Virtual Computer has released service pack 1 for its client hypervisor NxTop version 3.0 which was released in September last year. NxTop consists of two tiers, NxTop Client which is a Xen-based client hypervisor and NxTop Center, its centralized management component. Even though Citrix made a marketing investment in Virtual Computer in order to promote its XenClient NxTop still uses its own Xen-based client hypervisor and didn’t adopt the Citrix XenClient hypervisor, because NxTop considers its own hypervisor more robust and mature at this point.
NxTop hypervisor is also available in a Workstation edition, which is a scaled down free version of the platform, including a centralized management solution, capped to a maximum of five managed computers.
New features in this release:
- Centralized Control over the end-points, like ports, logon and launcher configuration, update interval settings, network access controls for wired and wireless networks, restart policies and more using centralized NxTop Engine control
- Remote Provisioning On-the-go using a USB provisioning kit enabling recovering a PC on the road, by exporting NxTops from NxTop Center to USB.
- Context sensitive help
- Navigation filtering
- Active Directory integration improvements
- Support for non-standard Windows paths
- Apple-like Dock, enabling to move between Virtual Machines swiftly
- Additional wireless network support, for hidden networks, multiple wireless networks with the same SSID, configuration of preferred network order and transparent roaming between access points
- Support for Cisco LEAP wireless authentication
- New paravirtualized audio driver
- Device Manager applet improvements, to view native device information, assign devices to specific NxTop and manual or automatic assignment
- Active Center applet improvements, to view and amend update schedules, view update progress and manuarlly import NxTop images from USB
Update: Virtual Computer states that, Citrix did not invest in Virtual Computer as a marketing investment to promote XenClient. They invested as a part of an investment round along with Virtual Computer’s VC firms, and they were investing in the company overall, including the NxTop technology. Secondly Virtual Computer states about the fact that XenClient is considered immature, is not their statement but based on independant evaluation and feedback from customer discussions. Virtual Computer has considered the possibility of adopting XenClient at some point in the future and supporting multiple client-hypervisors, but doesn’t provide a specific expectation to do this on any specific timeframe.