In September last year, virtualization.info reported about VMware starting the development of a management solution for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing platforms called vCloud Director. vCloud Director was developed from the engine of Lab Manager, which VMware acquired from Akimbi June 2006. Later we were informed by a member of the virtualization.info Vanguards community, that VMware was planning to phase out Lab Manager within a year, embedding its capabilities in vCloud Director which was released in September last year.
Year: 2011
Release: Oracle VirtualBox 4.0.4
Oracle has released a maintenance update for their desktop virtualization solution VM VirtualBox, version 4.0.4. The update, which is considered a maintence release is available for version 4.0 of VirtualBox which was released in December last year.
Some of the fixes from the changelog include:
- Support for Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha
- Support for X.Org Server 1.10 pre-release
- Linux 2.6.38-rc1 compile fixes
- ..
Release: Teradici PCoIP client firmware 3.3
Teradici is the developer of the PC-over-IP (PCoIP) remote desktop protocol, which is leveraged in software (by VMware view) and provided with Teradici hardware solutions which are OEM’ed by several vendors. Teradici now has released firmware version 3.3 for its PCoIP zero client devices and version 1.4 of it’s Management Console which it announced in April last year, providing USB peripheral, login and security enhancements.
Open Kernel Labs releases its mobile client hypervisor
In November 2008 VMware acquired the mobile virtualization startup Trango. Just a couple of months later Citrix invested in one of the biggest Trango competitors: Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs). In October last year virtualization.info reported that Citrix and Open Kernel Labs were working on Windows virtualization for smartphones and in December VMware announced a partnership with LG to deliver it’s Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) on Android, which it also showed of at the Mobile World Congress two weeks ago. While the MVP platform adopts a hosted virtualization platform (a type-2 VMM) which runs on top of the native RTOS installed on the phone, the Open Kernel Labs is a type-1 hypervisor running directly on the hardware and Open Kernel Labs is criticizing VMware for its decision to use a hosted virtualization platform.
Release: VKernel Optimization Pack 2.1
VKernel has updated it’s Optimization Pack to version 2.1 supporting the VKernel Management Suite version 2.2 which was released last month.
The Optimization Pack is designed to control VM sprawl by finding and reclaiming over allocated and wasted resources in virtual environments. It tracks average and peak usage for all VMs while also seeking out abandoned resources.
Release: VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat 6.3 update 1
Last week VMware released Update 1 for ESX/ESXi and vCenter, in order to support those releases, also other products were updated, like vCenter Server Heartbeat, which is updated to version 6.3.1. This version is the follow-up of version 6.3 which was released in August last year.
vCenter Server Heartbeat is a fail-over product that protects every component inside the vCenter host, including the licensing server and Update Manager (WUM), and works across LAN and WAN links, and is OEM’ed by VMware from Neverfail.
Release: VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.1.1
Last week VMware released Update 1 for ESX/ESXi and vCenter, in order to support those releases, also other products were updated, like Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which is updated to version 4.1.1 and can be considered as a maintenance release supporting Update 1 for ESX/ESXi and vCenter and containing bug fixes. This version is the follow-up of version 4.1 which was released in August last year.
VMware Site Recovery Manager automates the disaster recovery process in order to recover from data center outages in hours rather than days. SRM works with VMware Infrastructure and eliminates the complexity and unreliability of manual recovery.
VMware exposes vSphere 5 features at Partner Exchange
From 8th until the 11th of February VMware held its annual Partner Exchange conference. During the conference VMware detailed its roadmap for the upcoming version 5 of vSphere, VMware’s virtualization platform expected to be released in the second half of this year.
Although some of the features were already detailed earlier during VMworld , mentioning them on the conference tells us that it’s more likely that the features will make it into the product. VMware detailed the following new upcoming features:
Release: VMware VMmark 2.1
In December last year, VMware released version 2.0 of its benchmarking framework VMmark, focussing on measuring the performance of the whole data center, including complex operations like manual and automated (or DRS-initated) vMotion, Storage vMotion, as well as virtual machines cloning and deployment.
Now VMware has made available version 2.1 of VMmark provinding usability, managability improvements and better scale-out abilities.
Microsoft announces Windows 7 version tailored for VDI access
Together with the announcement of availability of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, Microsoft also announced a new version of Windows 7, called Windows Thin PC (WinTPC), which will become available shortly on the Microsoft Connect site making it available for customers willing to test it.
WinTPC is a smaller foodprint, locked down version of Windows 7, which enables customers to install this windows version on existing PCs repurposing them as thin clients which can be used to access Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments. WinTPC is comparable with Windows XP Fundamentals, which was revealed in 2005.
The WinTPC version will be made available for customers which use the Software Assurance (SA) program for their Microsoft Software, besides that for these WinTPC clients no VDA license, normally needed to access VDI desktops is needed.