Year: 2011

In March this year Citrix released a first public beta of the next version of XenServer called Project Boston, followed by another beta release in July this year. Now Citrix has released XenServer 6.0, which provides networking, performance and scalability improvements, based on the Xen hypervisor.

Citrix has now introduced the Open vSwitch (OVS) standard as the default network stack of the product. Citrix has decided not to release the Self-Service Manager feature available in the beta, because Citrix wants to line up with the Cloud.com products CloudStack and Cloud Portal which it acquired in July this year. Version 6.0 is available for download a the XenServer download page at Citrix.

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During VMworld 2008 Cisco announced its virtual switch for ESX 4.0, called the Nexus 1000V, which is a a piece of software built on NX-OS, that plugs into ESX and that can be configured through the familiar Cisco command line interface.

Now that Microsoft announced the upcoming functionality in Windows Server 8, Cisco announced it will extend the Nexus 1000V to Microsofts hypervisor Hyper-V as well.

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VMware has released version 4.0 of its desktop virtualization platform for Apple Mac: Fusion. This product is the follow up of version 3 for which the latest released version was 3.1.3. which was released in June this year.

Version 4.0 provides the following new features:

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Quest has released a new tool called the vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer. The tool contains Quests knowledge on how to optimize a Virtual Desktop, and although it is especially written for vWorkspace its also applicable to Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View.

The tool contains a list of 40 optimization settings stored in an XML which can be enabled or disabled using either a GUI interface or using the command line.

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During its annual Build conference, Microsoft shared some information about the upcoming versions of its flagship product Windows. As virtualization.info already reported the client version of Windows, dubbed Windows 8 will contain the Hyper-V hypervisor technology, besides other new functionality.

Microsoft also showed a glimpse of the new features for its upcoming server OS, dubbed Windows Server 8. Windows Server 8 will contain the next version of Hyper-V, version 3.0. and will provide the following new features from a virtualization and VDI point of view:

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VMware has released version 8 of its virtualization platform Workstation. While normally in-line with Workstation also Player and ACE are updated, no information on an updated version for these two products can be found (yet).

This version of Workstation includes the following new features:

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After releasing a beta in March this year, Microsoft today announced the release of the Release Candidate (RC) of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 as publicly available. The Release Candidate will be upgradable to the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version when it will be released.

SCVMM will transform from a centralized Virtual Machine management tool, to a Service Management and Fabric Management tool, by providing lifecycle management of VMs and the applications inside them and by providing configuration management of computing, networking and storage.

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In July last year, virtualization.info reported about the first details for the upcoming successor of Hyper-V called Hyper-V 3.0, at that time there were signals that the Hypervisor would be integrated in Windows 8 as well. In February this year, virtualization.info reported on the fact that more details about Microsoft’s upcoming client Hypervisor appeared online, pointing to patents which Microsoft claimed hinting at an upcoming client hypervisor. In June, Robert McLaws, got his hands on a leaked Windows 8 build (7989) which apparently provides the option to install Hyper-V as a feature on the upcoming OS on 64-bit versions of the Operating System.

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Last week during VMworld, VMware announced two new end-user computing technologies, called project AppBlast and Octopus.

AppBlast will enable any use of any application, running on any platform to be delivered remotely to any device supporting HTML5. Which makes this solution quite different solution compared to other solutions which require some kind of software in order to remotely display applications.

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In November 2008, VMware acquired Trango Virtual Processors announcing its plans to release a type-2 hypervisor for mobile phones called Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP). Development didn’t go as planned though, forcing VMware to delay the solution for at least one year. In December last year, VMware announced a partnership with LG to deliver MVP on LG phones with the Android OS.

During VMworld last week, VMware announced Horizon Mobile, consisting of Horizon Mobile Manager and VMware’s Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP). Horizon Mobile Manager, which will be a separate SaaS application hosted by VMware provides a management console that securely provisions, monitors, updates and de-provisions the virtual workspace residing on mobile devices.

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