of the box to provide the richest LAN experience. There are several important parameters that can be adjusted to optimally tune the protocol for WAN conditions and specific usage scenarios. For WAN conditions it can be very helpful to adjust the display frame rate, image quality and min/max bandwidth settings. As an example, the default frame rate with PCoIP is 30. This can be safely cut down to 12 frames per second for WAN usage resulting in less bandwidth consumption and a better experience in many such circumstances…
Microsoft has made available the Release Candidate of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.
Service Pack 1, which is now feature complete will introduce two important new features: Dynamic Memory for Hyper-V and the RemoteFX technology for Remote Desktop Services which Microsoft acquired from Calista in January 2008. The final Service Pack is still expected for H1 2011 as reported by virtualization.info in July this year.
The most interesting news here is the support for Dynamic Memory for the Standard and Web editions of Windows Server as reported by Ben Armstrong, Virtualization Program Manager at Microsoft
HyTrust has announced that it will partner with RSA in order to provide interoperability with the RSA enVision platform.
The HyTrust Appliance provides access control and change management for VMware virtual infrastructures, it does so by sitting between the VMware management interfaces (vCenter Client, ESX SSH and web management interfaces, vCenter and ESX APIs) as a transparent proxy that enforces authentication, authorization and corporate policy. The latest version is HyTrust Appliance 2.0 which was announced in March this year.
VMware and Symantec jointly released a technical white paper titled: Virtualizing Business Critical Applications with Confidence. The paper which is 10 pages provides an overview of the challenges faced when virtualizing business critical applications and how ApplicationHA, which is a joint solution from VMware and Symantec can help to solve these challenges.
ApplicationHA monitors the health of applications and virtual machines, and is powered by Veritas Cluster Server technology. It can restart both: applications by direct intervention, and VMs by coordinating with vCenter Server. Plus, the product can be fully operated from the vCenter Client and supports VMware HA and DRS.
Hyper9 has hired Bob Quillin as the new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Greg Barone as Vice President of Worldwide Sales.
Quillin comes from VMware where he was Director Product Marketing vCenter virtualization and cloud management solutions for applications, configuration and compliance for 7 months. Before that he was Senior Director Marketing at EMC for 4 1/2 years for the Ionix virtualization management line. Before that he held several marketing related positions at different companies, like nLayers, Network Physics, Manage.com, Packateer, NetLabs and Standford Telecommunications, where he started his career in 1983.
Barone comes from Reaction Design where he was Director of Sales for North America for 1 year and 5 months. Before that he worked for Fluke Networks for 1 year. He was also Vice President of Sales for 4 years at Cognio, which was acquired by Cisco.
Yesterday Citrix announced its Q3 2010 earnings, sharing interesting details about the desktop virtualization business unit performance.
In Q3 2010 the company revenue has been $277M, an 11% increase compared to 2009 (5% of that growth comes from license revenue, $60M is the total revenue for XenDesktop).
Despite the growth, Citrix reports a 6% decline, compared to Q2, for license revenue because of the XenDesktop Trade-up promotion ended in Q2.
An interesting information is that Citrix is on track to cover 15% of its customer base within year end with the Trade-up program, and it’s planning to make it part of the standard XenApp upgrade process in 2011.
Everything beyond the Trade-up program (new customers and licenses) translated into a revenue growth of 17% sequentially and over 200% from 2009.
Citrix scored 85 XenDesktop transactions from more than 1000 seat each, and 13 with over 5000 seats.
More than 2/3 of them selected the XenDesktop Platinum Edition, the one that is considered enterprise-ready by Gartner.